The First Front Army left Tsunyi in mid-January, and headed south for a short while before Mao and Zhou Enlai disrupted Chiang’s plan somewhat by marching north into Shensi rather than west into Szechuan.[76] Shensi was close to the border with the province of Gansu, outside the area controlled by Chiang Kai-shek, and contained the only remaining secure Soviet in China. Marching in the general direction of the Japanese army allowed Mao to rename the march as The Anti-Japanese March and claim that this had been his aim all along.
The Long March ended when Mao led between 4,000 and 7,000 troops into Paoan in the province of Shensi in October 1935. Mao had reached the Shensi Soviet led by Liu Chih-tan, with about the same number of troops as he had in his very first days at Jiangxi. Paoan would be the Communists’ capital until December 1936 when they seized Yenan.
So backward was this region that there were no major roads, railways or navigable rivers to carry relief supplies during the Great Northwest famine of 1928-33 when about one-third of the population starved to death.[77] During the famine peasants had borrowed to stay alive and by 1934-36, in a typical village in the eastern part of the county of some 85 households, three small landlords, 11 rich peasants, 39 middle peasants, 28 poor peasants, three farmhands and one tenant farmer, all had their land and property sequestered by creditors, and the land had passed into the hands of a finance company. This was fertile ground for the CCP.[78]
Jiangxi had been poor enough but this area of Shensi was absolutely impoverished with poor soil and low levels of productivity. The area of the Soviet fluctuated but did at various times extend into the three adjoining provinces of Shensi, Kansu and Ningsia. It was inhabited by scattered tribes that numbered less than one million; most villages consisted of no more than four or five farms. Only Yenan, a town with a population of less than four thousand people, could be reached by lorries and these travelled along a dirt track.[79]
Outside of the towns most people (and this includes Red Army troops) lived in caves or, even, just holes dug in the ground into which the water from melting snow ran. Food was barely adequate, the soldiers’ clothes were threadbare and their straw sandals falling to pieces. With winter coming on, Chiang corralled the Communists in these appalling conditions making sure they could proceed no further north, thus cutting them off from any possible supplies from Soviet Russia.
Mao sent Chun Yun as courier to Moscow to report on his success in reaching Shensi and on 13 December 1935, Pravda carried an edited version of the report as a major article headed; Leader of the Chinese People, Mao Zedong.[80] By June 1936, the radio link with Moscow had been restored but now Mao controlled the Chinese end with a consequent increase in his authority and prestige within the Party. The first telegram sent to Moscow from the Party Centre was dated 16 June 1936, and the first one from Moscow was received by the Party Centre on 2 July. The restoration of CCP-Moscow communication immediately strengthened Mao’s position. In the telegrams which the Centre sent to the Fourth Front Army under Zhang’s control, Mao often used phrases such as “according to the Comintern telegram” which forced Zhang to accept his authority. There are many cases of Mao going to great lengths to maintain radio contact with Moscow – for example, organising complex and dangerous missions to get kerosene to run the generators. It is inconceivable that if Mao was opposed to Moscow’s policy he would have made such persistent efforts.[81]
When the Communists settled in Shensi they again faced the problems of securing political support and maximising economic output. Two-thirds of peasants formally owned their land but nearly all were drained by usury. The CCP gained mass support with its radical policies of lowering rents, taxes and interest rates and negating debts to the landlords and usurers.[82]
There was little capital for agricultural development. Mao recognised this and stressed that in such a poverty-stricken region, increases of revenue could only come from increased production; and that the support of the population would depend on their gains in income being greater than the increase in taxes to support the Red Army and local administration. The solution was to require all Party members and troops to work in the villages to help produce the food and goods they consumed, and co-operate with villagers to mobilise labour for land reclamation, mutual aid in farming, and marketing co-operatives. Returns from these activities over and above the food taken by the Communists went back to the villages, to the surprise and delight of the peasants who, previously, had only been robbed by any troops stationed with them.[83]
Once again, under pressure from Mao, the CCP took the very positive step of introducing the same Marriage Law as in Jiangxi and, once again, backed off when faced with the hostility of the local male population: introducing restrictions on a woman’s ability to get a divorce which, of course, reduced her social position and the value of the formal right to own land.[84]
-
Garavante, Op. cit.
-
Selden, M, The Yenan Way, Harvard U.P. 1971, p6.
-
Goodman, D. Revolutionary Women and Women in the Revolution, The China Quarterly, No. 164, 2000, p915-942.
-
Guillermaz, Op. cit. pp267 et seq.
-
Sheng, Op. cit.
-
Sheng, Op. cit.
-
Gillin, D. “Peasant Nationalism” in the History of Chinese Communism, Jnl. Asian Studies, Feb 1964, Vol 23, pp269-289.
-
Tomlinson, Op. cit.
-
Duncan, J and Ping, L. Women and Land Tenure in China, 2001, Rural Development Institute.