BRINGING HAINAN TO THE NATION’S HEEL
Anti-localism in the Early PRC
In the fall of 1956, a revolution in Hungary broke out that challenged the rule and influence of the Soviet Union. It lasted several months, but Soviet troops finally crushed the movement and by early 1957 a new regime was in place, loyal to Moscow. While the uprising failed, the challenge it presented to the tiers of Communist hierarchy was cause for concern throughout the Communist world. Just as Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization process had worried Mao about his own hold on power and his legacy, so, too, did Mao see possible Chinese parallels to incidents like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Within the PRC, the specter arose of local uprisings based on regional interest challenging Beijing’s centralized rule, just as Hungary had challenged Moscow.
Political scientist Frederick C. Tiewes found in contemporary sources that throughout Guangdong Province (then still including Hainan) fully 80 percent of cadres at the county-level and higher rank were relieved of their duties during and immediately after the land reform campaign (1950–1953).1 By December of 1956, a relatively small-scale uprising in Lingao County on Hainan island earned the nickname the “Little Hungarian Incident” (xiao Xiongyali shijian). Coinciding with the Hungarian movement, timing was obviously a factor in the nickname, but like the movement in Hungary, the Lingao uprising clearly articulated a regional frustration with central directives, and a shift in response, on the part of the central authorities, to increase rather than decrease their administrative penetration. A group made up mostly of disaffected Hainanese veterans had risen against the newly installed Party apparatchiks from the mainland.
For many of these troops, there was no life to which they felt that they could return. They had left their hometowns and fled to a life of guerrilla subsistence, and they had foregone their education and any professional training. A relatively high proportion of the Hainan fighting force was women, and they were expected to return to their homes and start families. This was hard to take, especially considering the self-proclaimed progressive New Democracy and professed gender parity of the Communist regime in Beijing, notably in the Marriage Law of 1950. The fighting women of Hainan protested the order to go from being Communist spies, soldiers, and field doctors one day, to housewives the next. Along with the rest of the demobilized Hainan forces, they watched as Hainan’s leadership was also removed from high posts on Hainan and throughout the southern region. These and other factors combined to drive several hundreds of the former Hainan forces to rise against their new mainland political leaders.
Most official records of the incident note only briefly that a small uprising occurred and was quickly put down. Accounts of the incident were published in southern Chinese newspapers at the time, but the most remarkable accounts are found in recollections published in the Wenshi ziliao collections of Lingao County.2 Other sources used here include interviews conducted by the author, recorded speeches of Party leaders, Hainan’s provincial gazetteers, and official communications between the provincial and central leaderships during the 1950s.3
Casualties are not listed in the open official sources or the oral accounts, but the incident consisted of several hundred demobilized soldiers storming a government compound where local cadres had recently been disciplined and detained. The protests involved some violence, though none of the available sources are specific beyond citing the disruption of communications and the raiding of a jail to free the local cadres. Some sources clarify that there were no fatalities among the Hainanese cadres or the guards. The incident was quickly contained by all accounts. In the weeks that followed, the southbound cadres and their supporters held up the incident as an example of the kind of insidious localism that lurked beneath the surface in regions like Hainan.
The question of motivation, ideology, and the causes of Communist success must be asked repeatedly by successive generations because the Chinese Communist Party has shifted its priorities and perhaps even its reason for being. Sometimes this has been done deftly and brought the CCP great military victories, and at other times, the Party shifted its goals and identity with disastrous consequences. Observed from different levels of society, great successes and catastrophes could overlap. In the case of the early 1950s, as the Communist regime rapidly consolidated its rule, the groundwork was also established for the streamlining of command that would lead to the unchecked famine and social chaos of the two decades to follow. The political climate of the early PRC eschewed frank appraisal of failing policy. The pivot from revolution to rule in 1949–1950 represented a shift for the CCP from besieged insurgents to masters of China.
In the early twenty-first century, the CCP leadership has emphasized its role as standard-bearers of a patriotic and increasingly powerful nation, rather than as international leaders of Marxist revolution. Historically, this means that the nationalist identity of the CCP legacy is currently far more important than remembering class struggle, which has faded into the dubious academic realm of mandatory political-study classes in which students memorize and regurgitate Party boilerplate. In this current moment, the excesses and errors of revolutionary radicalism based on class struggle can perhaps be held at arm’s length. An accounting of the events of the Great Leap Forward and its massive resulting famine has been published and banned in China, by a Party member, Yang Jisheng. While Yang’s work has been banned in the PRC, he has not been expelled from the Party or publically punished for his groundbreaking scholarship, and his work reaches a wide audience through easily available downloads.4
A new generation of rulers in the twenty-first century does not shoulder the heavy mantle of the tragedies of Maoist policy. Indeed it is economic growth within a state-capitalist economy that undergirds the regime’s legitimacy. The identity of nonideological modernizers and nation-builders is far more important today than the revolutionary class-struggle identity of radical Communists, some of whom remain, but only in the embattled fringe of the Party, at the time of writing.
The anti-localism campaigns were a convergence of the two perhaps contradictory identities of China in that era of the early PRC: patriotic nation-building on the one hand, and class struggle on the other. While this might be reconciled with a tidy label of “socialism within one country,” the implications and implementation of this paradoxical confluence could potentially cause conflict and confusion among China’s political players. The anti-localism campaigns were, on the one hand, a part of a larger project of nationalism and nation-building, for they sought to bring to heel those regional leaders and interests that threatened to spread power too thinly, and dilute the potency of Beijing’s command over China. On the other hand, the anti-localism campaigns were part of a radical ideological program, which aimed to implement a zealous policy of class struggle that could shatter the residual networks and associations of traditional society and build a truly new culture in its place. So in the anti-localist campaigns, as well as in the “localist” or local movements that the campaigns opposed, ideologies of nationalism and communism were braided together inextricably as motivating factors. Contradictions abound in this type of conflict, as do constant incremental adjustments that can move the goalposts and puzzle the uninitiated observer.
