Red Star over China (39 page)

P'eng went on: “I was passing his place, and paused to watch the demonstration. I saw that many of the men were half starved, and I knew this man had over 10,000
tan
of rice in his bins, and that he had refused to help the starving at all. I became infuriated, and led the peasants to attack and invade his house. They carted off most of his stores. Thinking of it afterwards, I did not know exactly why I had done that. I only knew that he should have sold rice to the poor, and that it was right for them to take it from him if he did not.”

P'eng had to flee once more for his life, and this time he was old enough to join the army. His career as a soldier began. Not long afterwards he was to become a revolutionary.

At eighteen he was made a platoon commander and was involved in a plot to overthrow the ruling governor—
Tuchun
Hu. P'eng had been deeply influenced by a student leader in his army, whom the
tuchun
had killed. Entrusted with the task of assassinating Hu, he entered Changsha, waited for him to pass down the street one day, and threw a bomb at him. The bomb failed to explode. P'eng escaped.

Not long afterwards Dr. Sun Yat-sen became Generalissimo of the allied armies of the Southwest, and succeeded in defeating
Tuchun
Hu, but was subsequently driven out of Hunan again by the northern militarists. P'eng fled with Sun's army. Sent upon a mission of espionage by Ch'eng Ch'ien, one of Sun's commanders, P'eng returned to Changsha, was betrayed and arrested. Chang Ching-yao was then in power in Hunan. P'eng described his experiences:

“I was tortured every day for about an hour in many different ways. One night my feet were bound and my hands were tied behind my back. I was hung from the roof with a rope around my wrists. Then big stones were piled on my back, while the jailers stood around kicking me and
demanding that I confess—for they still had no evidence against me. Many times I fainted.

“This torture went on for about a month. I used to think after every torture that next time I would confess, as I could not stand it. But each time I decided that I would not give up till the next day. In the end they got nothing from me, and to my surprise I was finally released. One of the deep satisfactions of my life came some years later when we [the Red Army] captured Changsha and destroyed that old torture chamber. We released several hundred political prisoners there—many of them half-dead from beatings, fiendish treatment, and starvation.”

When P'eng regained his freedom he went back to his uncle's home to visit his cousin. He intended to marry her, as he still considered himself betrothed. He found that she had died. Re-enlisting in the army, he soon afterwards received his first commission and was sent to the Hunan military school. Following his graduation he became a battalion commander in the Second Division, under Lu Ti-p'ing, and was assigned to duty in his native district.

“My uncle died and, hearing of it, I arranged to return to attend the funeral. On the way there I had to pass my childhood home. My old grandmother was alive, now past eighty, and still very active. Learning that I was returning, she walked down the road ten
li
to meet me, and begged my forgiveness for the past. She was very humble and very respectful. I was quite surprised by this change. What could be the cause of it? Then I reflected that it was not due to any change in her personal feeling, but to my rise in the world from a social outcast to an army officer with a salary of $200 a month. I gave the old lady a little money, and she sang my praises in the family as a model ‘filial son'!”

I asked P'eng what reading had influenced him. He said that when as a youth he read Ssu-ma Kuang's
^*
Sze Chih Chien (History of Governing),
he began for the first time to have some serious thoughts concerning the responsibility of a soldier to society. “The battles described by Ssu-ma Kuang were completely pointless, and only caused suffering to the people—very much like those that were being fought between the militarists in China in my own time. What could we do to give purpose to our struggles, and bring about a permanent change?”

P'eng read Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and K'ang Yu-wei and many of the writers who had influenced Mao Tse-tung. For a time he had some interest in anarchism. In Ch'en Tu-hsiu's
New Youth
he learned of socialism, and from that point he began to study Marxism. The Nationalist Revolution was forming, he was a regimental commander, and he felt
the necessity of a political doctrine to give morale to his troops. Sun Yat-sen's
San Min Chu I (Three Principles of the People)
“was an improvement over Liang Ch'i-ch'ao,” but P'eng felt that it was “too vague and confused,” although he was by then a member of the Kuomintang. Bukharin's ABC
of Communism
seemed to him “for the first time a book that presented a practicable and reasonable form of society and government.”

By 1926 P'eng had read the
Communist Manifesto,
an outline of
Capital, A New Conception of Society
(by a leading Chinese Communist), Kautsky's
Class Struggle,
and many articles and pamphlets giving a materialist interpretation of the Chinese Revolution. “Formerly,” said P'eng, “I had been merely dissatisfied with society, but saw little chance of making any fundamental improvement. After reading the
Communist Manifesto
I dropped my pessimism and began working with a new conviction that society could be changed.”

Although P'eng did not join the Communist Party until 1927, he enlisted Communist youths in his troops, began Marxist courses of political training, and organized soldiers' committees. In 1926 he married a middle-school girl who was a member of the Socialist Youth, but during the revolution they became separated. P'eng had not seen her since 1928. It was in July of that year that P'eng revolted, seized P'ing Kiang, and began his long career as a rebel, or bandit—as you prefer.

He had been pacing back and forth, grinning and joking as he told me these incidents of his youth and struggle, carrying in his hand a Mongolian horsehair fly swatter, which he brandished absent-mindedly for emphasis. A messenger now brought in a sheaf of radiograms, and he suddenly looked the serious commander again as he turned to read them.

“Well, that's about all, anyway,” he concluded. “That explains something about how a man becomes a ‘Red bandit'!”

We sat in the house of a former magistrate, in Yu Wang Pao, in a two-story edifice with a balustraded porch—a porch from which you could look out toward Mongolia, across the plains of Ninghsia.

