Mass Democracy,Class Struggle,and Remolding the Party and Government during the Land Reform Movement in North China

The Problem of “Rotten Cadres” and the Discourse of Mass Democracy in Land Reform in the Old Liberated Areas

Previous scholarship has provided an important insight: empirical investigation of the land reform should not be confined to the land issue, but must return to the specific demands of the masses at that time and the CCP’s strategic political responses. On top of this, we need to consider that the landlord economy, as weak as it was in the first place, had been further buffeted by the Campaigns of Rent Reduction and the Thorough Investigation of Rent Reduction during the War of Resistance. Correspondingly, the class struggle carried out by the CCP based on the demands of the masses during land reform was more likely to target ruling elites who were not landlord-gentry. What, then, were the masses’ demands, and who were the ruling elites targeted in North China’s land reform? Recently available archival materials should shed some light.

Let us start with an important telegram concerning land reform. In July 1947, the National Land Conference was held in the village of Xibaipo, Jianping County (under the administrative purview of the Fourth District, Ji-Jin Subregion, Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region) in western Hebei. Liu Shaoqi presided over the conference, which was attended by more than a hundred delegates from various liberated areas. On August 4, Liu reported to Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee via telegraph on the progress of land reform which he gathered from the delegates. Liu Shaoqi’s telegram began:

In summary, the demands of the peasants in various areas focus on four aspects: land, production capital, protection of the peasants’ democratic freedom and rights, and fair distribution of burdens. Of these, land and democracy are the basic demands. Democracy is the fundamental condition for the protection and consolidation of complete victory with land reform, and an urgent demand of all the peasants to our government and cadres. The reason is that the practice of our cadres in imposing on, oppressing, and keeping themselves aloof from the masses has reached an astonishing level. Many of our cadres are corrupt, selfish, and evildoing. The masses urgently demand that such practices be changed, and that those rotten cadres be removed and penalized. (Liu, 1947a; the English translation is mainly based on “Report to the CC Concerning Each Locality’s Report to the Land Conference and Suggestions for the Future,” in Saich, 1996: 1287–95, with my slight revision, as are other portions of the same text cited hereinafter)

This passage clearly reveals that the “basic demands” of the masses in the liberated areas were not only about land but also about democracy, and that democracy was “an urgent demand of all the peasants to our government and cadres.” That is to say, the issue of “democracy” at the time was key to the CCP’s efforts to “arouse the masses.” To put it more precisely, the CCP’s ability to win popular support depended on its political resolve to remove and punish its “rotten cadres.”

Liu Shaoqi was one of the masterminds behind the mass line formulated in the Seventh Congress of the CCP. The land reform in North China, which was under his charge, thus became the litmus test for the mass line. How would he react to the demands for “democracy”?

By then, land reform had been carried out for more than a year since the promulgation of the May Fourth Directive (i.e. “Directive of the CCP CC on Settling Accounts, Rent-Reduction, and the Land Issue” [May 4, 1946]). Liu Shaoqi was very dissatisfied with the progress of the movement. Based on the reports from the delegates and his own observations during his visits to the border regions such as Jin-Sui (Shanxi-Suiyuan) and Jin-Cha-Ji (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei), Liu believed that land reform in the liberated areas was mostly “not thorough” and “in need of intense struggle.” He attributed the lack of thoroughness to “the serious impurity within the party, bureaucratism among leaders, and a lack of concrete ideological education within the party and among the cadres.” The so-called “impurity within the party” was first reflected in the class composition of party branch members and cadres. In the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, for example, village cadres and party branch members were mostly middle peasants, and even “many landlords and rich peasants occupy, directly and indirectly, positions of power.” In contrast, the poor-and-hired peasants “form only a minority and play no role” within the party, and hence Liu believed that they were “still the most oppressed social stratum.”

Although Liu Shaoqi framed the problems of the movement in terms of class analysis, what he called “impurity within the party” was indeed not just a problem of class origins, but concerned, more generally, the work style of the grassroots cadres and the masses–cadres relationship. He continued,

For many years, district and village cadres have not been subject to rectification. Most are totally irresponsible to the masses and are not subject to their supervision. They rely on coercive orders in their work. Many have selfishly embezzled, or taken by force, the fruits of the revolution. Those cadres who were previously poor peasants are now mostly middle and rich peasants due to their political status. They have antagonized the masses and are afraid that the masses may expose them and retaliate. Therefore, they want all the more to control and terrorize the masses. Those who criticized their mistakes and exposed their dark dealings were immediately persecuted. Most of these cadres do not serve in the military; they resist war requisitions and only have a light burden. They lower their class classification and resort to military conscription, military requisition, heavier burdens, and [manipulation of] class classification to persecute their opposition and favor their supporters. . . . A few of the worst elements have become the new bullies, committing every crime imaginable.

Liu Shaoqi acknowledged that the source of the CCP’s problem was its very own “rotten cadres.” The class background of this political group was very complex. Its members were not limited to those of landlord and rich peasant origins. There were also those who used to be in the poor-and-hired class, the main social force that the CCP relied on in the countryside, but were now “divorced from the masses” and had become “new bullies.” Liu highlighted that “those who keep themselves furthest away from the masses were the five principal leaders in the village: the party secretary, the village head, the director of the committee of the armed forces, the security chief, and the chairman of the peasant association. Although ordinary party members and village cadres were not all rotten . . ., most were under the control of the rotten cadres.” To further stress the seriousness of the conflicts between cadres and the masses, Liu noted that the work teams dispatched by the Central Work Committee to experiment with land reform in thirty neighboring villages had faced the problem firsthand when they had just arrived in Xibaipo. The teams reported that the five principal leaders in twenty-nine villages were not allowed to join the new peasant association. Many other party members and cadres were rejected as well. Apparently, the so-called “five principal leaders” were the ruling elites in rural areas. These grassroots cadres “kept themselves furthest away from the masses,” and were hated by the ordinary peasants. In some villages, the peasants even insisted on “first struggling against the cadres, and then against landlords.”