One could use Marxist doctrine to defend both sides. Hainan’s preeminent Communist leader, and a main target of the anti-localism campaigns, Feng Baiju, articulated this complexity when he remarked that in his reading of Das Kapital he had never come across anything about relying on the material welfare and greater wisdom of a “minority segment” of the population—in this case, Feng was referring to the anti-localist dictates to forgo perceived priorities of local peasants in order to rely on the southbound cadres and the mainland soldiers for ideological direction.5 His bold statement was made retroactively in 1962, in defense of Feng’s decisions and those of some of his Hainanese comrades in resisting some of the centralizing policies of the 1950s. There had been a brief period in the early 1950s during which the local Hainanese leadership was needed, and was therefore not immediately in conflict with the mainland cadres and soldiers. The early days following the military conquest saw a smooth transition, as Feng Baiju was left in power as the favorite son of the island. The work of accepting the surrender of bedraggled Nationalist soldiers and completing the takeover of power was done relatively smoothly, thanks to both the guerrilla and militia presence on the island, and thanks also to the initial reluctance to replace local cadres and demobilize the local fighting forces.
Following the successful Communist conquest of Hainan, and the end of the violence, came celebration for those who counted this as their victory. The guerrilla forces, along with their civilian support base, hosted the newly arrived “main army” (da jun) from the mainland. There were feasts for officers and joyful greetings between guerrillas and regular soldiers on the beaches and throughout the villages and cities of Hainan. But the celebration would be short-lived, and the relationship between the local Communists of Hainan and the “southbound cadres” of the mainland would be fractured within a few short years. On the national level, the beginning of the Korean War in June of 1950 heaped more doubt on the already unlikely Taiwan conquest, and the fervent momentum of the civil war turned to Korea and domestic campaigns of political consolidation.
In celebrations of the Hainan conquest in the spring of 1950, cries were raised to follow Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan and finish him off. To the west, the conquest of Tibet was another major preoccupation, also with an international dimension that could complicate early ambitions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). And so, the Hainan conquest, within a matter of weeks, slipped into the new normalcy of the PRC’s consolidation, making the pivot from revolution to rule on Hainan a very sharp turn. There was no period for acclimation, but rather an expectation from the mainland authorities that the nation-building project on Hainan would hit the ground running, and join the flow of national campaigns that had already been underway for months or even years in other regions of Communist territory.
The distance and communication difficulties during the revolutionary period had given the Hainan leadership some degree of de facto autonomy, but with the May 1950 incorporation of Hainan into the Communist regime, and the island’s incorporation into the province of Guangdong, Hainan would be brought to the heel of the national government, and quickly. In official documents, there are no references to the mistakes of disobedience, improvisation, or moderation on the part of the Hainan leadership in the wartime period, but this was doubtless a factor in the early implementation of policy on the island.
The specter of “localism” (difang zhuyi) was raised early in PRC rule of the island, referring to any leadership that favored Hainan local interests over national priorities. Mainland cadres might perceive localism in the form of moderation of central policies, most importantly land reform and redistribution, blunted by local cadres for the sake of softening the impact of an otherwise harsh campaign. Localism could be nepotism more broadly defined; it could be any form of local heroism that transcended orthodox allowances; indeed it was such a catchall label that it could include anything at all that might detract from a commitment to the national revolutionary regime in favor of a local entity. In his study of the subject, Xiaorong Han develops the important difference between “localization” (difanghua), which was encouraged in Communist organization, and localism (difang zhuyi), which was not. They can be seen as two sides of the same coin in terms of engaging with the local population during revolutionary struggle. Whereas localization is a positive and productive way of engaging with a local population through familiarization with local customs and priorities, if carried into excessive advocacy or prioritization of local interests, similar activity could lead to localism. As Han points out, there is considerable room for interpretation here, especially amid the chaotic and rapid changes of warfare and regime change. For this reason, the pejorative label of “localist” could be used for political convenience and expedience during factional struggles and political wrangling.6 It is crucial to note that the perception and misperception of motives diverged greatly between Hainan revolutionaries and their mainland counterparts. While moderate policy implementation on Hainan was carried out by cadres who believed that they were extremely patriotic and loyal to the Party, the same moderation was seen by mainland critics as insidious graft, favoritism, and possibly even separatist sentiment on the part of the Hainanese, in an effort to ensconce their favored leadership in a new Hainan kingdom.
Feng Baiju continued to represent and work for Hainanese interests in this period, and for nearly a year after the Communist conquest he was fully supported by the central leadership. He was not, however, the supreme commander of Hainan, since Deng Hua took that position when he crossed the Qiongzhou Strait with the main army forces. Then, in early 1951, as the land reform campaign on Hainan began in earnest, the perception of an unacceptably slow pace of reform on Hainan led to an influx of outside cadres, also known as the “southbound cadres” (nanxia ganbu), whose main charge was to overcome the local obstacles to speedy implementation of land reform policy and power centralization.7 As land reform accelerated, perceived local resistance continued in various forms.
