Since the struggle in the border area is exclusively military,
both the Party and the masses have to be placed on a war footing. How to deal
with the enemy, how to fight, has become the central problem In our daily life.
An independent regime must be an armed one Wherever such an area is located, it
will be immediately occupied by the enemy if armed forces are lacking or
inadequate, or if wrong tactics are used in dealing with the enemy. As the
struggle is getting fiercer every day, our problems have become extremely
complex and serious.
The Red Army in the border area is drawn from: (1) troops formerly
under Yeh Ting and Ho Lung in Chaochow and Swatow; [4] (2) the Guards Regiment of the former National Government at
Wuchang; [5] (3) peasants from Pingkiang and Liuyang; [6] (4) peasants from southern Hunan [7] and workers from Shuikoushan; [8] (5) men captured from the forces under Hsu Keh-hsiang, Tang
Sheng-chih, Pai Chung-hsi, Chu Pei-teh, Wu Shang and Hsiung Shih-hui; and (6)
peasants from the counties in the border area. However, of the troops
formerly commanded by Yeh Ting and Ho Lung, the Guards Regiment and the
peasants from Pingkiang and Liuyang, only one-third is left after more than a
year's fighting. Casualties have also been heavy among the peasants from
southern Hunan. Thus although the first four categories remain the backbone of
the Fourth Red Army to this day, they are now far outnumbered by the last two
categories. Furthermore, in the latter the peasants are outnumbered by the captured
soldiers; without replacement from this source, there would be a serious
manpower problem. Even so, the increase in men does not keep pace with the
increase in rifles. Rifles are not easily lost, but men are wounded or killed,
fall sick or desert and so are lost more easily. The Hunan Provincial Committee
has promised to send us workers from Anynan, [9] and we earnestly hope it will do so.
As to class origin, the Red Army consists partly of workers and
peasants and partly of lumpen-proletarians. Of course, it is inadvisable to
have too many of the latter. But they are able to fight, and as fighting is
going on every day with mounting casualties, it is already no easy matter to
get replacements even from among them. In these circumstances the only solution
is to intensify political training.
The majority of the Red Army soldiers come from the mercenary
armies, but their character changes once they are in the Red Army. First of
all, the Red Army has abolished the mercenary system, making the men feel they
are fighting for themselves and for the people and not for somebody else. So
far the Red Army has no system of regular pay, but issues grain, money for
cooking oil, salt, firewood and vegetables, and a little pocket money. Land has
been allotted to all Red Army officers and men who are natives of the border
area, but it is rather difficult to allot land to those from other parts of the
country.
After receiving political education, the Red Army soldiers have
become class-conscious, learned the essentials of distributing land, setting up
political power, arming the workers and peasants, etc., and they know they are
fighting for themselves, for the working class and the peasantry. Hence they
can endure the hardships of the bitter struggle without complaint. Each
company, battalion or regiment has its soldiers' committee which represents the
interests of the soldiers and carries on political and mass work.
Experience has proved that the system of Party representatives [10] must not be abolished. The Party representative is particularly
important at company level, since Party branches are organized on a company
basis. He has to see that the soldiers' committee carries out political
training, to guide the work of the mass movements, and to serve concurrently as
the secretary of the Party branch. Facts have shown that the better the company
Party representative, the sounder the company, and that the company commander
can hardly play this important political role. As the casualties among the
lower cadres are heavy, captured enemy soldiers often become platoon leaders or
company commanders in a very short time; some of those captured in February or
March are already battalion commanders. It might seem that since our army is
called the Red Army it could do without Party representatives, but this is a
gross error. At one time the 28th Regiment in southern Hunan abolished the
system, only to restore it later. To rename the Party representatives
"directors" would be to confuse them with the directors in the
Kuomintang army who are detested by the captured soldiers. A change of name
does not affect the nature of the system. Hence we have decided to make no
change. Casualties among Party representatives are very heavy, and while we
have started classes for training and replenishment, we hope that the Central
Committee and the Hunan and Kiangsi Provincial Committees will send us at least
thirty comrades who are able to serve as Party representatives.
Ordinarily a soldier needs six months' or a year's training before
he can fight, but our soldiers, recruited only yesterday, have to fight today
with practically no training. Poor in military technique, they fight on courage
alone. As long periods of rest and training are out of the question, the only
thing to do is to try and avoid certain engagements if possible and thus gain
time for training. We now have a corps of 150 people in training as
lower-ranking officers, and we intend to make this course a permanent
institution. We hope that the Central Committee and the two Provincial
Committees will send us more officers from platoon leader and company commander
upwards.
