¹ Some of the basic sources on the T'aihang-Pingyuan base area are Wu, Ch'i (ed.), I-ko ko-ming ken-chu-ti ti ck'eng-chang: K'ang-jih chan-cheng ho chieh-jang chan-cheng shih-ch'i-ti Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu pien-ch'u kai k' uang [The Growth of a Revolutionary Base: The General Conditions of the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Border Region During the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance and the War of Liberation] (Peking: The People's Press 1958), 1–196Google Scholar; Kuan-yu Chi-nan kung tso ti yi chien [Opinions Concerning Work in Southern Hopei] (The Propaganda Department of the Shantung Party Branch 1942), 1–156Google Scholar; Po-ch'eng, Liu, “Women tsai T'aihang shan shang,” [When we were in the T'aihang Mountains] (Jen-min jih-pao, June 21, 1962)Google Scholar; also see T'aihang jen-chia [The People of T'aihang] (Peking: China Youth Publishing House 1964)Google Scholar. The translation of this source is in Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, IV (Spring-Summer 1972)Google Scholar and v (Fall-Winter 1972–73). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the present author.

² Cf. Ch'i Wu (fn. i), 99–130; T'aihang jen-chia (fn. 1); and just about any Chinese source on the rent and interest reduction and wage increase movements among the peasantry during the War of Resistance.

³ The Chinese sources that evidence these traditional subsistence rights are T'aihang jen-chia (fn. 1); Teng-K'uei, Chi, Hua Hsien cha chien yun-tung chien pao [A Report on the Investigation of the Rent Reduction Movement in Hua County] (Materials for the Mass Movement, Civil Movement Department Hopei-Shantung-Honan District Party Committee: 1945?), 21–45Google Scholar; Fa ling hui pien Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu pien chu cheng }u pien [A Compilation of Laws and Directives Edited by the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung Honan Border Region Government], Vol. I, Part 1 (The Tao Fen Bookstore: July 1945)Google Scholar.

⁴ Ch'i Wu (fn. 1), 100–115; T'aihang jen-chia (fn. 1), 57–70.

⁵ T'aihang jen-chia (fn. i); Cf. Myers, RamonThe Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, 1890–1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1970)Google Scholar, chaps. 4–7.

⁶ Kuan-yu pu-bien chien-cha chien-tsu chien-hsi kai-shan kung-jen tai-yu cheng-tse tsu-chih kuang-ta kung-nung chi pen ch'un-chung te chih-shih [Concerning the Ordinary Investigation of Rent and Interest Reduction, the Policy of Improving Workers Treatment and Wages, and the Instructions for Organizing the Broad Masses of Workers and Peasants] (The Po Hai District Party Committee: June 1944), 1–15Google Scholar, 80–90.

⁷ Chi Teng-k'uei (fn. 3), 21–45.

⁸ Kung (so t'ung hsun ti shih i chi (Work Correspondence Number 11, The Civil Movement Department of the Hopei-Shantung-Honan Branch Office of the Central Communist Party: August 10, 1945), 1–10Google Scholar.

⁹ Tsu-tien kuan-hsi tiao ch'a tsan kao tsai-liao (Reference Materials on an Investigation of Rental Tenant Relations, November 1945-January 1946), 1–14.

¹⁰ Chi Teng-k'uei (fn. 3), 21–45.

¹¹ I have analyzed some details of the Communist Party's role in the return to subsistence in “Tenants in Revolution: The Tenacity of Traditional Morality,” Modern China: An International Quarterly, 1 (July 1975).

¹² Almost all of the Communist Party's documents and literary works suggest that many landlords in this part of China stayed in the villages (or else returned to them from the market towns) during the Japanese occupation to resume their exploitative practices. Cf. Te-ying, FengKu Tsai Hua [The Bitter Herb] (Peking: The People“s Press 1959)Google Scholar.

¹³ Kuan-yu pu bien … (fn. 6), 2–3.

¹⁴ Tsu-tien kuan-hsi (fn. 9), 1–14; cf. Kuang-yao, HsuLittle Soldier Chang Ka-tse (Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1974), 1–40Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Tsu-tien kuan-hsi (fn. 9), 1–14.