Questions surrounding personnel were also prominent in disagreements between mainland and Hainan officials in the early PRC. While many of the Hainanese revolutionaries felt that they were most knowledgeable of local conditions, and therefore best qualified to lead in the transition from revolution to rule, mainlanders raised the perennial concerns in Chinese governance (as perhaps in governance anywhere) of nepotism and favoritism. Safeguards like the “law of avoidance” in imperial China, by which an official cannot serve in his own home county or home province, had been diligently implemented even in the final Qing dynasty. The system was by no means perfect in curbing corruption, but it was a long-standing institutional way of aiming to limit local favoritism at the expense of central priorities or loyalties.8
The perception of localism and resistance to this acceleration is worth examining. From the perspective of Beijing and Wuhan (the national capital and the headquarters of the Communist southern bureau respectively), the southern regions like Guangdong, and especially Hainan, were resisting the implementation of radical land reform policies out of an alleged desire to create “independent kingdoms.” This concern had direct precedents in the southern political and military leaders like Chen Jitang, Bai Zhongxi, Li Zongren, and others who threatened to break away from the earlier regimes of Chiang Kai-shek.
The voices coming out of Hainan in this period express frustration, and ultimately despair, with the failure of Hainanese attempts to moderate and soften the centralization that came with the land reform campaign and military demobilization. Later, Feng Baiju blamed the newly arrived leadership in Guangdong, including Ou Mengjue, Zhao Ziyang, and Tao Zhu for the harsh policies that led to the uprooting of local cadres and the local leadership at the highest levels, including himself. These three high-level officials arrived in Hainan, according to Feng, with an air of superiority and even a sense of their own infallibility. Like the flood of southbound cadres who arrived on the island to implement land reform and radicalize local politics, Feng believed that these three leaders had valued their own personal authority over true national solidarity. This had created a rift that seemed impossible to bridge, and led to a conflict between the local and mainland leadership.9
In the early 1950s, however, this type of resistance to newly arrived cadres was difficult to express safely. This resistance manifested itself in different ways, and it was interpreted in different ways by the Hainan and mainland leadership. In some instances, what was perceived as resistance was in fact something else, like obedience to outdated directives or simply abject despair and exhaustion. Indeed, Feng and others later referred to the 1920s and 1930s leadership of Mao and Zhu De in Jinggangshan and Yan’an, asserting that their reliance on local conditions for survival was similar. Feng Baiju reflected on the political consciousness of the Hainan leadership in an article in Xin Hainan bao [New Hainan Journal] published on May 8, 1950, referring to those political workers and guerrillas under his command in the twenty-three-year Communist struggle (1926–1950).
The revolutionary struggle on Hainan has a history of over twenty years, and in that time there have been Communist Party, military, civilian government, and other types of people’s organizations. The struggle has been a trial and a tempering for the people. But this is not enough. If the main army did not come to Hainan, liberation would have been impossible. … If the main army had not come, we might still be in Wuzhishan. … We have many difficult challenges before us, but we can overcome them all. Most important is still our understanding of ideological problems. It is incorrect to try to implement guerrilla work methods in our new environment. Comrades! We have persevered for over twenty years in our struggle on this isolated island, not receiving the direct help of outside revolutionary strength and cooperation. Today is a great opportunity. Not only do we have outside revolutionary strength of help and cooperation, but we also have an opportunity to study. We must make the most of this time, grasp this opportunity, and study from the main army in order to transform, strengthen, and enrich ourselves.10
In this article, as in other speeches and writings, Feng readily acknowledges the need of Hainan Communist workers to study and learn new methods from the main army and the newly arrived cadres. But he also reminds the reader of the revolution’s self-reliance and resourceful survival for twenty-three years. Feng would eventually be accused of favoring local cadres over those same newly arrived cadres that he praised in the above quote.11 He even would be accused of supporting a military insurrection against the mainland political and military operatives who arrived in Hainan in the early 1950s. Those who called him a localist claimed also that he had spread the idea that the Communists of Hainan could have taken over the island without the help of the mainland force.12 There is no evidence to support these accusations, and they seem to contradict the sentiments Feng expressed in this article published in the early days of Communist rule on Hainan.
Feng’s warm rhetoric toward the southbound cadres in the spring of 1950 would be challenged a year later, however, when a much larger contingent of mainland cadres arrived to accelerate land reform. In this context, many local Communist cadres on Hainan began to push back against the increasing loss of autonomy in making local policy as well as military and political staffing.13 Resistance in this time is difficult to track however, because friendly rhetoric such as Feng’s article cited earlier continued through the era. While the focus of this chapter is the early 1950s and the first stage of the localist activities on Hainan, some of the best insights came from events, speeches, and writings from several years later. The “Little Hungarian Incident” in late 1956 reflects the intense frustration of demobilized local military leaders and the soldiers under their command; a recorded speech by Feng in the political calm of 1962 is a frank counterattack, the tenor of which was not possible (or not recorded) in 1952; the official posthumous rehabilitation of Feng in 1983 and Hainan’s 1988 provincial status perhaps represents the vindication of the Hainan localists. These all shed light on the early 1950s.
The previous chapters have established the tension between the mainland and Hainan Communist leadership. Within the first three years of Communist rule on Hainan, this conflict was firmly resolved in favor of the mainland command. While Hainan had traditionally been a destination of exiled officials, Feng Baiju was exiled in reverse, sent off the island first to a post in Guangzhou and then in Zhejiang, in 1953 and 1957, respectively. These two changes for Feng were technically promotions within the Party, but their main purpose was to uproot the Hainan leader from his home island, transplanting him into an environment where he could do little of what outsiders perceived to be localist harm, and indeed little of anything because he could not understand the Zhejiang dialect.14 Perhaps the most indicative of local frustrations with new mainland controls on Hainan came with the series of uprisings in the winter of 1956–1957. This was the culmination of the troubled relationship between local and newly arrived cadres, and a brief examination of this incident will serve to introduce the tensions that pervaded Hainan in the early 1950s.