Liu Shaoqi further recommended that the “only effective method” to resolve the problem of “rotten cadres” was “through the poor peasant leagues and peasant associations” to “mobilize the masses, fully establish democracy to thoroughly complete land reform, reform the party, the government, and civilian organizations, and cadres.” His plan was to utilize “mass democracy” to attack “rotten cadres,” while the poor peasant leagues and new peasant associations established in land reform would provide organizational security.

In his report, Liu spoke highly of the poor peasants’ revolutionary role in land reform. Imitating the tone of Mao’s “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” he described the following scenario:

Many poor peasants, who previously had been considered backward elements, have now become village leaders or activists. From the very beginning their organization established strict discipline and pledged fair administration; they pledged to listen to the views of the masses, to be selfless, to work for the masses, and to keep secrets. When they have been successful in leading the peasant associations, in the struggle to pour out bitterness (suku) and fight the landlords, in fairly distributing the fruits of the revolution, in eradicating feudalism, in thoroughly solving the land problem, and, particularly, in struggling against the village cadres, the atmosphere in the villages will be fresher, the masses will be livelier, and the work style will be changed. But poor peasants lack experience in administration; they will meet difficulties without the help of veteran village cadres. Other weaknesses have yet to be noticed. With correct leadership and education in the future, they will change the practice of the whole party.

In Liu’s view, poor peasants participated in the movements of fanshen and of democracy, struggling against both landlords and village cadres, and in the process not only did they reform the villages, but also the party. Thus, they were the “revolutionary vanguard” in land reform. On the other hand, the “rotten cadres” in the party, the government, and civilian organizations, particularly the “five principal leaders,” were considered the “ruling class” which the masses were eager to topple. Apparently, the designation “ruling class” did not necessarily refer to landlords only. Some of the veteran village cadres in the liberated areas were of landlord origin, but the majority of them were middle peasants and even poor peasants. For instance, the delegation of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region stated during the National Land Conference that “village cadre is not a class category since it includes landlords, rich peasants, common masses, and party and non-party members, but the majority are common masses” (“Quanguo tudi huiyi biji,” 1947). Hence, the key is that the rural ruling elites might be of common mass class origins, but their work styles were far from the masses. Their “undemocratic, selfish, self-fulfilling, and commanding” work styles had become the biggest problem for the peasantry. However, Liu differed from the delegation of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region in that he persistently incorporated the problem of rotten cadres into the narrative of class struggle. He assumed that the “rotten cadres” detested by the masses were “influenced by intra-and-extra party landlords” even if they were not of landlord class origins. ⁵

Liu’s report seemingly supports Pepper’s analysis initially: the CCP was so flexible in implementing different formulae of class struggle to meet the demands of the masses that it could still “mobilize masses through class struggle” in North China where landlords were few. However, the issue becomes far more complicated when this line of reasoning is extended into a deeper inquiry of land reform. Liu’s report illuminated a distinctive characteristic of the rural “class struggle” against the “ruling elite” during the movement, that is, that the CCP turned the revolution on its own rural power base when it attempted to mobilize the masses through “democratic struggle.” In other words, the “class struggle” in land reform became more or less a revolution waged by the CCP (as a revolutionary party) against itself (as a ruling party).

Setting itself as the target in the process of staging a social revolution was not a simple question of mobilization strategy but of determined political maneuvering by the CCP leadership. In fact, the work teams had conducted experimental democratic campaigns in the neighboring villages of Xibaipo before the start of the National Land Conference. Liu Shaoqi followed the development of these campaigns closely, and clearly understood the consequences of mobilizing poor peasants to struggle against the village cadres in the liberated areas. Reforming the grassroots power organs and cadres through instigating mass democracy would be “such an intense process of struggle,” Liu pointed out in his report, that “if it were implemented across the country, it would inevitably lead to the masses’ abandoning hundreds of thousands of party members and a large number of cadres, or to their undergoing criticism, struggle, and trial. Some incidents would inevitably occur” (Liu, 1947a). For these reasons, Liu Shaoqi declared to the Central Committee that, as far as democracy was concerned, there were “very critical issues of principle to be tackled.” At the same time, he clarified his own stand: “Land reform must be thoroughly completed, and the democracy and freedom of the peasantry must be protected. The work style must change, and cadres who have divorced themselves from the masses must be removed; criminals must be punished appropriately” (Liu, 1947a). In spite of huge political risk, Liu was determined to wage a democratic revolution in the liberated areas. ⁶ Soon, his suggestions were endorsed by Mao Zedong and the Central Committee.

As seen above, through a scrutiny of Liu’s telegraph we are able to identify empirically the “ruling class” in the liberated areas and thus grasp the self-revolutionary nature of the “democratic movement” during land reform. The theorists of elite circulation fail to highlight these points since they have neglected a critical variable in the land reform: the differences between the “old areas” and the new ones with respect to their political and socioeconomic conditions. I believe this difference is vital to understanding the political significance of land reform.

Indeed, how the old areas and the new ones were to be dealt with respectively was one of the core issues brought up by the participants in the meetings of the National Land Conference. The representatives of the Ji-Jin (Hebei-Shanxi) Subregion, for instance, brought up the issue plaguing their area. As the core area of the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region, the Subregion had around 13 million mu of land with a population of 3.7 million. This worked out to 3.6 mu per capita. In the areas where land was most scarce, the figure was only 1.5 mu per capita. According to the Ji-Jin representatives’ report, in the new areas, “the landlords had yet to be severely weakened,” and the poor peasants accounted for a large part of the total population (50 percent). These areas were economically underdeveloped, and the living standard of the masses was low. In the old areas, however, the landlord class had been severely weakened. The majority of the landlord class were dependents of anti-Japanese soldiers or cadres and most of them were cooperative during the War of Resistance. As for the poor peasants, “most had fanshened.” Moreover, politically speaking, the landlord class had been overthrown, and political power was held by the “common masses.” Therefore, the Ji-Jin representatives suggested that the old areas and the new ones must be dealt with differently with regard to mass mobilization (“Quanguo tudi huiyi biji,” 1947). The case of the Ji-Jin Subregion demonstrates that the differences between the old and new areas lay less in socioeconomic conditions and more in political conditions. Likewise, the political struggle against the “ruling class” in these two areas diverged in nature and form.