¹⁶ Ts“ung hsi meng hui kan Shansi min-chttng yun-tung [The Shansi Civil Movement from the Viewpoint of the Sacrifice League] (Yellow River Press July 1939), 1–70Google Scholar.

¹⁷ For many colorful examples of cooperative endeavors by the 8th Route Army and the peasants in subsistence-related practices, see Jen-min-ti chun tui [The People's Troops] (February-April 1946)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Cf. Chang, Liu, T'aihang fengyun [The T'aihang Storm] (Peking: The Writers' Press 1962)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Cf. Ming, Li HsiaoPingyuan Ch'iangsheng [The Sound of Rifle Fire on the Plains] (Peking: The Writers' Press 1959)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Cf. Liu Chang (fn. 18).

²¹ Wei-san, Cheng, K'ang-jih chan-chung yu nung-min yun-tung: tsai er shih ti i tzu min-yun kung-tso hui-i shang ti pao-k^'ao [The War of Resistance and the Peasant Movement] (Political Department, Second Division, the New Fourth Army, April 14, 1941), 2–3Google Scholar.

²² Cf. Ch'i Wu (fn. 1); also see Ling, T'ing, I-erh-chiu shih yu Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu ch'u [The 129th Division and the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Border Region] Peking; Hsin-hua: New China Press 1950), 39–45Google Scholar.

²³ Cf. Ch'i Wu (fn. I), 99–196.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Almost all of the documents on the war suggest the Communists were able to cultivate mutual-aid arrangements among the peasants into larger collective-oriented production movements, principally in the areas which were free from the devastation of war. Cf. Ch'i Wu (fn. i), 116–92.

²⁶ I have yet to encounter a single Communist document that maintains that the notorious land-owning elements did not attempt to deprive the peasants of their means of effective cooperative action during the Japanese occupation.

²⁷ Service, “Willingness of Chinese Military Leaders to Become ’Puppets,’” State Security Copy, November 3, 1943. Quoted in Esherick, Joseph W. ed., Lost Chance in China: The World War II Dispatches of John S. Service (New York: Random House 1974). 49Google Scholar.

²⁸ The T'aihang-Pingyuan case seems to support the brilliant analysis of Service on the consequences of the power realignments in North China for the growth of rural populist movements under the Communists. These consequences were negative.

²⁹ See Li Hsiao Ming (fn. 19).

³⁰ The slippage in peasant support is evidenced in short stories and novels on peasant participation in the war. For a vivid example, see Ying-shih, Chen, “A Visit to My Native Village,” Chinese Literature, No. I (1975), 86–93Google Scholar.

³¹ Cf. Ch'i Wu (fn. 1), 132–96; also, documents on the measures for grain provision by the T'aihang Communist Party Trade Bureau, Bureau of Industry and Commerce, and bank cadres.

³² The Communist Party's struggle for markets with the Japanese has never been researched by a Western scholar. A good place to begin reading on this topic is Pa-lu chun chun-cheng tsa-chih [Military Affairs Magazine of the 8th Route Army]. This periodical repeatedly stresses the crucial importance of the 8th Route Army in protecting and promoting the political economy of free trade in the Communist Party base areas from Japanese attacks. For this section on marketing, I rely mainly on T'aihang ch'u mao yi kung tso li nien lai chung yao chueh ting chih shih min ling pi mi wen Men i chiao pin [The Secretly Filed Materials on the Past Ten Years: Important Decisions, Directives, and Orders on T'aihang District Trade Work], tsan kao tsu liao ti san pien shan yeh mao yi lei ti i chi [The First Book on Categories of Business and Trade in the Third Edition of Reference Materials] (T'aihang District South Hopei Bank Headquarters, Bureau of Industry and Commerce: December 1945), 1'100.

³³ Cf. Gittings, John, The World and China, 7922–1972 (London: Eyre Methuen 1974), 28–30Google Scholar; Grove, Linda, “Creating a Northern Soviet,” Modern China: An International Quarterly, I (October 1975)Google Scholar; Liu Chang (fn. 18); and Li Hsiao Ming (fn. 19).