After the success of the Communist takeover in the spring of 1950, there was a brief celebratory phase in which local leaders were praised and rewarded with high posts in the political and military infrastructures of Communist Hainan. For their part, the Li people, so crucial to the survival of the Communist movement on Hainan in the 1940s, were among the first of fifty-five ethnic minority groups to be officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and thus granted special rights and territories under the new national government. As early as June of 1950, the four counties of Baoting, Ledong, Qiongzhong, and Baisha were incorporated in an autonomous district to be governed by the Li and Miao people.15
This brief period of relative harmony between local Communist leaders and the new regime continued a long period of localization (difanghua), by which regional organizers had been encouraged and supported to embed themselves within local societies. In 1943, this policy had saved the Hainan Communist movement in its alliance with the Li people. But even in the earliest days of Communist rule on Hainan, even while the official celebrations continued, there was tension between the local Communist leaders and those who were newly arrived, in spite of official rhetoric and ceremonial feasts. After a few months, early tensions had escalated into clear political divisions, accusations of corruption and nepotism on the one hand, and what we could loosely call carpetbagging on the other. By 1952, official anti-localism campaigns had begun, and by 1957 they would reach the climax that connected them to the antirightist movement that traumatized and alienated many of the political leaders and intellectuals of the PRC.
In August of 1950, three months after the Communist victory on Hainan, Feng Baiju was invited to Beijing to meet with Mao Zedong for the first time. He ultimately made the trip in November with his secretary, and with Ye Jianying, one of the most prominent military leaders in the Communist revolution. Although Ye had not made Guangdong the base of his revolutionary activities, after the military victory was complete there, he was brought in as the top provincial authority, based in part on his ties to the region. Prior to his trip to Beijing, Feng had met with Ye, Zhou Enlai, and other prominent national leaders, and he had communicated directly with Mao through central commands and responses. On his train ride from the south, Feng turned over in his mind what he would discuss with Mao. The possibility of immediate provincial status for Hainan was a major issue that Feng considered raising in his audience with Mao.16 The hierarchy of command at the time meant that Hainan had to report to Guangdong provincial leaders, and then to the Southern Party Bureau, and finally to Beijing. Feng would be the obvious candidate for provincial leadership and immediately a player on the national scene if Hainan should be elevated to provincial status.
En route to Beijing, Feng stopped in Wuhan for several days, and there he met with Deng Xiaoping and Deng Zihui, two more high-ranking politicians. While Feng waited to continue his trip north, the two Dengs visited him frequently and the three became well acquainted. Feng later remembered them joking that they were worried he would be lonely in a new city, so they came to his room often to play chess. By the time Feng arrived in Beijing, he must have begun to feel like something of a national celebrity. Immediately upon arrival, a steady stream of notable guests came to his hotel room, along with a package from the Party’s Central office containing five million renminbi.17 Three times, Feng sent this back to the office, until finally a personal explanation from Mao accompanied the money, clarifying that this was Feng’s “pocket money.” Feng then accepted and turned over the funds to his secretary.
Feng met with the Party Vice Chairman Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai, giving them a full report of the Communist movement on Hainan, its history, its current progress, and ideas for its future. Feng also emphasized the ongoing challenges on Hainan, and explained that significant help was needed from the central government. Both Liu and Zhou encouraged Feng to formally submit this report and ask for the funds. He did so, requesting 600 million renminbi in economic aid. The request was quickly granted and Feng formally thanked the government on behalf of the three million people of Hainan. In a meeting with Zhu De, commander of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Feng explained the communication difficulties that had cut off Hainan from the mainland Communist movement. Zhu immediately ordered forty wireless radio devices to be sent back to Hainan with Feng. Perhaps Feng was beginning to feel that he had carte blanche in the capital.
Still, ultimately, Feng did not argue forcefully for provincial status for Hainan, and instead he gave an essential report of progress on Hainan island, awaiting Mao’s instructions. Mao, for his part, did not take this opportunity to chasten Feng for disobeying central orders when, especially in 1946, the Hainan leadership did not follow explicit central directives to leave Hainan and join forces elsewhere. Neither is there any record that Mao had any critical words for the implementation on Hainan of a relatively moderate land reform policy that made the campaign far slower there than anywhere else in China. Instead, Mao instructed Feng to return to his command on Hainan and to focus on two main areas moving forward: military training and land reform. With the Korean War underway, and expanding Chinese involvement, national defense was a priority in Beijing. Also, Beijing was concerned with real Nationalist and American espionage designs on Hainan that required immediate attention. As for land reform, the relatively moderate policies of Hainan and the island’s late inclusion into Communist administered territory meant that there was much work to be done in order to bring economic policy up to speed.18
While in Beijing, Feng became ill due to complications related to severe intestinal ailments. Upon Zhou Enlai’s insistence, Feng reluctantly postponed his return to Hainan and convalesced in a Beijing hospital. From his “pocket money,” to meeting with many of the most prominent figures of the national revolution, and finally to his treatment in a modern Beijing hospital, Feng was a long way from his life as a hard-scrabble guerrilla commander on Hainan. After an operation and ten days in the hospital, the forty-eight-year-old Feng left Beijing in his best health in years. While Feng had only met with Mao briefly, Zhou visited him frequently in the hospital, and before Feng’s departure, Zhou reminded him of Mao’s final instructions, to focus on both land reform and military training. Feng returned via Guangzhou (Canton) where he received a hero’s welcome, and he announced these two priorities of the new regime, doing the same when he returned to Hainan. With him came the promise of 600 million renminbi in aid from the central government.