Unsurprisingly, mass mobilization through the punishment of traitors and bullies was easy in the new areas after the War of Resistance was won. For instance, the mass movement in Shanxi’s Long Bow Village opened with the struggle against Kuo Te-yu (Guo Deyou), the village head during the War of Resistance. Subsequently, two “sinful, evil traitors” (security chief Shen Chi-mei [Jimei] and deputy security chief Ch’ing T’ien-hsing [Qin Tianxing]) were executed. In this Anti-Traitor campaign, 16 middle-peasant and 6 poor-peasant households in the village had their properties completely or partially confiscated for working for the Japanese. In the Settling Accounts campaign that followed, other than the landlord Sheng Ching-ho (Shen Jinhe), Wang Kuei-ching (Guijing), who was originally a poor peasant and the head of the Progression Society (the financial branch of a Catholic church), was also struggled against as a landlord since he incurred the wrath of the masses. Wang’s 15-member household was destroyed; Wang himself was beaten to death at a struggle meeting, while one member committed suicide and the rest were exiled (Hinton, 1980: 119–65). The situation in Long Bow was in line with the hypothesis suggested by proponents of the theory of elite circulation. The old “ruling elites” (traitors, Catholic priests, etc.) were struggled against and replaced by the CCP’s cadres and activists.

Mass movements in the old areas, however, were entirely different. The power in these areas was already in the hands of the CCP’s grassroots cadres. As such, targets in the anti-bullies struggles initiated to mobilize the masses were frequently CCP cadres. The land reform in northwestern Shanxi is an illustrative example. In 1947, when Kang Sheng and Chen Boda led the Central Investigation Group of Land Reform there to conduct experimental land reform, they immediately took the local cadres to task. In the administrative village of Haojiapo in Lin County’s Baiwen Township, Kang Sheng held a struggle meeting against Mr. Gao, a leader in the peasant association, and removed him from both the position and the party itself (Wang and Liu, 1987: 45). Chen Boda, who led the team based in the administrative village of Panjiazhuang, Jingle County, heeded the wishes of the masses and executed the bully Hao Yuanlian. Hao was born in a poor peasant family. He joined the CCP in 1939 and became the captain of a militia squadron in 1941. The party bestowed on him the honorary title of Special Militia Hero in recognition of his outstanding performance in production and the War of Resistance in 1944. Later, his bad attitude in the work relating to the “Four Great Mobilizations,” rent/interest reduction, and military requisitions, as well as his problematic lifestyle and selfishness, angered the masses. Hence, the masses insisted on struggling against Hao when the work team initiated the Settling Accounts struggle in Panjiazhuang. Chen Boda decided to fulfill the people’s demands by calling a public trial and announcing Hao’s execution (Niu, 1988). Unlike the “ruling class” toppled in Low Bow, “new bullies” such as Hao Yuanlian were rural leadership in the old areas cultivated by the CCP during the War of Resistance.

At the National Land Conference, Liu Shaoqi specified that his report was intended for the “old liberated areas” (“Shaoqi tongzhi, Zhu zong siling, Kang Sheng tongzhi,” 1947). Indeed, the problem of democracy was not limited to North China, but was prevalent in the other old areas controlled by the CCP. Even in areas where the landlord economy was well-developed, there were still loud calls to “first struggle against the cadres, and then against the landlords.” For example, the masses staged a grand struggle against the Settling Accounts Committee when the government of the Shaan-Gan-Ning (Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia) Border Region conducted land reform in Yangjiagou, a famous landlord stronghold (Li Fangchun, 2008). As such, “democracy” was a persistent structural problem in the process of establishing the CCP’s power base in the villages. Moreover, the demand of the peasants in the liberated areas for bottom-up mass participation was strongly related to the top-down discursive encouragement initiated by the party. Therefore, the political objectives of the peasants in land reform and the corresponding strategies of the revolutionary ruling party can only be adequately elucidated in the revolutionary discursive context of “fanshen” and “democracy.”

Nevertheless, the socioeconomic conditions of the old areas in North China undoubtedly made the problem of rotten cadres more apparent. The cadres became easy objects of mass struggles. For this reason, the representatives in the National Land Conference intensely debated the nature of the cadre problem. For example, the representatives of the Ji-Jin Subregion suggested: “The relationship between the masses and village cadres is twofold: there is, firstly, the relationship between the party and masses; and, secondly, that between the fanshened and non-fanshened peasants. What we have is, on one hand, an internal problem in form and a class problem (such as the bribery of the cadres) in actuality; on the other hand, simply a class problem.” “In general, most of the cadres in the old areas are good,” the representatives argued, “although their work style is bad, their class status and viewpoints are fine” (“Quanguo tudi huiyi biji,” 1947). Therefore, the Ji-Jin representatives advocated the conventional strategy of “recognizing merits and criticizing wrongs” (biaogong pingguo) to solve the cadre problem. They opposed the radical plan of struggling against the cadres à la struggling against the landlords, which would “create a united front against the cadres.” They also argued against the mode of carrying out struggles in public meetings, which they thought was like “a minority raping the will of the people,” merely “democratic in form but not in substance.” Furthermore, the representatives reasoned: “It is unsuccessful to first rectify the organization and then struggle against the landlords. Generally, rectifying the organization in struggles requires top-to-bottom and also bottom-to-top efforts. The leadership has to set the thinking right before rectification can take place from bottom up” (“Quanguo tudi huiyi biji,” 1947). Apparently, there was a veritable chasm between the opinions of these local leaders and those of Liu Shaoqi and the Central Working Committee. The opinions and suggestions of the representatives were in fact directed at the aggressive methods adopted by the work teams during the land reform in their local old areas. Their discontent was obvious. ⁷

Liu Shaoqi thought differently, however. He insisted on promoting mass democracy to remold the party, government, mass organizations, and cadres at all levels. He adamantly linked the democratic movement to class struggle. And, indeed, he thought his proposal was specifically designed for the situation in the old areas. Liu believed that class enemies had sneaked into the party committees at all levels, including the central bureaus, and that they were more difficult to annihilate than the landlord class outside of the party. “Now,” the expert on party affairs pointed out, “the most dangerous enemies are within our party and among the masses. Our comrades should be warned of this. The agents of the landlords are nowhere but in our party and among the masses” (Liu, 1947b). Thus did he twine together party rectification and land reform. In the end, the Land Conference adopted two resolutions, set toward equally dividing the land and purifying the party’s ranks.

