HERE I cannot even begin to outline the absorbing, yet brutal history of the eight years of the North China people's war behind the Japanese lines - a period that was destined to gain for the Communists the affections of the Cow Skin Lanterns of Shansi and the rebellious plainsmen of Hopei, Shantung and north Honan and thus to be a prelude to the violent civil war that flared up after the defeat of Japan. But despite all the ingenuity of the Communists and the heroism of the people, the Japanese campaigns were not absolute failures. It is true they did not wipe out the forces of General Liu Po-cheng, but they put them completely on the defensive and they created such hardship in North China that resistance was seriously compromised.

　　But these campaigns, bad as they were, with their emphasis on killing, burning and robbing, were not the worst thing with which the people of North China had to cope in the years between 1941 and 1943.

　　"Because God did not bless us," say Communists, "we had three successive years of famine."

　　Some Christians thought they were being punished for their sins; a few thought the earth had too many people and God was calling them back to Heaven; but among most, the general suspicion prevailed that the gods were indulging in one of their periodic wars against human beings.

　　Whole villages marched in concert to the temples and knelt down before Buddhas, Taoist images and local gods and prayed for rain. Many dressed like prisoners and many clothed themselves in the raiments of religious penitents, putting square boards around their necks and groveling on the ground. Others cut holes in their neck tendons and strung long pieces of string through them, dragging them behind as they walked, as a sign of their penance.

　　The religious zeal in the villages mounted high, but not all the farmers reverted to ancient superstitions and not all prayed to Heaven. Some of the younger men said: "Manpower can overcome Heaven power."
Others said: "God helps those who help themselves." Still others cried: "Mao Tze-tung is the saving star of the people (1) and he is here; let him save us." Finally, some put their hope in the government and expected help and relief.

　　As the rain did not fall and as the people grew more hopeless every day, an ideological argument broke out among village officials. At first, they had gone with the people to the temples and prayed for rain like everyone else, but nothing had happened. As the drought grew worse, they had witnessed the barbarous rites of their elders, which they had never seen before, the mutilation of their bodies, and their prostration before wood and clay idols.

　　Meeting little opposition, the more active village officials sprang into the temples, tore the idols from their foundations and broke their heads off with stones. Their fantastic forms and features, conveying a symbolic meaning which had long been forgotten by most and was entirely lost on the younger men, seemed in their eyes only the remnants of a superstition that must die. With unaccustomed energy they rolled the broken idols out of the temples into the streets, amid the misgivings of the village elders. They then consummated the whole by smearing the gods with paint and by smashing them in front of the assembled farmers.

　　Already having lost a good part of their faith during the drought, the people put up no fight to protect their village idols. And finding their deities incapable of preventing or even punishing this profanation of their shrines, they conceived a low opinion of their power compared to their own village rulers. Only a few old men thought the smashing of the idols would enrage the gods more, but they confined their remarks to dark hints about bitter times to come.

　　Some villagers reached the conclusion that it was better to depend on themselves and Mao Tze-tung than on a god. They did not at this time replace their deities with Mao, but when the famine was finally broken and good times returned, not a few peasant families put little pictures of Mao in the tiny household shrines where they had formerly kept clay images.

　　The Communist party started a Locust Beating-Down Campaign. Even in small areas, one hundred thousand people were mobilized in the fields to defend the crops against the locusts. As the insects swept toward them, the people with sticks and clubs would stand waiting, drawn up in battle array like an army facing an invader. Also like an army they would dig trenches to block the advance of the locusts. Since locusts can only fly short distances before resting, many of them would light in trenches, like planes landing on refueling bases. As soon as they came down, the people would be on them with sticks and clubs beating and killing. Others would hold woolen bags into which dozens of people would throw the insects, which were then thrown into roaring fires. Still others would excitedly grab up the bugs, take them home and boil them for dinner. In winter and spring, thousands of people were organized to dig up the ground and kill locust eggs. The eggs thus dug up were estimated to weigh nearly three million pounds. During the whole campaign against the locusts, several hundred million labor days were used. In the end, the people won the Insect War and the locusts were defeated.

　　The years 1941, 1942 and 1943 were the worst in the history of the Border Region, perhaps the worst in the history of North China. That the people were able to emerge victorious with their government and military organizations still intact was probably due mostly to the leadership given by the Communist party. Under orders from the Central Committee of the party, all Communist members and all members of the 8th Route Army became directors of production in the villages. The slogan of the period was "A Good Communist Party Member Is A Good Producer." So soldiers and party workers pitched in with the people, dug canals and wells, plowed the fields, carried water to dried-up fields and took up sticks to beat the locusts. At the same time the rations of party workers, soldiers and government officials were cut in half. Now, instead of two pounds of millet a day, only one pound was allotted to party and government members. Wild plants and leaves Were picked in the hills and cooked with the scanty millet ration. Even so, men and women became weak, dizzy, fell down when climbing hills, so that today many of the workers are afflicted with heart disease from overexertion when in weakened condition.

