Shensi had been largely under warlord control so the CCP was bringing law and order for the first time, and this was widely welcomed. For local administration, Mao introduced his own variation of the bloc of four classes, dubbed the three-thirds:
The system whereby the Communists (representing the workers and the poor peasants), and progressive elements (representing the petty bourgeoisie), and the intermediate elements (representing the middle bourgeoisie and enlightened gentry) each contributed one-third of the leading personnel of the government administration, was introduced in all the Liberated Areas.[55]
CCP members were told to sincerely co-operate with, and genuinely listen to the views of, non-Communists.
From February 1937, Yenan was the seat of government of the Shensi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. In this Communist-controlled enclave, the CCP continued to work to win the support of the population by implementing programmes that would benefit the majority of people. However, the ways these were formulated and carried out were constrained by the move towards the Popular Front e.g. an end to radical land reform programmes. Particularly affected was the policy to raise the status of women.[56]
The Communists were under siege, and in the arid land of Shensi which provided little material comfort, the CCP depended for its survival on Party discipline and, more importantly, a community spirit that was the opposite of the corrupt, decadent and self-seeking KMT. The CCP was eager to show the world that Yenan was organised in accordance with a fair and just social ideal, a model society where everybody, regardless of position and power, worked for the common good. However, those in Yenan who had to battle with the harsh realities day to day saw a different picture, where uneven access to resources and privileges left many feeling disgruntled.
From its earliest days, the CCP paid particular attention to the problems of women because women were a vast reservoir of support for the Revolution as they were among those who could benefit most from it. Belden quotes from a school book he came across in the liberated area, headed On women’s equality:
The old society is too dark; men and women are treated differently. The man goes to an office, the woman stays within the compound. The man wears new clothes, the woman dresses in rags. The man eats white flour, the woman, husks and chaff. The man can scold until heaven bursts, the woman seldom opens her mouth. The man reads books, the woman stands at the side of the cauldron. The man three times changes his temperament, the woman swallows into her stomach the words she has to say. In the (liberated areas), a great revolution has taken place. People are free, male and female have equal rights, men and women jointly apply themselves to production, and men and women together enjoy better times.[57]
Formally the administrative programmes of the Border Region ensured “that women enjoyed an equal position in society”, including “equal pay for equal work” and “five weeks paid maternity leave.”[58] With the drive for a Popular Front with the KMT, the Party re-assessed its goals and big changes took place in its policies.
The first and major shift was a change in emphasis, criticisms of traditional family values (the extreme subjugation of women in the family home) were downplayed and instead it was argued that women would reach equality simply by joining men in production. Of course, the CCP leadership presented their policy in Marxist terms. Great emphasis was placed on Frederick Engels’ argument that: “The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large social scale and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant part of her time.”[59] But this one sided, economic, approach relegated the importance of social elements such as equality in marriage and divorce. It also omitted the important consideration that the end result of all these efforts would be a liberal bourgeois, capitalist society in which women would remain second-class citizens.
The main concern of the leadership was maximising the war effort, and the emphasis in Party literature was for women to become spinners and weavers to produce their own clothing and clothing for the troops. This had a certain resonance locally in Shanxi where women tended to dominate in handicrafts, but it bowed to patriarchy by preserving the tradition that women remained at home and did not participate in agricultural work.