The promotion of remolding the party and government reflected the influence of Liu Shaoqi on the progress of land reform in the north, as well as the widespread problem of “democracy” in the CCP-controlled old areas. While the May Fourth Directive responded to the peasants’ demand for land, the Outline of China’s Land Law drawn up at the National Land Conference granted their demand for democracy. ⁸ Before long, the democratic movement of party consolidation unfolded across the liberated areas.

Remolding the Party and Government (I): The Issue of Purity and the Practice of “Removing the Stones”

Pursuing the line of inquiry along “democracy” sheds light on the motivation behind the incorporation of “party rectification” into North China’s land reform. Top leaders such as Liu Shaoqi initially planned to conduct top-down party rectification. According to this plan, the various liberated areas were to conduct rectification down the party’s hierarchy, starting from the central committee to the district level, whereby cadre meetings would be held to set thinking right, reform structure, and take disciplinary action. Liu particularly pointed out that “the district and township (xiang) must not have cadres of landlord-and-rich-peasant origins.” The intra-party class struggle aimed at “purification” was to clear the obstacles for mass mobilization from the top down. Its nature was different from the bottom-up “democratic movement” where the masses reviewed cadres and party members. Liu initially planned to rectify the party from top to bottom before engaging in land reform, and then allow democratic reviews of the cadres after the reform. Even so, the measure of “purifying” the party is clearly indicative of the democratic demands of the masses in the liberated areas. In this regard, the issue of “purification” was in essence one of “democracy.” Indeed, the movement eventually progressed beyond and greatly transformed Liu’s conception, and in turn stimulated new thinking on his part.

It is impossible to examine comprehensively the process of the democratic movement of party consolidation here. We shall only briefly look at the situation in the Beiyue (formerly Ji-Jin) Subregion.

In November 1947, soon after the National Land Conference, the Ji-Jin Subregion was merged with Chahar Province into the Beiyue Subregion. According to data compiled for the Beiyue Land Conference, nearly half of all members of the thirteen county- or city-level party committees were of landlord-and-rich-peasant origin, whereas only 20 percent were of the poor-and-hired class (Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948a). ⁹ This was consistent with Liu Shaoqi’s estimate. Moreover, during the conference, it was revealed that as many as 23 kinds of “thought deviations” had been found in the representatives from various administrative districts, and that hundreds of cadres had “impure work styles.” More than a third of the county-level cadres were corrupt and degenerate. In fact, the figure would exceed 50 percent if one were to include those who misappropriated the “fruits of struggle” in land reform as well (Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948a).

To further elucidate the state of “organizational impurity,” we will examine the party branches in three counties (Liangxiang, Laizhuo, and Wanping) in the Beiyue Third Administrative District. According to contemporary estimates, as shown in Table 1, fewer than 20 percent of the grassroots party branches were controlled by the poor-and-hired, while the overwhelming majority were manipulated or ruled by various “enemies,” such as landlords, rich peasants, hooligans, and GMD secret agents. If this was indeed the case, most of the power organizations that the CCP had established in the rural areas would have to be overthrown or substantially remolded. From this we can see how (potentially) wide the scope of attack was in the party rectification conceived by Liu Shaoqi.

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Table 1.

“Organizational Impurity” in Party Branches in Three Counties in the Third Administrative District, Beiyue Subregion

	Liangxiang	Laizhuo	Wanping	Total	%
Manipulated or ruled by landlords and rich peasants	7 branches	22	57	86	35.0
Manipulated or ruled by middle peasants	7	6	42	55	22.4
Manipulated or ruled by hooligans and degenerate elements	3		11	14	5.7
Manipulated or ruled by pro-GMD (Guomindang) elements	3		2	5	2.0
Manipulated by GMD secret agents	4	2	12	18	7.3
Manipulated by suspicious individuals	3		9	12	4.9
Ruled by the poor-and-hired	18	11	20	49	19.9
Others	7			7	2.8
Total	52	41	153	246	100.0

Source. Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948b.

Note. The original table contains some statistical errors, which have been corrected here. It also, as well as the tables that follow, contains no dates. All the tables likely present data from late 1947 to early 1948.

Besides the problem of “organizational impurity,” the contemporary estimate of the state of “thought impurity” (sixiang buchun) was also grim. Table 2 lists some data from the Beiyue Subregion showing that the most common wrongs on the rural cadres’ part were abusing the masses, embezzlement, and self-enrichment. These problems were precisely what the peasants in the old areas had perceived as the most immediate causes of their grievances. In contrast, other problems of “impurity” such as secretly defending landlords were only of secondary importance. The essential meaning of so-called “impurity within the party” was therefore the CCP cadres’ misconduct, including corruption and bullying the people. These issues dragged the CCP, as the ruling power in the old areas, into the perilous situation of being “divorced from the masses.” On the wave of the “new climax of revolution,” however, the CCP decided to launch a self-revolution in order to “maintain close contact with the masses.”

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Table 2.

“Impurity in Thought and Work Style” in the Beiyue Subregion

32 Party Branches in Fanshi County			Training Class for Village Cadres, First Administrative District			Training Class for Old Cadres, Tangxian County
Problem	Implicated Individuals	%	Problem	Implicated Individuals	%	Problem	Implicated Individuals	%
Embezzlement	81	35.7	Beating and berating; a undemocratic	56	28.0	Beating and berating; undemocratic	345	57.9
Beating and berating	51	22.5	Embezzlement	52	26.0	Embezzlement	104	17.4
Secretly defending landlords	41	18.0	Gambling and opium smoking	30	15.0	Elements of landlord-and-rich-peasant	97	16.3
Having sex with “worn-out shoes” b	30	13.2	Unwillingness to support the front and join the army	16	8.0	Rape	30	5.0
Opium smoking	24	10.6	Unwillingness to serve as cadres	12	6.0	Murder	20	3.4
Total	227	100.0	Improper sexual relations	11	5.5	Total	596	100.0
			Other	23	11.5
			Total	200	100.0

Source. Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948b.

a.

“Beating and berating the masses” were typical of the work style of some CCP cadres.

b.