It was during this first year following the Communist victory that Feng Baiju wrote his own account of the Communist movement on Hainan, Zhongguo gongchandang de guanghui zhaoyao zai Hainan dao shang (The radiance of the Chinese Communist Party shines on Hainan island).19 Feng’s account marked the thirtieth year of the CCP’s existence: “The organization and victory of the Hainan Party is inseparable from the CCP’s national victory; it is a very small part of the heroic thirty-year struggle and our Party’s great victory.”20
Feng emphasized the way in which the Hainan movement had relied on the masses, the people of Hainan, as the foundation of its success. This may seem a boilerplate platitude, and perhaps in 1950–1951 it was; but in the coming months, the gap would grow between “relying on the people of Hainan,” and “relying on the Southbound cadres (nanxia ganbu),” sent by mainland authorities to dictate policy on the island. But for the moment, at least, as Feng made his debut on the national stage and Hainan was embraced by the new regime, it seemed that a honeymoon period would mark the beginning of the new Beijing’s relationship with Hainan. Feng’s account of the “CCP’s radiance” shining on Hainan was, in 1950–1951, no more than a paean to Beijing and the success of the new regime. This same text, however, would take on new meaning in the months and years to come, and it is worth revisiting in an examination of the troubled 1950s on Hainan.
The souring of relations between the Hainan leadership and the mainland Party authorities in Wuhan and Beijing, paralleled in large part throughout Guangdong Province, can be divided into issues related to land reform and civil-military leadership and ideology, those same two crucial issues that Mao and the Party leadership had emphasized to Feng. In both of these areas, relations began very smoothly as reflected in Feng’s trip to Beijing and the celebration of the Hainan conquest both in Haikou and Beijing. Land reform began with a period of moderation that quickly shifted into a radical phase that ultimately cleared out the ranks of local leaders in favor of newly arrived cadres from the north. As for the civil-military leadership and ideology, the celebration of the conquest began with praise for the heroics of the Hainan guerrillas, but it then shifted toward a narrative of the main army in wooden junks and fishing boats—a people’s flotilla taking on the warships and beach defenses of the Nationalists. This directly reflected the priorities of the people’s struggle and national unity as the PRC entered the Korean War.
Land reform was undoubtedly one of the most important pillars of CCP policy during the civil war and into the early period of Communist rule. It underpinned much of the CCP’s support in their territories, from the days of Jinggangshan in the late 1920s, to Yan’an and behind Japanese lines in the late 1930s, and throughout much of northern China in the 1940s. Ever since the split with the Nationalists in 1927 and the shift from an urban to a rural revolution, the CCP either drove or unleashed rural class warfare, calibrating the violence and scale according to their needs. Certain periods saw relatively moderate reforms and rent reductions, while in other periods the CCP implemented violent struggles and radical economic leveling in the countryside. One generalization about land policy leading up to the Communist victory in 1949–1950 was quite self-evident, namely that areas under secure and unrivaled Communist control saw a more systematic and permanent policy of land reform. Those areas that were disputed, either by the Japanese, the Nationalists, or other groups, naturally did not experience as radical or systematic a policy of land reform.
Hainan was one such disputed territory all the way through the Communist takeover in the spring of 1950. This was why, when Mao met with Feng in late 1950, he told Feng to make land reform a top priority in the early work of the new regime. It was not the first time that Feng had received such instructions from the central Party leadership. In 1947, Feng had received a similar directive to “vigorously develop the revolutionary land movement” across Hainan, but this ambitious rhetoric reflected the reality of the increasingly solid hold the Communists had on northern China, not Hainan. While Feng and the Hainan leadership attempted to implement land reform policies in the late 1940s as in earlier periods, the lack of solid administrative control over much of the island made this impossible.21 The Communists of Hainan had held certain territories with relative impunity, especially following their alliance with the Li and the shift of the movement’s locus to the southern mountain bases of Wuzhishan in 1943–1944. In the relative safety of this territory, economic policy could be enforced, but the lack of large landlords in the region, and the need for cooperation from powerful Li leaders, prevented them from implementing any significant policies that radically transformed the social fabric of the Li territories or the rest of Hainan.
Rather, the Hainan Communist fighters made a priority of base-building and disseminating a progressive political ideology that favored sexual equality, broad political participation, universal education, and indeed some degree of economic justice.22 Some of the Hainanese Communist leaders were familiar with the policies of land redistribution and rent reduction as they were being implemented in more securely held Communist territories in the north. But even by 1950, there was no precedent for the kind of far-reaching successful implementation of these policies on Hainan.
In 1950, the mainland soldiers and cadres arrived to find a fighting force that knew the local terrain and had many local allies. The military conquest and the early transition to Communist rule was facilitated by these local connections, and by the popularity of local leaders, most importantly, Feng Baiju. Among the Li people, Wang Guoxing’s unrivaled leadership and his alliance with Feng and the CCP brought in that significant group and bolstered the local credibility of the Party. Feng, Wang, and Ma Baishan all traveled north to Beijing as a way of confirming their loyalties following the success of the Communist conquest.
But it quickly became apparent to the newly arrived cadres and administrators that implementing land reform and class struggle would have to be undertaken almost from scratch. Conditions were very different from northern China, but the initial urban takeover of Guangzhou was a success story in early Communist policy. Fueled by early signs of success in Guangzhou, thousands of young cadres, mostly from northern China of intellectual backgrounds and unfamiliar with southern rural society, spread throughout Guangdong including Hainan. Their initial task was to implement a relatively moderate land reform policy that had been announced in the weeks following the takeover of Hainan.23
The initially smooth transition in both political leadership and economic policy can be attributed to several factors. The newly arrived cadres respected the popularity of local leaders and left them in positions of power. Land holdings of overseas Cantonese and Hainanese were not immediately seized, and owing to Hainan’s strong connections to commerce throughout the region and the world, but especially in Southeast Asia, this meant that a relatively large portion of Hainan’s landowners were abroad. Also, and owing in part to this previous fact, a relatively small percentage of the local population on Hainan was categorized as landlords who deserved punishment and confiscation of their land.