　　Of all the deeds they accomplished during the eight-year war against Japan, the Communists were perhaps proudest of the way they emerged victorious from these three dark years. Today, they say: "A Good Communist not only has to fight the enemy, but plow and irrigate fields, plant crops, dig wells, eat small rations and fight locusts."

　　The Communists freely admitted to me that there were desertions from the government, the army and even the party during these three hard years. The second year of the North China famine coincided with a desperate world situation for the United Nations. Stalingrad was nearly in the hands of the Germans. From scanty news published in their mountain newspapers, some few cadres thought the Russians could not hold out. One regiment commander who had been on the famous six-thousand-mile Long March of the Red Army, ten years before, deserted his troops and turned over to the Japanese. The desertion of an officer who had previously stood up so valiantly against every kind of hardship and who was an old party member shocked the leaders of the Border Region. If others followed him there might be a wholesale demoralization of the forces fighting the Japanese in North China.

　　Party leaders did not try to hide from themselves the dangers inherent in the situation. Some time before, the Central Committee had advocated a new policy of reducing the numbers of the army, simplifying the government and strengthening production. Soldiers released from the army and workers temporarily dismissed from the government could be put to more use in planting, plowing and watering the rain-parched fields. Communist reasoning was simple. During the civil wars against Chiang Kai-shek, as well as during the war against Japan, they had learned that the party could not exist if it left the people. So they decided the party, government and army would have to lighten the people's burden or die.

　　Besides adopting this economic program, the party carried on intensive work among its cadres to maintain their confidence in final victory. Basic slogans adopted by the Central Committee were carried into the villages and published everywhere, in newspapers, on blackboards and in theaters. The general theme of these messages was: "Democracy Will Win; Fascism Will Fail." Finally in 1943, the party issued a general slogan: "Beat Hitler This Year; Beat The Japs Next Year."

　　In the meantime, Mao Tze-tung issued secret instructions to all party leaders to make preparations for the worst possible situation. Though it was hard to see how things could possibly get worse, the party prepared even more disastrous conditions as follows: another famine; no international aid for three more years; the return of the Japs from the Pacific; an anti-Communist attack by Chiang Kai-shek; further desertions from the army and the party. While the party tried to encourage the people and lighten their burden, it harshly told its own cadres to eat bark, to obey directions of the Central Committee and to act as models of frugality for everyone else.

　　"You mean," I said, "You studied the attack of Jacques Duclos, the French Communist, on the American Communist party, which led to Earl Browder's being thrown out?"

　　Po laughed. "Yes, that's what we studied. From it we learned the dangers of an incorrect party policy. If there had been no Cheng Feng Movement, we might have been cheated by Marshall's truce maneuvering and surrendered our democracy to the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek."

　　What did Po mean by this statement? As far as I could find out from conversations with him and others in the Border Region, there was such a strong desire for peace throughout the country that the Conimunist party, might have allowed itself to be pushed by popular sentiment into surrendering their arms, in which case they would have found themselves in the same position as other liberals in China, with no freedom, in danger of being jailed and with no voice in the government. In The meantime, thus held captive in the government, all their peasant organizations and local resistance governments would have been completey smashed.

　　As far as their statements about being "cheated" by Marshall wait, I was never able to get from any Communist in the Border Region one clear-cut fact on how they had been cheated. The best answer I get from anyone was that Marshall was a representative of American policy and therefore could not escape personal responsibility for that policy. If he did not approve of the policy which put him in the curious position of being a mediator between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek while the American government was supporting and helping Chiang Kai-shek, he should have resigned. As he did not, he could not escape responsibility.

　　"In this period," he said, "the Chinese Communist party grew from a child to an adult. Cheng Feng taught party members to be objective, to be against darkness and ignorance. It taught us to consider the question: Do we dare to win?"

　　"Do you mean," I asked, "do we dare seize power?"

　　"No, it was not a question of seizing power. No such period was before us. It was a question of whether we were going to lead the country or whether we were going to be led by Chiang Kai-shek. Finally, Cheng Feng taught us that the Chinese Communist party must have its own principles. It was not necessary that we travel the same road as the Soviet Union."

　　It is not within the scope of this chapter to engage in a polemic discussion; however, a few general comments may not be out of place here. It seems quite obvious that the Communists had decided before the end of the war with Japan that they could compete on an equal basis with Chiang Kai-shek for power in China. What led them to this belief was not only the tremendous growth in their own strength or the tremendous popular support they had gained in the guerrilla areas, but the almost complete degeneration of economy in Chiang Kai-shek's areas and the gradual dissipation of the political capital with which Chiang had originally entered the war against Japan. The question was, however, not so much one of a personal struggle between Chiang and the Communists, but a struggle between their policies.