“Worn-out shoe” refers to a woman who is considered to be sexually promiscuous.

On November 27, 1947, the Jin-Cha-Ji Daily published a crucial editorial, “Removing the Stones, Reorganizing the Troops,” which vehemently attacked “bad cadres” and party members who were “selfish, abusing their power, riding on the people’s heads, bullying the peasants together with landlords and rich peasants,” pointing out that

These good-for-nothings in our midst look like a helter-skelter pile of stones. When they weigh down upon our head, we can’t raise our head (taitou); when they block our feet in front, we can’t walk. In order to taitou, to walk, to wage revolution, it is necessary to remove this helter-skelter pile of stones. (“Bandiao shitou, zhengdun duiwu,” 1947)

Thereafter, the Beiyue Subreigion saw a drastic campaign of “removing stones” (ban shitou). Numerous grassroots cadres and party members were suspended, dismissed, or even sent to the People’s Court. For example, in Jianping County, in the Beiyue Fourth Administrative District, where the campaign was proceeding under Liu Shaoqi’s direct supervision, almost all grassroots cadres were removed as “stones” (Hu, 1993: 85). ¹⁰ In the Fifth District village of Hutaliang, where most of the villagers were serving as cadres, only ten people were left after the poor-peasant league’s removal of “stones,” including four elderly persons, one little girl, and one mentally retarded individual (“Guanyu jiu cun ganbu canjia xin tuanti de wenti,” 1948). Another good example is Yuxian County in the Beiyue Second Administrative District. There were 29 villages in the first district of this county, in each of which 15 “stones” were removed; in the other six districts, 5 “stones” were removed from each village; in the entire county (exclusive of the fourth and eighth districts), there were 555 “stones” in total, or 11 per village on average. Most of the “stones” were party branch secretaries, heads of peasant unions, or village headmen: 191 were dismissed, 314 suspended, and 9 sent to court (Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948b). In addition, with regard to class background, the removed “stones” who were from landlord-and-rich-peasant families only accounted for a very small part. The overwhelming majority of the “stones” were middle and poor peasants. The overall situation in the Second Administrative District was roughly similar. As Table 3 shows, the middle-peasant “stones” accounted for more than half, with the poor-and-hired representing a substantial percentage as well.

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Table 3.

Class Origins of the Removed “Stones” in the Beiyue Second Administrative District

	Yuxian County (Five Districts) a		Pingding County (Five Districts)		The Second Administrative District (Six Counties) b		Dingxiang County (Seven Districts)
	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
Landlord	6	5.4	3	8.3	13	6.5	24	5.2
Rich peasant	10	9.0	7	19.4	24	11.9	27	5.9
Middle peasant	65	58.6	21	58.3	106	52.7	266	57.8
Poor-and-hired	30	27.0	5	14.0	55	27.4	143	31.1
Worker	0	0.0	0	0.0	3	1.5	0	0.0
Total	111	100.0	36	100.0	201	100.0	460	100.0

Source. Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948b.

a.

Yuxian County has nine districts, but only five of them have reliable data.

b.

The six counties in the Second District are Quyang, Shouyang, Yuci, Yangquan City, Yuxian, and Pingding.

It is not difficult to see similarities between the movement for remolding the party and government in Beiyue Subregion during the land reform and the Shandong movements during the period of the Investigation of Rent Reduction studied by Suzanne Pepper. In both instances, the CCP focused on problems that caused the greatest distress for the masses, such as corruption and bullying. In addition, the struggle targets were also similar in terms of composition. In this regard, there were continuities between “class struggle” in the land reform and mass struggle during the War of Resistance. The crucial point, however, is that the “anti-bully, anti-corruption” struggle in the old areas’ land reform targeted not only landlords but also the CCP’s grassroots cadres and party members, who were the “ruling class” that “oppressed the people.” This was neglected by Pepper in her speculative analysis of land reform based on the experience of the Investigation of Rent Reduction. ¹¹

The campaign of removing stones sent shock waves through the CCP authorities in the liberated areas. The newly established poor-peasant leagues and peasant associations replaced old organizations (such as the party branches). This gave rise to much confusion and fear. Slogans such as “From now on, long live the poor-peasant league, but not the Communist Party” prevailed (Beiyue qu dangwei, 1948b). More seriously, while the CCP was removing “stones” from the top down, the masses everywhere rose up spontaneously to struggle against cadres. Many of them were arrested, hung up, beaten up, or even killed. Apparently, once it was launched, the movement soon spiraled beyond the CCP’s control. ¹²

Noteworthy here is the ironic relation between removing the “stones” and arousing the masses. The original intention of the top leaders in this campaign was to eliminate obstacles to mass mobilization. However, the campaign actually hindered the realization of mass mobilization since, once they were removed, many “stones” were spared from public struggle. This partially explained why the peasants rose up spontaneously to detain cadres during this period.

In fact, one of the primary considerations of some local leaders was to protect grassroots cadres from mass struggle as the campaign unfolded. Yang Gengtian, then deputy secretary of the Beiyue Party Committee, once said when he was making arrangements for removing “stones,”

Our goal of removing “stones” is to educate and reform the cadres. If we don’t remove them, the masses would struggle against them, and the firepower would be concentrated on them. So if we dismiss the cadres from their posts in advance, the masses’ anger would dissipate. In this way, the firepower could be focused on the landlords. (Yang, 1947: 324)

Obviously, Yang could not allow the struggle against cadres to be the same as that against landlords. He wished to concentrate the firepower of mass struggle on the latter. Li Shaoqi strongly criticized Yang’s action as a “deviation” in which the work team

ersisted mechanically in struggling against the landlords first before dealing with the cadre problem; separated mechanically the solution of the land problem from the democratic movement; or, deterred the masses from struggling against party members and cadres; or, took away many party members and cadres as “stones,” whom the masses opposed. [As a result], it gave rise to the situation of being divorced from the masses. (Liu, 1948b: 374)

However, if the CCP overemphasized the necessity of satisfying the peasants’ urgent demand for democracy and letting the masses raise their heads, it would expose the party’s own members and cadres to the fire of mass struggle. In other words, a possible result of the democratic movement was the collapse of the CCP’s political power at the grassroots level, and thereby the complete loss of revolutionary leadership. Figuratively, the revolutionary ruling party was playing with the fire of mass democracy during wartime, and could set itself on fire if it was not careful.

