China is the only country in the world

China is the only country in the world

China is the only country in the world today where one or more small areas under Red political power have emerged in the midst of a White regime which encircles them. We find on analysis that one reason for this phenomenon lies in the incessant splits and wars within China's comprador and landlord classes. So long as these splits and wars continue, it is possible for an armed independent regime of workers and peasants to survive and grow. In addition, its survival and growth require the following conditions: (1) a sound mass base, (2) a sound Party organization, (3) a fairly strong Red Army, (4) terrain favourable to military operations, and (5) economic resources sufficient for sustenance.

An independent regime must vary its strategy against the encircling ruling classes, adopting one strategy when the ruling class regime is temporarily stable and another when it is split up. In a period when the ruling classes are split up, as during the wars between Li Tsung-jen and Tang Sheng-chih in Hunan and Hupoh Provinces [1] and between Chang Fa-kuei and Li Chi-shen in Kwangtung Province, [2] our strategy can be comparatively adventurous and the area carved out by military operations can be comparatively large. However, we must take care to lay a solid foundation in the central districts so that we shall have something secure to rely on when the White terror strikes. In a period when the regime of the ruling classes is comparatively stable, as it was in the souther provinces after April this year, our strategy must be one of gradual advance.  In such a period, the worst thing in military affairs is to divide our forces for an adventurous advance, and the worst thing in local work (distributing land, establishing political power, expanding the Party and organizing local armed forces) is to scatter our personnel and neglect to lay a solid foundation in the central districts.  The defeats which many small Red areas have suffered have been due either to the absence of the requisite objective conditions or to subjective mistakes in tactics.  Mistakes in tactics have been made solely because of failure to distinguish clearly between the two kinds of period, that in which the regime of the ruling classes is temporarily stable and that in which it is split up.  In a period of temporary stability, some comrades advocated dividing our forces for an adventurous advance and even proposed leaving the defence of extensive areas to the Red Guards alone, as thought oblivious of the fact that the enemy could attack not merely with the landlords' levies but even in concentrated operations with regular troops.  In local work, they utterly neglected to lay a solid foundation in the central districts and attempted unrestricted expansion regardless of whether it was within our capacity.  If anyone advocated a policy of gradual advance in military operations or a policy of concentrating our effort in local work on laying a solid foundation in the central districts so as to secure an invincible position, they dubbed him a "conservative".  Their wrong ideas were the root cause of the defeats sustained last August by the Hunan-Kiangsi border area and by the Fourth Red Army in souther Hunan.

Our work in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area began in October last year. At the start, all our Party organizations in the counties were defunct. The local armed forces consisted only of the two units under Yuan Wen-tsai and Wang Tso in the vicinity of the Chingkang Mountains, each unit having sixty rifles in bad repair, while the peasant self-defence corps in the counties of Yunghsin, Lienhua, Chaling and Linghsien had been totally disarmed by the landlord class and the revolutionary ardour of the masses had been stifled. By February this year Ningkang, Yunghsin, Chaling and Suichuan had county Party committees, Linghsien had a special district Party committee, and in Lienhua a Party organization was beginning to function and establish connections with the Wanan County Committee. All the counties except Linghsien had a few local armed units.  In Ningkang, Chaling, Suichuan and Yunghsin, and especially in the two latter counties, there were a good many guerrilla uprisings against the landlords which aroused the masses, and all were fairly successful. In that period the agrarian revolution had not yet been carried very far. The organs of political power were called governments of the workers, peasants and soldiers. Soldiers' committees [3] were set up in the army. When units went on separate missions, action committees were set up to direct them. The leading body of the Party there was the Front Committee (with Mao Tse-tung as secretary), which had been appointed by the Hunan Provincial Committee during the Autumn Harvest Uprising. In early March, upon the request of the Southern Hunan Special Committee, the Front Committee was abolished and reorganized as the Divisional Party Committee (with Ho Ting-ying as secretary), which thus became a body in charge of Party organizations in the army only and without authority over the local Party organizations. Meanwhile, Mao Tse-tung's forces were dispatched to southern Hunan upon the request of the Special Committee there, and consequently the Hunan-Kiangsi border area was occupied by the enemy for more than a month. At the end of March came the defeat in southern Hunan, and in April the forces under Chu Teh and those under Mao Tse-tung, together with the peasant army of southern Hunan, withdrew to Ningkang and began to re-establish the independent regime in the border area.

From April onward the independent regime in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area was confronted with a temporarily stable ruling power in the south, and Hunan and Kiangsi would dispatch at least eight or nine regiments of reactionary forces to "suppress" us and sometimes as many as eighteen. Yet with a force of less than four regiments we fought the enemy for four long months, daily enlarging the territory under our independent regime, deepening the agrarian revolution, extending the people's political power and expanding the Red Army and the Red Guards. This was possible because the policies of the Party organizations (local and army) in the border area were correct. The policies of the Border Area Special Committee (with Mao Tse-tung as secretary) and the Army Committee (with Chen Yi as secretary) of the Party were then as follows:

Struggle resolutely against the enemy, set up political power in the middle section of the Lohsiao mountain range, and oppose flightism.

Deepen the agrarian revolution in areas under the independent regime.

Promote the development of the local Party organization with the help of the army Party organization and promote the development of the local armed forces with the help of the regular army.

Be on the defensive against Hunan with its comparatively strong ruling power, and take the offensive against Kiangsi with its comparatively weak ruling power.

Devote great efforts to the development of Yunghsin, set up an independent regime of the people there and prepare for a prolonged struggle.

Concentrate the Red Army units in order to fight the enemy confronting them when the time is opportune, and oppose the division of forces so as to avoid being destroyed one by one.