　　Chiang was still upholding the rule of the landlords and village nobles, but the Communists were advocating Dr. Sun Yat-sen's policy of "land to the tiller." In eight years of war, Chiang had neither instituted any effective reforms nor held any popular elections, but the Communists had not only introduced widespread reforms in their areas, but had adopted a policy of elections throughout their villages. Finally, Chiang's printing-press economy was every day becoming more and more tied to the American dollar and native trade and industry was gradually being destroyed. The Communists, on the other hand, had a program of building up a Chinese national industry on a self-sufficient basis.

　　In short, the Communists believed that Chiang was leading the nation into an inescapable impasse, but more important, they thought the Chinese people would see this and turn against their dictator. Since Chiang, however, still had a reservoir of prestige, especially in the Japanese-occupied areas, there would be no immediate chance of overthrowing him. What could be done was to form a United Front of the Chinese people. This United Front would be different than the one formed against Japan. In that front, the Communists had clearly recognized the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. Now, however, to recognize that leadership would be to demoralize the people and lose their mass support. Therefore, though willing to make peace with Chiang Kai-shek, they would not subordinate their policies to his. In brief, they had decided that they did, "dare to win."

　　As far as Soviet Russia went, the Communists, particularly Mao Tze-tung, had long ago come to the conclusion that China could not make a proletarian revolution at the moment since she lacked a large mass of workers to give them a political striking force. Moreover, the Communists were also not sure they wanted to follow the Soviet Union's agrarian path. I was often to be quite astonished while in the Liberated Areas to hear both Communists and non-Communists declare that the Soviet Union had made the peasant the serf of the state. Furthermore, the Chinese Communists were extremely critical of the violence of the Soviet land reform. "We want to avoid that," they would often say to me. "Not only did the Russians make many mistakes, which we don't have to repeat, but also their basic program may not be suited to China."

　　Suddenly, the Japanese surrendered before the power of the atomic bomb. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the 8th Route Army to advance no further. At the same time he got an agreement with Nakamura, Japanese commander in chief in North China, not to surrender to 8th Route Army troops. Finally, scores of puppet troops were overnight declared members of Chiang Kai-shek's army. Yen Hsi-shan, the ancient war lord of Shansi Province, was smuggled back on an armored train by Japanese troops into his capital at Taiyuan, while numerous puppets entrenched themselves in walled towns and cities, waiting for Chiang Kai-shek's troops to arrive.

　　In the meantime, unknown to the Chinese Communist party, or at least to Communist leaders and their allies in the field, the Soviet Union, a week before V-J Day, signed a treaty of alliance with Chiang Kai-shek. It had always been a nightmare of the generalissimo that after the defeat of Germany the Russians would attack Japan without any understanding with him. He feared that they would then install Chinese Communist guerrillas in power in the wake of their advance into Manchuria. The Kremlin, which seems to have been very skeptical of the postwar possibilities of Mao Tze-tung, chose, instead, to sign a treaty with Chiang which promised to recognize his authority, and his alone, in Manchuria.

　　This treaty, which was not made public until a week after V-J Day, when the 8th Route Army was already on the move toward the cities, forced the Chinese Communists to realize Stalin was committed to support the Kuomintang government. At the same time, MacArthur's headquarters in Japan issued orders that Japanese troops in China should surrender only to the generalissimo, while the United States Navy and Air Force began to transport Chiang's troops to the big cities of Central and North China and Manchuria. These developments completely deprived Mao Tze-tung and his followers of diplomatic support and left them no alternative but to compromise - temporarily.

　　The Central Committee of the Communist party at Yenan and the leaders of the 8th Route Army immediately decided they could not recover the large cities in North China. Mao Tze-tung issued a statement that the Chinese people after eight years of war needed peace, and ordered the advance of 8th Route Army troops in the field to cease. Then he went to Chungking to confer with Chiang Kai-shek.

　　In the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Border Region at this time, there seems to have been little opposition to Mao's political analysis of the situation and little opposition to the theory that the cities could no longer be recaptured. However, no matter what Mao said or did in Chungking, the leaders and the troops in the Border Region were prepared to beat back any invasion of their area by Chiang Kai-shek's troops. In short, they would not have surrendered the sovereignty of the Border Region to the Kuomintang even at the direction of Mao. There seems to be no doubt on this point, and everyone I talked to about this question - especially non-Communist government officials - declared they would have fought off Chiang's troops no matter what Mao ordered.

　　The war with Japan was now over. There followed a period of armed truce which gradually merged into a civil war.