Remolding the Party and Government (II): The Problem of Democracy and the Practice of “Mass-Involved Party Rectification”

The hurricane of class struggle raged during the initial period of the remolding the party-and-government campaign. Particularly, the chief architect of the campaign, Liu Shaoqi, had always framed democracy and party rectification in the context of class struggle. In spite of this, the critical discursive-historical connection between party rectification and class struggle has not been fully examined in previous studies. Pepper’s analysis, for example, attempted to uncover the historical truth behind the façade of revolutionary slogans, but it overcompensated with a singular focus on practical strategies. As a result, it did not detect the various discursive-historical contradictions in the process of the Chinese revolution. While Pepper highlighted the CCP’s strategies and flexibility in the practice of class struggle, the shaping effects of the discourse of class struggle also need to be taken into consideration. In other words, “class struggle” was not a vacuous ideological catchphrase, but, as a kind of soft structure, had a concrete and powerful impact on historical action and thought. Whatever strategies there were were gradually formed within the limitations of and promoted by a series of discursive-historical contradictions.

A reading of another important telegram regarding land reform will illustrate this point. On January 18, 1948, Liu Shaoqi replied to Mao Zedong with another telegram on the issues of land reform and party rectification (Liu, 1948a). By then, however, the political situation had changed greatly. At that time, while the Central Working Committee led by Liu was still the command center of the land reform movement, Mao and the Central Committee had begun to intervene. Moreover, Mao was no longer vigorously supporting Liu’s work, but seeking to correct it. ¹³ On January 14, 1948, Mao sent a telegram to Liu, informing him about the Enlarged Conference of the Central Committee of the CCP held at Yangjiagou and also rejecting the Draft Directive for Enforcing the Outline of the Land Law drawn up by Liu immediately after the National Land Conference. The key idea set forth in this draft was actually that of opposing “Rightist deviations,” whereas Mao believed the major problem at the time was “Leftist deviations.” On January 18, Mao sent another telegram to Liu, informing him that the Central Committee had passed the “January Decision,” that is, “Several Issues about the Party’s Current Policies,” drafted by Mao himself. In his reply, Liu agreed with the decision made by Mao and the Central Committee.

In this important telegram, Liu Shaoqi discussed for the first time his general understanding of the situation of land reform in North China. ¹⁴ On the basis of reports from four counties (including Pingshan and Jianping) in the Beiyue Fourth Administrative District, he pointed out a major problem in the reform: “Mass movements in several newly developed areas have been quite grand and dynamic. As long as the problem of the GMD and puppet personnel is correctly and thoroughly solved—currently the problem has yet to be solved properly, if at all—it will be possible to organize the ranks of the people. However, the movement in the old areas is often not equally fervent. Even in the villages where land had been equally redistributed, the masses are not very active.” The reason for this languor lies in the substantial differences between the old and new areas. First, the movement had “extremely rich economic content” (i.e., a massive poor-peasant and hired-laborer population, coupled with ample feudal properties) as well as “extremely rich political content” (i.e., endless bitterness under the rule of the GMD and the pro-Japanese puppet government) in the new areas, whereas “there are no GMD organizations, but vast CCP organizations” in the old areas. This was the fundamental difference in terms of political situation. Second, “feudalism” in the old areas had been severely weakened. As Liu Shaoqi observed,

the landlords who still owned some property and controlled more and better land are almost exclusively from the families of party members and cadres, or the pro-CCP gentry, or individuals who have mainly depended on doing business to make a living.

Therefore, the targets of land reform in the old areas were “predominantly the landlord-and-rich-peasant families of the party members, cadres and the pro-CCP gentry.” In the semi-old areas, only landlords who had connections with the CCP retained their properties.

It was with this view in mind that Liu Shaoqi pointed out,

For this round of land reform, the main objects [of struggle] are from within the party. The so-called “non-thoroughness” we talked about is not a problem outside of the party, but rather an internal problem thereof, that is, “non-thoroughness” within the party itself. In addition, that the cadres seize the fruits [of the struggle] is also an internal problem of the party. Hence, now when the peasants are incited, they want to struggle against the members of the party and the cadres. Moreover, there are some party members and cadres of landlord-and-rich-peasant origin (as well as a few bad cadres) who formed small factions in the past, turned the party into sectarian groups, usurped the party’s power, gave oppressive commands, and did all kinds of evil deeds, thereby sparking the masses’ opposition and fury. Now the masses want to take revenge and speak of their suffering. . . . The current policy of our work teams, however, mechanically stipulates that one must struggle against the landlords first before solving the cadre problem. After the equal distribution of land, [the work teams] restrain the masses from struggling against the cadres and party members, or remove great numbers of cadres and party members, whom the masses oppose, as “stones.” As a result, there are only very few landlords and rich peasants to serve as the objects of struggle. Alternatively, the masses may simply struggle once again against those non-party landlords who had already been severely attacked. Thus, the masses’ enthusiasm is not high, and they are not eager to pour out their bitterness. Nevertheless, some cadres still attempt to whip up a “climax” of struggling against the landlords, trying by their own wishful thinking to bring about a “grand and dynamic” movement. In doing so, they inevitably commit Leftist errors. Hence, in the old areas, the organizations of the masses are not of any large scale, the tidal current of the movement is weak and lacking in ardor, whereas the struggles go too far, yet squeezing out only a little land and property. [Emphasis added]

One of the striking characteristics in Liu’s analysis is the way he joined two things together as if they were two sides of a single coin: struggling against the landlords and struggling against the cadres and party members. He further admitted, “The land struggle in the old areas is not plentiful economically and cannot be compared with the new areas. Hence, the land issue cannot be the sole motivator for stirring up a mass movement of widespread enthusiasm to reach climactic heights. We have to arrange the struggle realistically, to determine the scale and form of mass struggle on the basis of the number of feudal remnants and poor-and-hired laborers there are.” This implied that the land issue was not the key factor in the old areas, and the inflexible implementation of land reform would only receive a weak response. Therefore, results were limited if land redistribution was the only source of political mobilization in the old areas. To mobilize the masses, the scope of the class struggle had to be expanded; more objects of struggle had to be found. Simultaneously, however, Mao and the party’s central authorities were correcting the excesses and magnification of class struggle in the movement to avoid political havoc that could result from land reform and party rectification in the liberated areas. Under such contradictory circumstances, Liu Shaoqi proposed that the coupling of land reform and the democratic movement of party rectification would be able to stir up the masses in the old areas and thus usher in the “climax” of the mass movement. The main method was to make the party branches publicly known to the masses, widely invite people outside of the party to attend branch meetings, and accept popular opinions on how to deal with the party’s internal problems. This mode of “opening up party rectification to mass participation” (gongkai zhengdang), or “mass-involved party rectification,” was the core of the famous “Pingshan experience.”