The Hunan Provincial Committee has asked us to attend to the
material conditions of the soldiers and make them at least a little better than
those of the average worker or peasant. Actually they are worse. In addition to
grain, each man receives only five cents a day for cooking oil, salt, firewood
and vegetables, and even this is hard to keep up. The monthly cost of these
items alone amounts to more than ten thousand silver dollars, which is obtained
exclusively through expropriation of the local tyrants. [11] We now have cotton padding for winter clothing for the whole
army of five thousand men but are still short of cloth. Cold as the weather is,
many of our men are still wearing only two layers of thin clothing. Fortunately
we are inured to hardships. What is more, all of us share the same hardships;
from the commander of the army to the cook everyone lives on the daily food
allowance of five cents, apart from grain. As for pocket money, everybody gets
the same amount, whether it is twenty cents, or forty cents. [12] Consequently the soldiers have no complaints against anyone.
After each engagement there are some wounded. Also many officers
and men have fallen ill from malnutrition, exposure to cold or other causes.
Our hospitals up in the mountains give both Chinese and Western treatment, but
are short of doctors and medicines. At present they have over eight hundred
patients. The Hunan Provincial Committee promised to obtain drugs for us, but
so far we have received none. We still hope the Central Committee and the two
Provincial Committees will send us a few doctors with Western training, and
some iodine.
Apart from the role played by the Party, the reason why the Red
Army has been able to carry on in spite of such poor material conditions and
such frequent engagements is its practice of democracy. The officers do not
beat the men; officers and men receive equal treatment, soldiers are free to
hold meetings and to speak out; trivial formalities have been done away with;
and the accounts are open for all to inspect. The soldiers handle the mess
arrangements and, out of the daily five cents for cooking oil, salt, firewood
and vegetables, they can even save a little for pocket money, amounting to
roughly six or seven coppers per person per day, which is called "mess
savings". All this gives great satisfaction to the soldiers. The newly
captured soldiers in particular feel that our army and the Kuomintang army are
worlds apart. They feel spiritually liberated, even though material conditions
in the Red Army are not equal to those in the White army. The very soldiers who
had no courage in the White army yesterday are very brave in the Red Army
today; such is the effect of democracy. The Red Army is like a furnace in which
all captured soldiers are transmuted the moment they come over. In China the
army needs democracy as much as the people do. Democracy in our army is an
important weapon for undermining the feudal mercenary army. [13]
The Party organization now has four levels, the company branch,
the battalion committee, the regimental committee and the army committee. In a
company there is the branch, with a group in each squad. "The Party branch
is organized on a company basis"; this is an important reason why the Red
Army has been able to carry on such arduous fighting without falling apart. Two
years ago, when we were in the Kuomintang army, our Party had no organizational
roots among the soldiers, and even among Yeh Ting's troops [14] there was only one Party branch to each regiment; that is why we
could not stand up to any serious test. In the Red Army today the ratio of
Party to non-Party people is approximately one to three, or an average of one
Party member in every four men. Recently we decided to recruit more Party
members among the combat soldiers, so as to attain a fifty-fifty ratio. [15] At present the company branches are short of good Party
secretaries, and we ask the Central Committee to send us a number of activists
from among those who can no longer function where they are now. Almost all the
cadres from southern Hunan are doing Party work in the army. But since some of
them were scattered during the retreat in southern Hunan in August, we now have
no people to spare.
The local armed forces consist of Red Guards and insurrectionary
detachments of workers and peasants. Armed with spears and shotguns, these
detachments are organized on a township basis, each township having one
detachment whose strength varies with the population. Its job is to suppress
counter-revolution, protect the township government and assist the Red Army and
Red Guards in battle when the enemy appears. The insurrectionary detachments
started in Yunghsin as an underground force, but they have come into the open
since we captured the entire county. The organization has now been extended to
other counties in the border area and the name remains unchanged. The arms of
the Red Guards are mainly five-round rifles but also include some nine-round
and single-round rifles. There are 140 rifles in Ningkang, 220 in Yunghsin, 43
in Lienhua, so in Chaling, 90 in Linghsien, 130 in Suichuan and 10 in Wanan,
making a total of 683. Most of the rifles have been supplied by the Red Army,
but a small number were captured from the enemy by the Red Guards themselves.