Further contributing to the initial sense of mutual goodwill between natives and newcomers, early land reform development brought with it experts in agricultural development who taught Hainanese farmers how to change their methods and even their crops in order to make better use of their land. The scale of this operation was unprecedented in the economic relationship between Hainan and the mainland, and plans for increasing rubber tree cultivation were realized as soon as March of 1951, when nearly 6,000 hectares of undeveloped land were planted with rubber trees.24
Less than a decade later, even while much of the country’s agricultural sector hurtled toward disaster in the late 1950s, the improved development of tropical agriculture in Hainan, such as rubber and coconuts, earned the national spotlight in propaganda publications. Improved development methods along with local suitability proved these early policies to have been a success for Hainan.25 A central government loan along with early harmonious leadership between Hainan and the central Party had laid the foundations for success in the early rubber development. A typical rubber tree must grow for between five and six years before it can first be tapped, hence the success story of Hainan’s rubber industry came during the late 1950s.
With the successful launching of improved rubber farming in March of 1951, Feng Baiju announced that expectations would be surpassed, and that the first phase of land reform would be complete before the end of that year. This vitality and enthusiasm spurred much of the early work, as thousands of Hainan revolutionary cadres were employed by the effort. The ebullience of this period, however, stands in stark contrast to the revolutionary land reform that took place during wartime throughout northern China. The military success was celebrated across Hainan, and it became increasingly difficult to discern who among the population were in fact deserving of having their land confiscated, either for political crimes or excessive wealth. From the perspective of mainland cadres, local Hainanese cadres went about land reform, especially the task of confiscation and punishment, with insufficient urgency and zeal. This was the basis of what later would be labeled “peaceful land reform,” a crime of the highest order in a time of violent revolutionary class struggle.26
In an era of modernization and class struggle, the charge of “peaceful land reform” was a crime that was both premodern (“feudal” in the imprecise jargon of the time), and counterrevolutionary. The lineage and village ties that connected communities of Hainanese were targeted by mainland cadres newly arrived on Hainan, for they were the “feudal” remnants of an earlier society. More importantly, these ties stood in the way of the kind of radical national policies that would have to carry the day in order for the new regime to collect enough revenue to prosper and to fight the United States on the Korean peninsula. Both nationalism and class struggle were brought to bear as rhetorical and political tools to break down local ties. These ties of local identity and loyalty that were under attack included the family, clan, and village, but by 1952, even island-wide ties of Hainanese identity would become the focus of a larger campaign of anti-localism.
In early 1951, the official land reform campaign began in earnest on Hainan. In official documents from this period, the special conditions on Hainan island were already an issue that preoccupied both Hainanese and central Party planners. In February, Feng Baiju and the Hainan leadership repeated the orders from Beijing to focus on military training and land reform. While military training seemed to be less of a contentious issue, a February 13, 1951, circular issued by the Hainan authorities, declared the launching of the land reform movement on Hainan. Considering the conflicts between local and central leadership that would later develop, the confidence of the local leadership in the February circular is remarkable. The authors declare that although they have recently received a central directive ordering them to speed up the land reform campaign on Hainan, they would be able to complete land reform in two years, completing a third of the campaign’s planned land redistribution campaigns by the end of 1951, and the rest of the island by the end of 1952. The authors, presumably Feng Baiju and Deng Hua, immediately note the extensive revolutionary experience of the local Hainanese Communist cadres, emphasizing both their competence and their popularity, which will serve them well in the coming campaign: “After over twenty years of revolutionary struggle, the political consciousness of the masses is rather high. Political organizational work of the Party is very widespread, and land reform has begun in a number of places giving us experience.”27
In March of 1951, the official tone in Hainan documents was still one of restraint and moderate land reform. Nearly every specific note in one relatively thorough list of provisions about land reform on Hainan emphasizes moderation. A list of potential target groups are listed as not being the immediate or pressing targets for confiscation of their land, including wealthy tenant-peasants (dianfunong), Li and Miao villagers in Hainan’s mountains, absentee landlords, and counterrevolutionaries who have already been punished. The absentee landlords mentioned were those who were not present or could not be found, and included those who lived in the towns and cities of Hainan or the mainland, and also those who lived abroad, mainly in Southeast Asia. The list of provisions notes that it is not necessary to confiscate the landholdings of these and other groups. Even “traitors” (Hanjian), those who had collaborated in some way with the Japanese occupiers (1939–1945), were given special mention in this March 1951 document. While traitors could generally be punished in keeping with usual national policy, this document notes that there will be “special circumstances.” These special circumstances are not clearly defined, but it seems likely that those circumstances are “special” in cases where the possible punishment of an individual would significantly disturb the local peace. In this brief stipulation, the document advises any cadre adjudicating such a case should rely on two factors: first, “the opinion of the masses” and second, the cadre’s own understanding of the situation.28
Overall, the deference to local conditions and the judgment of cadres on the ground is striking in this March 1951 document. Feng Baiju was then serving as vice-chairman of Hainan’s civil-military committee. The chairman, Deng Hua, was not Hainanese, but had commanded the main Communist army’s assault on Hainan a year earlier, and the two worked together closely in this year following the conquest. While some of their policies reflected moderation compared to what was to follow, there were areas of strictness in their policies. These included confronting the real threats of espionage and sabotage from Nationalist remnants, and also the continuation of flagrantly exploitative behavior by landlords. In a document they issued several days after the above March 1951 proclamation, they stipulated that the hasty selling or giving away of land and property by landlords was forbidden. This was done to avoid the adjudication of Party cadres who were on their way to officially parcel out land. The assumption was that a landlord could divide up his land among friendly locals and naturally benefit from these favors, rather than facing the harsher arbitration and redistribution of his land by Communist officials. Also noted in the document was the duty of every Hainanese to report any kind of sabotage or espionage. “It is not permitted to connive and cover for saboteurs. Those harboring violators will be brought to justice.”29
In this early period on Hainan, it was pragmatism and not ideological purity that made a priority of dealing with sabotage and the illegal preemptive sale of large plots of land and significant amounts of property. On the Guangdong mainland, harsher land reform policies were already being implemented, but it seems these were delayed on Hainan.30 This variation may be explained by the experimental nature of these early policies. Indeed a circular (tongzhi) announcement made regarding Hainan’s land reform policies refers to problems with the “land reform experiment” (tugai shidian) on Hainan.31 But while Deng Hua and Feng Baiju continued to issue quite moderate reports and announcements that emphasized stability and consideration of the “opinion of the masses” over radical policy, on the neighboring mainland, and within the same province, a shift was underway. In the case of Hainan, it seems that the “opinion of the masses” could indeed be contrasted with aspects of radical land reform policy, which engages the question of whether the Chinese Communist Party, in its early years, was effectively unleashing the pent-up fury of the masses or stirring up class struggle that might not have been as potent a dormant force as is still sometimes assumed by historians. Ultimately, the example of Hainan showed that from one region to the next, local realities and local “masses” had different ideas about the appropriate degree of radical reform to be implemented.