The original experience of “mass-involved party rectification” was created by Feng Wenbin, then concurrently the Secretary of the CCP CC Youth Committee and the Secretary of the Pingshan County Party Committee, who led a work group to carry out land reform and party rectification in the Second District of Pingshan County. ¹⁵ It was once highly commended by Liu Shaoqi, who called it “the highest manifestation of justice in the rural areas.” Liu noted that “the participation of villagers who were not party members in party meetings ultimately broke the chains that were constraining the masses.” Undoubtedly, the CCP adopted this method of conducting rectification in order to arouse the masses. “In the old areas,” Liu Shaoqi argued,

a democratic movement for the efficient rectification of the working style of the party members and cadres presently stands on a broader social basis, and has won greater popular support than mere equal distribution of land. All of the poor peasants, middle peasants, and other folk approve of the movement. It is thus viable to organize the populace at large on this basis. Once the two [i.e., the democratic movement and equal distribution of land] are joined together correctly, there will be a mighty and ardent mass movement in the old areas.

Meanwhile, the “gongkai party rectification” was also a compromising method of tackling the conflict between the cadres and the ordinary peasants, as well as between the party and the masses. The party branch meeting became open to active participation by ordinary peasants, such that it was both a party meeting and a mass rally, bringing plebeian pressure into play, yet avoiding the predicament of going too far in dealing with the cadres as might happen in a purely mass meeting. It is fair to say that, compared to the intense experience of the earlier movement of “checking on the cadres via the masses” (which occurred in northwest Shanxi), the Pingshan experience was much milder. A major political significance of this new form of struggle was that it was to fulfill the urgent needs of the masses and also sidestep the potential consequences of “overthrowing the ruling class.” ¹⁶ In this way, the initial democratic revolution was transformed and achieved a balance between “democracy” (which sought to mobilize the masses) and “revolution” (which sought to overthrow the ruling class).

Liu Shaoqi’s idea gained endorsement from Mao and the party’s central authorities. Accordingly, the “Pingshan experience” was included in the February Directive (which was drafted by Zhou Enlai and issued by the CCP CC as “Directive on Land Reform and Party Rectification in the Old and Semi-old Areas”; see Zhou, [1948] 1980), and became the model for the democratic movement in the old areas. ¹⁷

Coupling land reform with party rectification, instead of simply struggling against landlords, successfully mobilized the masses in North China’s old areas. Concomitantly, the element of “struggle” in class struggle was also greatly reduced. Feng Wenbin summarized the implementation of the rectification with a fourfold description—“separate and clear, endeavor to secure, educate, unite”—which stressed the integration of the first two actions with the last two (Feng Wenbin, 1948: 4–5). The campaign carried out after the February Directive had, in fact, been revised to avoid the quandary of “self-revolutionizing” as far as possible. It was documented in Hinton’s account of Long Bow, and was the new political backdrop to Xie Juezai’s diary entry in the epigraph to this article. ¹⁸

Nevertheless, this development actually fell short of being satisfactory. The Pingshan experience was hailed as a paragon of the democratic movement, but in reality it was not as successful as claimed in official propaganda. In April 1948, the Pingshan Party Committee sent investigation teams down to various districts and villages to find out how the rural party branches were running. “At present,” they discovered,

the organization of the party branches is far from perfect. There is great confusion in the thinking of the party members, typically manifesting as attitudes of “tailism,” going with the flow, inward discontent and coping with one’s superiors while ignoring the masses. (Pingshan xianwei, 1948)

The party committee identified five types of party branches: (1) those that have truly set their thinking right and are thus effective in different areas of work; (2) those that are superficially active but still harbor bad thoughts (such as the intention to seek revenge, cover up errors, or contend for power and profit); (3) those that work with a wait-and-see attitude; (4) those that are full of factional infighting and cannot be held together; (5) those that still put up passive resistance. Only slightly more than ten percent of the rural party branches were still doing their work actively. Most of the party’s grassroots organizations suffered from low morale, and quite a few were even in a confrontational mood.

Xie Juezai met with Zhang Qingyun, the magistrate of Pingshan County, on June 13, 1948, to acquaint himself with the state of the governmental agencies at the county and town levels. He recorded the predicament caused by the rectification in his diary:

It may be easy to remove the stones but it is difficult to reinstall them. This is where the difficulty lies. The old cadres refuse to work again, whereas the new cadres fear being targeted as new stones. The party members and cadres mock [the activists of] the poor peasant leagues and the new peasant associations, causing them to be low-spirited. [For example,] some “stones” in Xingtang County went back and mocked the poor-peasant league, such that several league members committed suicide. (Xie, 1984: 1211)

The opening up of party rectification to mass participation partially resolved the tensions between the cadres and masses, and rebuilt connections between the party and the masses. However, the practice also led to the momentary waning of grassroots organizations. In particular, the campaign of “removing stones” brought about a leadership crisis in the rural areas. The problems in the movement revealed the profound contradictions inherent in the Chinese revolution.