³⁴ Hinton, William, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (New York: Random House 1966), 31–46.Google Scholar

³⁵ I would speculate, on the basis of minimal evidence, that incidents of goiter among the peasants in many T'aihang villages increased as a result of these salt monopolies. Certainly, goiter was widespread in southeast Shansi. Cf. Liu Chang (fn. 18).

³⁶ Esherick (fn. 27), 19.

³⁷ T'aihang ch'u mao yi kung tso … (fn. 32), 1–56.

³⁸ Pingyuan tsa-chih [The Magazine of the Plains]; Tsun i shu [Village Art] Tsen yang kai tsao miao hui [How to Transform the Temple Fairs] Chi Tsung Lo Ku hsian yen ta hui te kao tsao [Notes on the Transformation of Tsung Lo Ku's Big Incense Meeting]. No date.

³⁹ This practice of “subsistence first” in grain^tax collections under the Communists runs through all of the Communist Party documents on the T'aihang-Pingyuan revolutionary base. Cf. Tung yi lei chin shui pan fa [The Method of Unified Progressive Income Tax] (Special Inspector's Office of the T'aihang Seventh Administration); Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu pien chu tung yi lei chin shui chan hsieng shui tze tsao an [A Draft of the Temporary Tax Principles for the Unified Progressive Tax of the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Border Region] (Revised regulations of April 1945).

⁴⁰ T'aihang ch'u mao yi kung tso … (fn. 32), 56–100.

⁴¹ For an understanding of the Yenan origins of the rich peasant economy as it benefitted the entire village community, and of how the Communist Party cadres spread its development throughout the T'aihang-Pingyuan and Wutai-Central Hopei Plain base areas, see “Kuan-yu Wu Man-yu ti fang hsiang” [Concerning the Direction of Wu Man-yu] (Liberation Daily, in Outlines for Problems in Unfolding the Struggle against the Enemy and Strengthening the Economic Reconstruction of the Base Areas, Front Line Press 1943), 1–41.

⁴² T'aihang ch-u mao yi kung tso … (fn. 32), 56–100.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Chi-Lu-Yu chu shih ko yueh chan ch'in kung tsou ching kuang [The Conditions of Ten Months of Combat Service Duties in the Hopei-Shantung-Honan Region] (War Participation Work No. 13, Command Headquarters of the Hopei-Shantung-Honan Rear Area, June 10, 1947), 1–22, 1–7.

⁴⁵ Chi Teng-k'uei (fn. 3), 21–45.

⁴⁶ Belden, Jack, China Shades the World (New York: Monthly Review Press 1970), 319–20, 350.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ All of these examples are from Chi-Lu-Yu … (fn. 44), 1–22.

⁴⁸ I-ch'ing, Li, Tung-yun min It yu tsu-chih min-li [The Development and Organization of Civilian Power] (T'aihang Administrative Office, May 1, 1947), 4–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid., 1–20.

⁵⁰ Chi-Lu-Yu … (fn. 44), 1–22.

⁵¹ For most of these measures, see ibid., and Li I-ch'ing (fn. 48), 1–20.

⁵² Cf. Isabel and Crook, David, Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1959), 161–65.Google Scholar

⁵³ T'aihang ch'u ssu-fa kung-tso kai-k'uang Hsu-ch'u-chang tsai T'aihang ch'u ssu-fa hui-i shang chih tsung-chieh pao-kao [The General Conditions of Judicial Work in the T'aihang District, Department Director Hsu's Summary Report to the Judicial Conference of the T'aihang District] (T'aihang hsing-shu yin 1946); trans, by Douglas, Wallace, Chinese Law and Government, IV (Fall 1973), 1–15, 22–64.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Cf. Chi Teng-k'uei (fn. 3), 21–45.

⁵⁵ Ibid.; cf. T'aihang jen-chia (fn. 1).

⁵⁶ Kuan-yu pu-bien … (fn. 6), 72–74.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 70–75, 80–104.

⁵⁸ Cf. Feng Ye-ying (fn. 12).

⁵⁹ Ch'i Wu (fn. 1), 99–116.

⁶⁰ Cf. T'aihang jen-chia (fn. 1).

⁶¹ Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1962), chaps. 1–5.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid., 2.