Adopt the policy of advancing in a series of waves to expand the area under the independent regime, and oppose the policy of expansion by adventurist advance.

Thanks to these proper tactics, to the terrain of the border area which favoured our struggle, and to the inadequate co-ordination between the troops invading from Hunan and those invading from Kiangsi, we were able to win a number of military victories and expand the people's independent regime in the four months from April to July. Although several times stronger than we, the enemy was unable to prevent the expansion of our regime, let alone to destroy it. Our regime tended to exert an ever-growing influence on Hunan and Kiangsi. The sole reason for the August defeat was that, failing to realize that the period was one of temporary stability for the ruling classes, some comrades adopted a policy suited to a period of splits within the ruling classes and divided our forces for an adventurous advance on southern Hunan, thus causing defeat both in the border area and in southern Hunan. Tu Hsiu-ching, the representative of the Hunan Provincial Committee, and Yang Kai-ming, the secretary of the Border Area Special Committee who had been appointed by the Provincial Committee, failed to grasp the actual situation and, taking advantage of the fact that Mao Tse-tung, Wan Hsi-hsien and other strongly dissenting comrades were far away in Yunghsin, they disregarded the resolutions of the joint meeting of the Army Committee, the Special Committee and the Yunghsin County Committee of the Party, which disapproved of the views of the Hunan Provincial Committee. They just mechanically enforced the order of the Hunan Provincial Committee to march to southern Hunan and fell in with the desire of the Red Army's 28th Regiment (composed of peasants from Yichang) to evade struggle and return home, thus causing defeat both in the border area and in southern Hunan.

Originally, in mid-July, the Eighth Army from Hunan, under Wu Shang, had invaded Ningkang, penetrated to Yunghsin, sought battle with us in vain (our men tried to attack them from a side road but missed them) and then, being afraid of the masses who supported us, hurriedly retreated to Chaling via Lienhua. In the meantime, the major detachment of the Red Army, which was advancing from Ningkang to attack Linghsien and Chaling, changed its plans on reaching Linghsien and turned towards southern Hunan, while the enemy forces from Kiangsi, consisting 5 regiments of the Third Army under Wang Chun and Chin Han-ting and 6 regiments of the Sixth Army under Hu Wen-tou, launched a joint assault on Yunghsin. At that point we had only 1 regiment in Yunghsin which, under the cover provided by the broad masses of the people, pinned down these 11 regiments within a radius of thirty li of Yunghsin county town for as long as twenty-five days by means of guerrilla attacks from every direction. In the end we lost Yunghsin because of the enemy's fierce assault, and also lost Lienhua and Ningkang shortly afterwards. At that moment internal dissensions suddenly flared up among the Kiangsi enemy forces; the Sixth Army under Hu Wen-tou withdrew in haste and presently engaged Wang Chun's Third Army at Changshu. The other 5 Kiangsi regiments then hastily withdrew to the county town of Yunghsin. Had our major detachment not moved to southern Hunan, it would have been entirely possible to rout this enemy force and extend the area of the independent regime to include Kian, Anfu and Pinghsiang and to link it up with Pingkiang and Liuyang. But as the major detachment was away and the one remaining regiment was much too exhausted, it was decided that some men should remain to defend the Chingkang Mountains in co-operation with the two units under Yuan Wen-tsai and Wang Tso, and that I should take the rest to Kueitung to meet the major detachment and to invite it back. By that time the major detachment was retreating from southern Hunan to Kueitung, and on August 23 we joined forces there.

When the major detachment of the Red Army had arrived in Linghsien in mid-July, the officers and men of the 29th Regiment, who were wavering politically and wanted to return to their homes in southern Hunan, refused to obey orders, while the, 8th Regiment was against going to southern Hunan and wanted to go to southern Kiangsi, but in any case did not want to return to Yunghsin. As Tu Hsiu-ching encouraged the 29th Regiment in their mistaken ideas and the Army Committee failed to dissuade them, the major detachment set out from Linghsien for Chenchow on July 17. In an engagement with the enemy forces under Fan Shih-sheng in Chenchow on July 24, it was initially successful but was later defeated and withdrew from the battle. Thereupon, acting on its own, the 29th Regiment hurried homeward to Yichang with the result that one section was annihilated at Lochang by Hu Feng-chang's bandits, another scattered in the Chenchow-Yichang area and has never been heard of since, and no more than a hundred men were mustered again that day. Fortunately, the 28th Regiment, which was the main force, had not suffered great losses and on August 18 it occupied Kueitung. On August ,3 the regiment was joined by the troops from the Chingkang Mountains, to which it was decided that the combined forces should return by way of Chungyi and Shangyu. When we reached Chungyi, battalion commander Yuan Chung-chuan defected with an infantry company and an artillery company, and though the two companies were brought back, our regimental commander Wang Erh-cho lost his life in this action. When our men were returning but had not yet reached their destination, enemy units from Hunan and Kiangsi seized the opportunity to attack the Chingkang Mountains on August 30. Using their points of vantage, the defending troops, numbering less than one battalion, fought back, routed the enemy and saved the base.

The causes of our August defeat were as follows: (1) some officers and men, who were wavering and homesick, lost their fighting capacity, while others, who were unwilling to go to southern Hunan, were lacking in enthusiasm; (2) our men were exhausted by long marches in the sweltering summer heat; (3) having ventured several hundred li away from Linghsien, our men lost contact with the border area and became isolated; (4) as the masses in southern Hunan had not yet been aroused, the expedition proved to be pure military adventurism; (5) we were uninformed about the enemy situation; and (6) the preparations were inadequate, and officers and men did not understand the purpose of the operation.