5 Auld Lang Syne?
During the Sian Incident the Red Army had occupied large new areas. In Shensi it now held the greater part of the province, including nearly everything north of the Wei River. In their some fifty counties——an area between sixty and seventy thousand square miles, or, roughly, twice the size of Austria——the Reds controlled the biggest single realm they had ever ruled. But it was economically poor, very limited in its possibilities of development, and thinly populated, with perhaps less than 2, 000, 000 inhabitants.
Strategically the area was extremely important. From it the Reds could, if they chose, block the trade ways to Central Asia, or perhaps later themselves make direct connections with Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang) or Outer Mongolia. It was one of only two Chinese frontiers, and sources of supply, which Japan could not blockade. More than half of Chinese Turkestan, roughly 550, 000 square miles in area, was ruled by a warlord seemingly sympathetic to the Chinese Reds and the U.S.S.R. Northeast of it, Outer Mongolia, another 900, 000 square miles of former dependency of China——Chinese suzerainty over which was still nominally recognized, even by Russia——was now definitely under the Red banner, as a result of the military alliance (Mutual Defense Pact) concluded with the U.S.S.R. in 1936.
These three regions of Communist control in what could still be called "Greater China"were altogether about a third the size of the former Chinese Empire. Separating them from physical contact with each other were only politically ambiguous buffer districts inhabited by Mongols, Moslems, and frontiersmen whose ties with Nanking were fragile, and against whom the threat of Japanese conquest was a deepening reality. Those areas might later on be brought into the orbit of the "Anti-Japanese United Front, "and under soviet influence. That would close in an immense future Red base extending from Central Asia and Mongolia into the heart of Northwest China. But all that realm was backward, some of it barren steppe and desert, with poor communications, and sparsely populated. It could become a decisive factor in Eastern politics only in close alliance with the advanced industrial and military bases of either the U.S.S.R. or Central China, or both.
Immediate gains of the Chinese Reds were confined to these categories：the cessation of civil war, a certain degree of liberalization and tolerance in Nanking's internal policies, a stiffening toward Japan, and a partial release of the soviet districts from their long isolation. As a result of negotiations conducted between General Chang Chung, the Generalissimo's envoy in Sian, and Chou En-lai, the Reds' delegate there, a number of important changes took place during April, May, and June. The economic blockade was lifted. Trade relations were established between the Red districts and the outside world. More important, communications between the two areas were quietly restored. On the frontiers the Red Star and the Kuomintang White Sun were crossed in symbolic union.
Mail and telegraph services were partly reopened. The Reds purchased a fleet of American trucks in Sian and operated a bus service connecting the principal points in their region. Needed technical materials of all sorts began to pour in. Most precious to the Communists were books. A new Lu Hsun Memorial Library was established in Yenan, and to fill it Communist comrades throughout the country sent in tons of new literature. Hundreds of young Chinese Communists migrated from the great cities to Yenan, the new Red capital in north Shensi. By May over 2, 000 students had been accepted for enrollment in the Red University (renamed the "Anti-Japanese University"), and some 500 were in the Communist Party school. Among them were Mongols, Moslems, Tibetans, Formosans, and Miao and Lolo tribesmen. Scores were also studying in a number of technical training institutes.
Enthusiastic young radicals as well as veteran Party workers rolled in from all parts of China, some walking over great distances. By July, despite the rigors of student life, there were so many applicants that no more could be accommodated. Scores were turned back to wait for another term, when the Reds prepared to receive 5, 000. Many trained technicians also arrived, and were given work as teachers, or in the "construction plan"which was now begun. In this, perhaps, lay the biggest immediate benefit of peace：a base in which freely to train, equip, and discipline new cadres for the ranks of the revolution and the anti-Japanese war.
Of course, the Kuomintang continued strictly to supervise the Reds' connections with the outer world. There was less restriction on the movement of Communists now, but there was as yet no open acknowledgment of the fact. Many parties of non-Communist intellectuals also arrived in Red China to investigate conditions there——and many of them stayed on, to work. In June, the Kuomintang itself secretly sent a semiofficial group of delegates, headed by Hsiao Hua, to visit the Red capital. They toured the soviet districts and made appropriate rufescent anti-Japanese speeches before huge mass meetings. They acclaimed the return to the anti-imperialist united front between Communists and the Kuomintang. Nothing of this was allowed to appear in the Kuomintang press, however.