Concluding Comments: Remolding the Party and Government and the Birth of Rule-by-Virtue Democracy

Scholars who adopt the elite circulation approach argue that the true significance of “class struggle” in land reform consists in the overthrowing of the ruling class and the establishment of new basic-level institutional structures supporting the CCP in the countryside. I have demonstrated that this theory ignores the “ecological” differences between the old and new areas, and fails to illuminate the political process of land reform in the old areas. The land problem related to tenancy, as Pepper observes, was not very serious in North China. This was particularly the case in the old areas. Thus, the Communist Party emphasized the issue of democracy (minzhu), attacking party members and cadres previously recruited by the party itself who oppressed, bullied the masses, or became corrupt, so as to satisfy the demand of the peasants. This was a campaign of remolding the party and government at the basic levels. In the beginning, the CCP initiated the struggles against the bad cadres and party members to pave the way for land reform. Later, following the dynamics of the contemporary discursive-historical situation, it turned to integrating land reform and class struggle with the democratic movement of party consolidation.

Remolding the party and government at the local levels gradually became an integral part of land reform in the old areas, which revealed the CCP’s strategy and flexibility. This strategy (or more precisely, political resolve), however, brought about serious consequences: the “class struggle” developed in this manner was aimed at the CCP grassroots organizations. Any slip-up could result in the scenario of the party “waging revolution against itself.” The National Land Conference chaired by Liu Shaoqi focused its attention on the issue of democracy, and eventually met the demands of the peasants with the promulgation of the Outline of China’s Land Law. Following this, the CCP initiated the “removal of stones” from the top down in order to clear the obstacles to mass mobilization. Many grassroots cadres and party members were suspended, fired, and persecuted in the movement. In fact, they were also arrested and struggled against by the masses spontaneously. All these led to great fears and even resistance among the cadres and party members in the old areas. The situation was alleviated with the intervention of Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee. The excesses of “class struggle” began to be “corrected.” Simultaneously, the practice of mass democracy was tempered, and a form of moderate struggle—“mass-participated party rectification”—was created. The CCP invited people who were not members of the party to the branch meetings and adopted their suggestions about managing intra-party affairs. This approach could effectively mobilize the masses and yet confine the struggles to party meetings, such that excessive struggling against the grassroots cadres and party members could be avoided. The CCP did remove many party members and cadres through this approach of public struggle. However, the basic tone of party rectification in general was reformist. Accordingly, the result was not the “overthrow of the ruling class” as suggested by Pepper. It was rather a temporary compromise between the “ruling class” at the basic levels and the masses of the peasantry.

“Mass democracy” is a core issue of the Chinese revolution. I argue that “democracy” is an important discursive-historical axis of the process of revolution. Specifically with regard to land reform in northern China, our understanding of “class struggle” should not be limited to political mobilization. Land reform has to be studied in connection with the practice of “democracy.” Only then can we uncover the link between “mass democracy” and “class struggle” and understand the impetus behind the incorporation of remolding the party-and-government into the land reform movement. The objective of this line of inquiry is thus not to reiterate how a revolutionary party mobilized the masses and won power. Instead, it is about putting the “democratic movement” during the land reform in a larger historical context, which I have termed “Chinese revolutionary modernity,” so as to understand it and to reflect critically upon it. Notably, this approach also allows our research to move beyond the analysis of the CCP’s political maneuvers and strategies, and instead to turn the searchlight onto the profound contradictions and painful setbacks within the historical process as well as the various forms of power and institutions that emerged.

It was the series of discursive-historical contradictions surrounding “mass democracy” that gave rise to Chinese revolutionary modernity. They included the conflicts between struggling against the cadres and against the landlords, the tensions between the poor peasant leagues, peasant associations, and the party branches, as well as the tensions between the masses’ self-liberation and the CCP leadership. The present article investigates the CCP’s political actions in the historical context of these contradictions, rather than trying to comprehend the historical process purely from the angle of CCP’s political objectives or strategies. In addition, it highlights the self-revolution of a revolutionary party under the impetus of multiple contradictions. The fact is that the practice of remolding the party and government in North China’s land reform bears witness to the deep contradictions between “democracy” (which seeks to awaken the populace) and “leadership” (which seeks to overcome the problem of detrimental disunity) in twentieth-century China.

Under the impetus of the conflicts between mass democracy and party leadership, one of the most important consequences of modernity in North China’s land reform was the initiation of open-door party rectification as a new form of political movement. ¹⁹ It was fundamentally not a democratic revolution or circulation of elites by nature. Rather, it was an example of self-governance by the ruling elites under the pressures of mass-involved democracy. Typically, the question of governance is framed in the dual variables of state (/party) and society (/masses), and defined as the execution of power by the state in order to control, discipline, and change society. The practice of democratic party rectification in North China’s land reform, however, reveals a form of power that this one-dimensional conception of governance fails to appreciate. By this I refer to the way the party mobilized the masses through a self-revolutionary style of “class struggle” and achieved the governmentalization of administration itself through “mass-participated” self-reformation. This form of power, which gave access to the masses while targeting itself, clearly embodied both the modern belief of “mass democracy” and the traditional ideal of “rule by virtue” (dezhi). The practice of quasi-institutionalized democratic party rectification implied the rebirth of dezhi in modern revolutionary discourse. In other words, open-door party rectification is an important component of revolutionary modernity with a distinctly Chinese quality. It was a democracy, implemented by the new ruling elites, which aimed toward revolutionary rule by virtue or virtuous governance through revolutionary democracy. My concise term for it is “rule-by-virtue democracy.” ²⁰

It was in the wake of decisive military victories that the CCP marked the success of its 28-year revolutionary struggle with its ascension to state power. However, the contradictions inherent in the New Democratic Revolution remained unresolved and continued to create tensions during the Socialist Revolution and Construction period. Correspondingly, rule-by-virtue democracy, which took shape in the practice of mass democracy during the land reform movement, was gradually institutionalized into an important “new tradition” of the revolution. Driven by the idea of “continuing the revolution,” the practice of periodic open-door rectification of the party and government gained its preliminary structure despite the many difficulties and errors in its practice, and became the ruling party’s mechanism for ensuring that it perennially “matches the mandate of Heaven with virtue” (or maintains “a close connection to the masses”).

The political practice of dezhi democracy reflects an acute awareness of adversity among the revolutionary leaders. Moreover, it is closely linked to the CCP’s duality as both a revolutionary party and a ruling party. Last but not least, as shown in this article, it also clearly reveals the two essential factors (i.e., “leadership” and “democracy”) that are part of Chinese revolutionary modernity.