On the high, stout walls of Yu Wang Pao a squad of Red buglers was practicing, and from a corner of the fortlike city flew a big scarlet flag, its yellow hammer and sickle cracking out in the breeze now and then as though a fist were behind it. We could look down on one side to a clean courtyard, where Mohammedan women were hulling rice and baking. Washing hung from a line on another side. In a distant square some Red soldiers were practicing wall scaling, broad jumping, and grenade throwing.

Although P'eng Teh-huai and Mao Tse-tung were
t'ung-hsien-ti,
or natives of the same county, they had not met until the Red Army was formed. P'eng spoke with a pronounced southern accent, and machine-gun rapidity. I could understand him clearly only when he spoke slowly and simply, which he was generally too impatient to do. For this interview Huang Hua, whose English was excellent, acted as my interpreter.

“The main reason for partisan warfare in China,” P'eng began, “is economic bankruptcy, and especially rural bankruptcy. Imperialism, landlordism, and militaristic wars have combined to destroy the basis of rural economy, and it cannot be restored without eliminating its chief enemies. Enormous taxes, together with Japanese invasion, both military and economic, have accelerated the rate of this peasant bankruptcy, aided by the landlords. The gentry's exploitation of power in the villages makes
life difficult for the majority of the peasants. There is widespread unemployment in the villages. There is a readiness among the poor classes to fight for a change.

“Second, partisan warfare has developed because of the backwardness of the hinterland. Lack of communications, roads, railways, and bridges makes it possible for the people to arm and organize.

“Third, although the strategic centers of China are all more or less dominated by the imperialists, this control is uneven and not unified. Between the imperialist spheres of influence there are wide gaps, and in these partisan warfare can quickly develop.

“Fourth, the Great Revolution of 1925–27 fixed the revolutionary idea in the minds of many, and even after the counterrevolution in 1927 and the killings in the cities, many revolutionaries refused to submit, and sought a method of opposition. Owing to the special system of joint imperialist-comprador
^*
control in the big cities, and the lack of an armed force in the beginning, it was impossible to find a base in urban areas, so many revolutionary workers, intellectuals, and peasants returned to the rural districts to lead the peasant insurrections. Intolerable social and economic conditions had created the demand for revolution: it was only necessary to give leadership, form, and objectives to this rural mass movement.

“All these factors contributed to the growth and success of revolutionary partisan warfare. They are, of course, quite simply stated, and do not go into the deeper problems behind them.

“Besides these reasons, partisan warfare has succeeded and partisan detachments have developed their invincibility because of the identity of the masses with the fighting forces. Red partisans are not only warriors; they are at the same time political propagandists and organizers. Wherever they go they carry the message of the revolution, patiently explain to the mass of the peasantry the real missions of the Red Army, and make them understand that only through revolution can their needs be realized, and why the Communist Party is the only party which can lead them.

“But as regards the specific tasks of partisan warfare, you have asked why in some places it developed very rapidly and became a strong political power, while in others it was easily and quickly suppressed. This is an interesting question.

“First of all, partisan warfare in China can only succeed under the revolutionary leadership of the Communist Party, because only the Communist Party wants to and can satisfy the demands of the peasantry,
understands the necessity for deep, broad, constant political and organizational work among the peasantry, and can fulfill its promises.

“Second, the active field leadership of partisan units must be determined, fearless, and courageous. Without these qualities in the leadership, partisan warfare not only cannot grow, but it must wither and die under the reactionary offensive.

“Because the masses are interested only in the practical solution of their problems of livelihood, it is possible to develop partisan warfare only by the
immediate
satisfaction of their most urgent demands. This means that the exploiting class must be promptly disarmed.

“Partisans can never remain stationary; to do so is to invite destruction. They must constantly expand, building around themselves ever new peripheral and protective groups. Political training must accompany every phase of the struggle, and local leaders must be developed from every new group added to the revolution. Leaders from the outside can be introduced to a limited extent, but no lasting success can be achieved if the movement fails to inspire, awaken, and constantly create new leaders from the local mass.”

One of the chief reasons why Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang began to respect the Reds (the enemy he had been sent to destroy) was that he had been impressed with their skill at this type of combat, and had come to believe they could be utilized in fighting Japan. After he had reached a kind of truce with them he invited Red instructors to teach in the new officers' training school opened for his Manchurian army in Shensi, and there the Communist influence rapidly developed. Marshal Chang and most of his officers, bitterly anti-Japanese, had become convinced that it was superior mobility and maneuvering ability on which China would ultimately have to depend in a war with Japan. They were anxious to know all that the Reds had learned about the tactics and strategy of maneuvering warfare during ten years of fighting experience.

Was it possible, I had asked P'eng Teh-huai, to summarize the “principles of Red partisan warfare”? He had promised to do so and had written down a few notes from which he now read. For a fuller discussion of the subject he referred me to a small book written by Mao Tse-tung and published in the soviet districts; but this I was unable to get.
^*

“There are certain rules of tactics which must be followed,” P'eng explained, “if the newly developing partisan army is to be successful. These we have learned from our long experience, and though they are variable according to conditions, I believe that departures from them
generally lead to extinction. The main principles can be summarized under ten points, like this:

“First, partisans must not fight any losing battles. Unless there are strong indications of success, they should refuse any engagement.

“Second, surprise is the main offensive tactic of the well-led partisan group. Static warfare must be avoided. The partisan brigade has no auxiliary force, no rear, no line of supplies and communications except that of the enemy. In a lengthy positional war the enemy has every advantage, and in general the chances of partisan success diminish in proportion to the duration of the battle.

“Third, a careful and detailed plan of attack, and especially of retreat, must be worked out before any engagement is offered or accepted. Any attack undertaken without full knowledge of the particular situation opens the partisans to outmaneuver by the enemy. Superior maneuvering ability is a great advantage of the partisans, and errors in its manipulation mean extinction.