Conditions in the Kuomintang areas also improved for the followers of Lenin. The Communist Party was still nominally illegal, but it became possible to extend its influence and widen its organization, for the oppression somewhat diminished. A small but steady stream of political prisoners was released from the jails. The special gendarmes, the Blueshirts, continued their espionage on Communists, but kidnapings and torture ceased. Word was sent out that Blueshirt activities henceforth should center primarily on "pro-Japanese traitors."A number of the latter were arrested, and several Chinese agents in Japan's pay were reported to have been executed.
By May, in an exchange of concessions, the soviets had prepared to adopt the name Special Area Government, and the Red Army had petitioned to be included in the national defense forces as the National Revolutionary Army. Great "all-China"meetings of Party and Red Army delegates were called in May and June. Decisions were made on measures by which the new policies, calling for cooperation with the Kuomintang, could be realized. At these meetings the portraits of Lenin, Marx, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, and other Red leaders appeared beside those of Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen.
The most important changes in Red policy were the cessation of the practice of confiscation of the landlords' land, the cessation of anti-Nanking, anti-Kuomintang propaganda, and the promise of equal rights and the voting franchise to all citizens, regardless of their class origin. Cessation of land confiscation did not mean the return of land to the landlords in areas where redistribution had already been realized, but was an agreement to abandon the practice in districts newly brought under Communist control.[*]
On his side, Generalissimo Chiang agreed to consider the soviet districts part of the "national defense area, "and pay accordingly. The first payment to the Reds ($500, 000) was delivered shortly after Chiang Kai-shek's return to Nanking. Some of the Kuomintang money was used to convert soviet currency, to buy manufactures for their cooperatives, and to purchase needed equipment. The exact monthly allowance from Nanking was still under negotiation——as, indeed, was the whole definitive working agreement for future cooperation——while the storm of Japanese invasion was gathering in the North.
In June the Generalissimo sent his private plane to Sian for Chou En-lai, the Reds' chief delegate, who flew to Kuling, China's summer capital. There Chou held further conversations with Chiang Kai-shek and members of the cabinet. Among points discussed was the Communists' demand for representation in the People's Congress——the Congress scheduled to adopt a "democratic"constitution——in November. It was reported that an agreement was reached whereby the "Special Area"would be permitted to elect nine delegates on a regional basis.
However, these delegates in all probability would not be known as "Communists."Nanking had not openly acknowledged the so-called remarriage. It preferred to regard the relationship rather as the annexation of a concubine whose continence had yet to be proved, and one about which, for diplomatic reasons, the less said outside family circles the better. But even this furtive mêsalliance was an astounding and open defiance of Japan, unthinkable a few months previously. Meanwhile Japan's own offer (through Matchmaker Hirota) of a respectable "anti-Red"marriage[*] with Nanking was finally spurned. In this was perhaps a last and definite indication that Nanking's foreign policy had undergone a fundamental change.
All that seemed an utterly incomprehensible denouement to many an observer, and serious errors were made in its analysis. After a decade of the fiercest kind of civil war, Red and White suddenly burst into "Auld Lang Syne."What was the meaning of it? Had the Reds turned White, and the Whites turned Red? Neither one. But surely someone must have won, and someone lost? Yes, China had won, Japan had lost. For it seemed that a final decison in the profoundly complicated internal struggle had been postponed once more, by the intervention of a third ingredient——Japanese imperialism.
[*]New land-rent policies were, however, to penalize the landlords, and in practice the bias in "democratic"political organizations favored the poor peasants. At no time, not even in the early months of the brief lived two-party cooperation, did the Communists cease propagandizing for their cause or repudiate their ultimate Marxist program.
[*]The essence of Japan's proposals was to make of China a kind of satellite partner in the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo alliance.