⁶³ Ibid., 2, 5, 7, 11.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 11.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 4.

⁶⁶ Ibid., chaps. 1–2.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 1–2, 11–13.

⁶⁸ Gillin, Donald, Warlord Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Gillin, , “Peasant Nationalism in the History of Chinese Communism,” Journal of Asian Studies, XXIII (February 1964), 269–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁹ Selden, Mark, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971).Google Scholar Cf. Selden, , “Revolution and Third World Development: People's War and the Transformation of Peasant Society,” in Miller, Norman and Aya, Roderick, eds., National Liberation: Revolution in the Third World (New York: Free Press 1971), 214–48, esp. 226–27.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ In the initial critique of “peasant nationalism,” Donald Gillin argues that the Red Army won its claim to legitimacy by championing the cause of the poor. Yet Gillin's critical overview does not develop an alternative theoretical explanation for peasant participation in the Chinese revolution. Gillin's provocative attack is almost entirely an account of the provincial elite's perceptions of Communist power tactics. The argument hardly supersedes the suppositions in Johnson's version of Peasant Nationalism. Although Gillin presents an explanation of exploitation in terms of relational exchanges, his evidence does not show that the Japanese invasion did not create political instability and thereby make peasants available for revolutionary mobilization, that peasants were not attuned to the nationalist appeals of the Communists, or that the Communists were not infiltrators taking over peasant communities by terrorism. Mark Selden stresses the power of egalitarian economic changes such as land redistribution—rather than of nationalist appeals—in the Communist mobilization of the peasantry. Despite his strengths on the political organization of an aroused peasantry during the early years of the War of Resistance, Selden does not disprove “peasant nationalism” because there is no way to test for the intervening independent effect of the war on the Communists' development of peasant revolution in a base area so lightly affected by the Japanese invasion. Interestingly, when making reference to war, Selden argues that the transformation of Chinese peasant society was largely dependent on the peasants' involvement in the Communist-induced people's war—an argument which, not unlike Johnson's in Peasant Nationalism, contends that peasant mobilization and revolutionary war were similar phenomena, if not altogether the same. For a very precise and perceptive theoretical work that raises serious questions about “peasant nationalism,” see Hofheinz, Roy Jr., “The Ecology of Chinese Communist Success: Rural Influence Patterns, 1923–45,” in Barnett, A. Doak, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1969), 50–52.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Kataoka, Tetsuya, Resistance and Revolution: The Communists and the Second United Front (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies 1974), 4–6, 8, 10, 32, 43, 46, 49, 54. 85, 105, 301, 311.Google Scholar

⁷² Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Maying of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press 1966), 223–25.Google Scholar

⁷³ Wolf, Eric R., Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row 1968), 152–53.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Migdal, Joel S., Peasants, Politics, and Revolution: Pressures Toward Political Change in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974), 253–54.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Cf. Tilly, Charles, The Vendée: A Sociological Analysis of the Counterrevolution of 1793 (New York: John Wiley and Sons 1964), 316–30.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Race, Jeffrey, “Toward an Exchange Theory of Revolution,” in Wilson, John Lewis, ed., Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1974), 200.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Engels, Friedrich, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers 1966), 105–6, 112.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ For a very rich and brilliant account of why and how the rebellion in the Congo fell apart under government pressure, see Young, M. Crawford, “Rebellion in the Congo,” in Rotberg, Robert I., ed., Rebellion in Black, Africa (London: Oxford University Press 1971), 209–45, esp. 210–15, 242–45.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ In a convincing argument, Verba and Almond contend that “Internal wars lay bare the authority structures of political systems” and that “internal violence makes strong demands upon ordinary citizens for commitment to politics.” The Communist Party's pressures on the peasantry for war-service duties, which were intensified in the Chinese case bv foreign assistance to the internal foes of the revolutionary government, seem to substantiate this thesis. See Verba, Sidney and Almond, Gabriel A., “National Revolutions and Political Commitment,” in Eckstein, Harry, ed., Internal War: Problems and Approaches (New York: Free Press of Glencoe 1964), 205–32Google Scholar; quotations from p. 205.

⁸⁰ Cf. Womack, John Jr. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Alfred Knopf 1969).Google Scholar