The responsibilities and goals of women’s groups during the Popular Front were outlined in a pamphlet entitled The Mass Movement of the Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region published in 1938. Party policy was that the movement to liberate women was secondary to building unity to resist Japan. Rather than risk upsetting their allies in the Popular Front, Party leaders called for the utmost caution when implementing any moves to emancipate women. Activities to eradicate traditional feudal practices (e.g. arranged marriages, foot-binding, and demanding protection of human rights) had previously been pushed with vigour but now these were put on the back burner and it was declared that male-female equality would be achieved by women voting in local elections, participating in production, and joining in defence work. Local cadres were to tell women that by contributing to the war effort, they could break away from the traditional system that had oppressed them for centuries. In principle this was correct, but little guidance or evidence was presented on how these activities would help achieve social equality within the foreseeable future.[60]
A similar response had occurred in the Soviet Union when the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of the Party had bowed to the conservative social demands of the kulak to restrict the rights of women. Take the question of divorce. The CCP cadres arrived in Yenan with the example of Jiangxi fresh in their minds, and women cadres actively promoted divorce as a means of breaking up the traditional family structure. The result was a significant improvement in the treatment of women, but at the expense of disruption of the traditional family unit which had a negative effect on the local economy. The CCP leadership, susceptible to pressure from the rich peasants and “patriotic” landlords, shifted its position to one of asking women to avoid drastic action and to try and find liberation within the family! Liberation Daily, the CCP’s daily newspaper in the border region, now published articles arguing that the wife of even a violent and extremely abusive husband should stay with him and work to reform him rather than get a divorce.[61]
Women’s associations were tasked to solidify the family unit by making them more harmonious; women were to achieve a sense of fulfilment from the knowledge that increased production contributed to Japan’s defeat. Women comrades were instructed to form study groups within the associations to raise their cultural level and political understanding, a move meant to overcome the objections of members and bring them into line with the new policy.
The theme of the Liberation Daily articles was that women’s liberation would be achieved if the women’s movement participated in resistance work against the Japanese, but singularly failed to explain how. Nor were women given any direction on how they could obtain the skills and training needed to enter production on an equal basis with the men. In practice, in many cases, when women took more skilled positions they were of men called away, and the woman had to relinquish that position when the man returned. While women’s associations still encouraged women to participate in village politics, their main emphasis changed to the co-ordination of child care and other efforts to increase production.
At the same time the conservatism of certain leading cadres could be seen in reports on party work where it was claimed that “promiscuous women” inspired “disgust” and “fear” in “ordinary peasants.”[62] These were the women Mao had referred to (without prejudice) in his Report on an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan as having “triangular and multi-lateral relationships.”[63] Conservative attitudes were gaining ground with the growth of the Popular Front.
In an attempt to head-off criticisms of the leadership, male comrades were taken to task for dominating their female partners and limiting their activities to household chores. However, the consequence of the political perspective of a democratic dictatorship meant that women’s associations downplayed the importance of the fight for equality within the family. Equality was presented as one aspect of the liberation struggle, but one which could have the undesirable consequence of women blaming men not society for their plight.[64]
The extent to which Party officials sacrificed the cause of female emancipation to political and wartime objectives, can be seen in marriage reform. Traditionally the woman was effectively imprisoned in the family house with her labour supporting the status quo; thus the right of women to divorce ran counter to the interests of the middle peasants, an essential support for the Party. Faced with the KMT blockade and the increasing demands of the war with Japan, the Yenan government determined not to alienate peasants by disrupting the social system. The Party claimed there was no alternative but to subordinate radical reform of marriage to the immediate need to survive. Soon marriage reform was only a propaganda slogan.[65]
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Hu Chiao-mu, Thirty Years of the CCP, 1951, FLPH.
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Stranahan-Jackal, P. Changes in Policy for Yenan Women, 1935-1947: Modern China, 1981, 7(1)83-112.
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Belden. Op. cit. p122.
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Saich, The Rise, …. Op. cit. p935.
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Engels, F. Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, w.m.org.
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Stranahan, Op. cit.
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Liberation Daily, 2 and 3 July 1941, quoted in Stranahan, Op. cit.
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Saich, The Rise, …. Op. cit. p1016.
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Chi-hsi Hu, The Sexual Revolution in the Kiangsi Soviet, The China Quarterly, No. 59, 1974, p477-490.
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Liberation Daily, 26 Oct. 1941, quoted in Stranahan, Op. cit.
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Hua Chang-ming, The feminine condition and the Chinese Communists in action: Yan’an, 1935-1946. Paris: Centre de Recherches et de Documentation sur la Chine Contemporaine de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 4, 1981.