By April of 1951, a critical mass of northern cadres had arrived in Guangdong and on Hainan so that their presence gradually came to dominate the local cadres, and soon the tone of the land reform movement began to shift. In that month, Fang Fang, a hugely popular local Guangdong revolutionary, made a public self-criticism in which he confessed to having put too much emphasis on orderly transition and peaceful land reform.32 By mid-April, a circular on land reform and class designations showed early signs of conflict. Work teams had become aware of some individuals hiding land (mantian) in order to avoid assignment to a higher class, and naturally to avoid having the land confiscated and redistributed. This problem was a common one, and the work teams and cadres implementing land reform on Hainan were ordered to pay more attention to this type of deceit.33
This circular ends by acknowledging a phenomenon that would cause some concern in the coming months and years: local “tyrants” (eba) were committing suicide in great enough numbers that it was noticed as a trend, and that the work teams and cadres should compile statistics and rosters of these suicides. Over the coming months, suicides of those targeted by land reform policies, usually referred to as local “tyrants,” became a frequent topic in the circulars and directives regarding the calibration of land reform. Studies of suicide in China, as in any other society, usually do not employ “single-cause models,” which fail to convey the complex fabric of social and individual factors that might lead to suicide.34 Still, the cause of the suicides mentioned in the directives and circulars of the Hainan land reform movement seem to share some aspect of the trauma of that movement as their common cause. In fact, while the writers of these documents insist on using the term “suicide” (zisha), most of the deaths referred to result from being driven to such an act through coercion, threats, and only then, resulting desperation.
And yet, a citizen of the nation committing suicide as opposed to subjecting himself or herself to the laws of that government is certainly problematic. When it occurs on the scale that it gains the attention of the government, it is more likely that the epidemic is due to a clumsily or brutally enforced policy, rather than simply being due to the wickedness of certain class elements. Suicide was generally considered by authorities to be an admission of guilt, if it came in the case of a persecuted official or landlord. In either case of political suicide, either as protest or admission of guilt, it represents the most absolute impasse between the ruler and the powerless ruled. Whether an inward revolution or a shameful confession, political suicide is the final claim and perhaps the only vestige of individual power.
In Yang Kuisong’s 2008 study of the campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries (zhenya fan’geming), the author examines the ways in which a revolutionary regime must continue its violent ways beyond the transition from revolution to rule. Yang explains the use of “executions by quota” in this campaign of the early 1950s, in which a “contest among officials of different places to execute large numbers of people was propelled by these officials’ eagerness to prove themselves to higher levels by filling and overfilling quotas.”35 Some officials stood against this policy in the early years of the campaign, at the local, provincial, and even at the national levels. Yang quotes a report on the campaign by Ye Jianying from May of 1951, almost at exactly the same time as the beginning of the reports noted above by local land reform work teams on the increasing incidence of suicides and violent deaths. Ye wrote that many of the executions carried out in Guangdong and Guangxi were not even based on the slightest bit of information about the accused. Victims were killed without knowledge of their age or family background, let alone any clear charges of any crime. According to Ye, only a single character—huai (wicked)—was enough of a criminal dossier to lead to one’s execution.36 Ye’s outspoken criticism of the implementation of this campaign at the local level, which employed the very quotas that Mao himself had determined, would soon lead to Ye’s own removal from authority in his native southern China.
Besides Ye’s report quoted by Yang, Ye also remarked that the best results in the land reform campaign in Guangdong were found in those areas that had been old guerrilla bases, which is relevant to our story. This observation was taken by the central authorities as evidence of Ye’s “localist” tendencies—favoring the work of local cadres in the guerrilla bases to the work of newly arrived southbound cadres—and in the later anti-localism campaign, Ye would be “promoted” to a post in Beijing and away from the possibility of affecting policy in his native Guangdong.37
While considering the many campaigns and factors that overlapped in this period, it is difficult and indeed inadvisable to connect suicides and violent deaths to a single cause. It is noteworthy that in the Hainan case, many of the references to a troubling number of suicides, especially among wealthier peasants and landlords, and the actions that should be taken in response, are noted in directives and circulars relating to the land reform movement. It is clear from these directives and from the later urgency in the anti-localist crackdown in Guangdong and Hainan, that the land reform movement was certainly a traumatic period in Hainan’s relationship with the mainland.