Fighting constantly against the peace preservation corps and levies of the
landlords, most of the Red Guards in the counties are steadily increasing their
fighting capacity. Before the May 21st Incident, [16] all the counties had peasant self-defence corps. There were 300
rifles in Yuhsien, 300 in Chaling, 60 in Linghsien, 50 in Suichuan, 80 in
Yunghsin, 60 in Lienhua, 60 in Ningkang (Yuan Wen-tsai's men) and 60 in the
Chingkang Mountains (Wang Tso's men), totalling 970. After the incident, apart
from the rifles in the hands of Yuan's and Wang's men, which remained intact,
only 6 rifles were left in Suichuan and 1 in Lienhua, all the rest having been
seized by the landlords. The peasant self-defence corps were not able to hold
on to their rifles as a result of the opportunist line. At present the Red
Guards in the counties still have far too few rifles, fewer than those of the
landlords; the Red Army should continue to help them with arms. The Red Army
should do everything, short of reducing its own fighting capacity, to help arm
the people. We have laid it down that each battalion of the Red Army should
consist of four companies, each with 75 rifles, and, counting the rifles of the
special task company, machine-gun company, trench-mortar company, regimental
headquarters and the three battalion headquarters, each regiment will have
1,075 rifles. Those captured in action should be used as far as possible for
arming the local forces. The commanders of the Red Guards should be people who
have been sent from the counties to the Red Army training corps and have
finished their training. The Red Army should send fewer and fewer people from
outside areas to command local forces. Chu Pei-teh is arming his peace
preservation corps and levies, while the armed forces of the landlords in the
border counties are of considerable size and fighting capacity. This makes it
all the more urgent to enlarge our local Red forces.
The principle for the Red Army is concentration, and that for the
Red Guards dispersion. At the present time when the reactionary regime is
temporarily stable, the enemy can mass huge forces to attack the Red Army, and
dispersion would not be to the Red Army's advantage. In our experience, the
dispersion of forces has almost always led to defeat, while the concentration
of forces to fight a numerically inferior, equal or slightly superior enemy
force has often led to victory. The Central Committee has instructed us to
develop guerrilla warfare in much too large an area, extending several thousand li in
both length and breadth; this is probably due to an overestimation of our
strength. For the Red Guards dispersion is an advantage, and they are now using
this method in their operations in all the counties.
The most effective method in propaganda directed at the enemy
forces is to release captured soldiers and give the wounded medical treatment.
Whenever soldiers, platoon leaders, or company or battalion commanders of the
enemy forces are captured, we immediately conduct propaganda among them; they
are divided into those wishing to stay and those wishing to leave, and the
latter are given travelling expenses and set free. This immediately knocks the
bottom out of the enemy's slander that "the Communist bandits kill
everyone on sight'. Writing about this measure, the Ten-Day
Review the journal of Yang Chih-sheng's 9th Division, exclaimed:
"How vicious!" The Red Army soldiers show great concern for the
prisoners and arrange warm farewells for them, and at every "Farewell
Party for Our New Brothers" the prisoners respond with speeches of
heartfelt gratitude. Medical treatment for the enemy wounded also has a great
effect. Clever people on the enemy side like Li Wen-pin have recently imitated
us by stopping the killing of prisoners and by giving medical attention to the
wounded. Nevertheless, our men rejoin us at the very next engagement, bringing
their arms with them, and this has happened twice already. In addition, we do
as much written propaganda as possible, for instance, painting slogans.
Wherever we go, we cover the walls with them. But we are short of people who
can draw and hope the Central Committee and the two Provincial Committees will
send us a few.
As for the military bases, the first base, the Chingkang Mountains
is at the juncture of four counties, Ningkang, Linghsien, Suichuan and
Yunghsin. The distance between Maoping on the northern slope in Ningkang County
and Huangao on the southern slope in Suichuan is 90 li. The
distance between Nashan on the eastern slope in Yunghsin county and Shuikou on
the western slope in Linghsien is 80 li. The circumference measures
550 li, stretching from Nashan to Lungyuankou (both in Yunghsin County), Hsincheng,
Maoping, Talung (all in Ningkang County), Shihtu, Shuikou, Hsiatsun (all in
Linghsien county), Yingpanhsu, Taichiapu, Tafen, Tuitzechien, Huangao,
Wutoukiang and Che-ao (all in Suichuan County) and back to Nashan. In the
mountains there are paddy-fields and villages at Big Well, Small Well, Upper
Well, Middle Well, Lower Well, Tzeping, Hsiachuang, Hsingchow, Tsaoping,
Painihu and Lofu. All these places use to be infested by bandits and deserters
but have now been turned into our base area. Its population is under two
thousand, and the yield of unhusked rice is less than ten thousand piculs, and
so the entire grain for the army has to be supplied from Ningkang, Yunghsin and
Suichuan Counties. All the strategic passes in the mountains refortified. Our hospitals,
bedding and clothing workshops, ordnance department and regimental rear offices
are all here. At the present moment grain is being transported to the mountains
from Ningkang.
Provided we have adequate supplies, the enemy can never break in.
The second base, the Chiulung Mountains, is at the juncture of the four
counties of Ningkang, Yunghsin, Lienhua and Chaling. It is less important than
the Chingkang Mountains, but serves as the rearmost base for the local armed
forces of the four counties, and it too has been fortified. It is essential for
an independent Red regime encircled by the White regime to make use of the
strategic advantages offered by mountains.
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