By February of 1952, increasing incidence of suicide drew the attention of the South China Bureau of the Party leadership, as well as the attention of Party central in Beijing. Party authorities in Guangdong (including Hainan), Hunan, Henan, and other provinces were reporting an increase in suicide, which included not only the “local tyrants,” but also middle and lower peasants. Directives and circulars that were issued in this time outlined different ways of dealing with suicide or attempted suicide pertaining to different class elements as well as those peasants who had been tainted by some counterrevolutionary activity as opposed to those who had not.38 Each suicide case was to be dealt with according to class, family background, and/or revolutionary history.
By the spring of 1952, it was clear that the local cadres had become one of the most important obstacles to the implementation of centrally dictated land reform. The main line of accusation was that these cadres were “rightists,” and that their methods were too moderate for the planned land reform policy. In Li territory, land reform was also a special problem. As in the rest of Hainan, cadres familiar with the language, culture, and farming practices of the north were frustrated by the ways in which the Hainanese reality did not fit their training.39 By July of 1952, the central Party authority in Beijing issued a directive to rely on the southbound cadres and the main army in order to complete land reform. Guangdong was the slowest province to enact and complete land reform, and Hainan was the slowest part of Guangdong to do so, a dubious superlative in the early PRC. Even the Guangdong ally of Hainan, Ye Jianying, pointed out to the central leadership that within the province of Guangdong, Hainan needed the most spurring along in its completion of the campaign. The new slogan was, “Rely on the Southbound Cadres, rely on the main army, complete land reform.”40 It was in the implementation of this stage of land reform that the first anti-localism campaign began in Guangdong. The main purpose was to eliminate any local obstructions to the work of the newly arrived cadres.
Wang Guoxing, the leader of the Li people who brought them into alliance with Hainan Communists, was celebrated as a paragon of the ethnic minority groups and their service to the revolution. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai lectured on Wang’s exemplary leadership, and granted him a post as a representative in the national government. The southern territories of Hainan that had long been the home of the Li and Miao people were granted status of autonomous districts, and Wang was appointed their leader. Land reform in the Li-Miao district, however, also did not go smoothly. The southbound cadres who arrived in Hainan to complete land reform, especially in large numbers in 1952, also moved into the Li-Miao district for their work. The ethnic distinction was obvious, and the “Han chauvinism” of the newly arrived cadres was clear in their relationship with the Li.41 The CCP leadership made room for dissent and differing opinions in the early years of the PRC. This meant that Zhou Enlai and others could court the big capitalists and landlords, and convince them that their wealth would not be completely nationalized, and that indeed there was a place for them in the new regime. For many moderates, this was not needed and the ebullient atmosphere of the early years of the regime was enough to attract their loyalty even if they did not share the same radical ideology that had occasionally been revealed in CCP policies of the 1930s and 1940s. The “national bourgeoisie” and the moderates would eventually be incorporated into a new society with varying degrees of force and persuasion.
But sometimes more threatening than outright opponents to an ideological regime is the critic within the political establishment who claims that current policies are straying from the founding ideology. These individuals claim a truer truth—often an earlier truth—and they are the first target in the purges and inquisitions of history. The decision to criticize an authoritarian regime on its own ideological terms can come only from a special kind of audacity, or the belief that one’s ideas will be respected, heeded, and not punished.
In the case of Feng Baiju, he became a loyal dissenter when he referred to his own reading of Marx as being inconsistent with the policies he saw implemented on his Hainan island. As the southbound cadres and the main army began to dictate policy, running roughshod over local Hainanese interests, the Hainanese cadres were told to respect this group. The policy directive was to “rely on the southbound cadres, rely on the main army.” Feng witnessed this shift away from local policy and local leadership, and in a 1952 speech he bluntly stated his opposition. “I can find no mention in the teachings of Marxism-Leninism of relying on any minority segment of the population. The Southbound Cadres and the main army are a minority segment of the Hainanese population. In Marx’s Das Kapital there is no prescription for relying on such a minority segment of the population. In my policies, I rely on the will of the masses, and not on the will of a minority segment of the population. This has been the foundation of the Hainanese revolution.”42
Ten years later, Feng criticized this statement himself, saying that he was mistaken and should not have said it. He does not elaborate, however, and while his self-criticism acknowledges that he was wrong, he does not substantiate how such a statement is mistaken. The confession seems pro forma, and should be treated with some skepticism. Ultimately, the accusations of localism that destroyed his career and ended his service on Hainan would be overturned, and in 1983 Feng was completely exonerated, ten years after his death.43
For centuries, Hainan has been perceived with appetite and grand designs from the mainland, “suspended like a baroque green gem from the south coast of China.”44 Such was still the case in 1921 with Peng Chengwan’s survey, and still on the eve of the Communist takeover with T.V. Soong’s plans for the island and Chen Zhi’s Hainan gazetteer. With each successive mainland regime or individual’s plans to develop the island came an acknowledgment of the obstacles to development and modernization. These obstacles were often Hainan’s backward infrastructure, and the localist and sometimes nativist mentality that resisted outsiders’ schemes and efforts, embodied by both the island’s Li and Han populations.
By 1950, the local Communist movement had made common cause with these perennial obstructions to progress in helping to fight the Japanese and Nationalist occupiers of the island. This leap of faith on the part of a portion of the island’s Han and Li population anticipated a new kind of relationship with the mainland in which they would hold more control over their political fate. Ultimately, there was no room for this in the early PRC, and the priority of nation-building and political streamlining served to sideline any attempts to assert provincial or regional autonomy. The military victory had been shared, but the peace that followed could not be.