The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou

1. On the Eve of the Takeover

1 On the Eve of the Takeover March 23, 1948, had special significance for Communist leader Mao Zedong. In the early morning, two hundred boatmen assembled at the mouth of a gorge at Chuankou village (the nearest crossing point to Communist headquarters at Yan’an) and began preparing to ferry Mao and his staff across the Yellow River.1 A year before, Hu Zongnan, a general in the gmd, had launched a massive attack on Yan’an, and the Communists had had to withdraw their heavily outnumbered forces. The Communist headquarters and Mao’s entire revolution were both in desperate straits. After he evacuated Yan’an, Mao Zedong took the assumed name of Li Desheng and resumed his guerrilla strategy, fighting in one village after another. Despite all the risks, however, Mao resolutely refused to cross the Yellow River for refuge, believing that his continuing presence in Shanbei, in the area near Yan’an, would boost the morale of the Communist troops and their supporters. Before long, the tide of the war was reversed. In August 1947, the Communists staged a first counterattack in the battle of Shajiadian and destroyed Hu Zongnan’s two brigades. Seven months later, the Communist troops totally crushed Hu, destroying his leading force, the Twenty-sixth Army of twenty-eight thousand men, at the battle of Yichuan. This victory marked a shift of initiative to the Communist side in the northwestern battlefield. Crossing the Yellow River at this stage, as Mao Zedong saw it, was a symbolic and essential step in spreading the Communist revolution throughout the country. The war would then no longer be fought in Communist enclaves but in gmd-controlled territory. Many years later, Mao’s bodyguard still remembered when Mao said goodbye to the Shanbei revolutionary base before crossing the Yellow River.2 It was extremely cold on the river in early spring. The turbid yellow water churned up huge chunks of ice and slapped thunderously at both banks. Impressed by the power of the river, as he gazed at the rapids and the whirlpools, Mao said to his entourage, ‘‘You can despise anything but the Yellow River. If you despise the Yellow River, you despise the Chinese nation.’’3 Mao’s feeling of worship for the Yellow River had been shared by Chinese peasants and intellectuals for thousands of years. An old Chinese proverb says, ‘‘Water carries boats and also destroys boats’’ (Zai zhou zhi shui yi fu zhou). This saying reflects a traditional belief that like water in the river, people could either consolidate or overthrow a regime. At this moment, Mao Zedong was confident of support from growing revolutionary bases in the war with Chiang Kai-shek.4 But a challenge for Mao and his colleagues was whether the Communists could gain support from newly liberated areas, especially the cities. Excited by the recent military victories, Mao did not forget to warn his colleagues: ‘‘If our policy is wrong, we shall fail.’’5 Making Urban Policy Communist urban policy was closely associated with its rural policy . A few days before Mao Zedong crossed the Yellow River, he received a telegram from Liu Shaoqi, now on the ccp Central Committee and earlier secretary of the North China Bureau (ncb). The letter reported on a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee held in Hebei. This meeting aimed at correcting the ‘‘left deviations’’ in North and East China. Liu Shaoqi wrote that in both Shanxi and Shandong, a lot of people had been killed in the land reform. The Executive Committee recognized that considerable damage had been done and had to be controlled.6 Mao replied, ‘‘It is a pleasure to hear that all errors and shortcomings with the leadership have been thoroughly examined and corrected 12 The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou at the meeting. Thus [the Party’s work] will be put on the right track.’’7 When Mao visited the liberated Shanxi-Suiyuan area, he found that the local government did not drive landlords out of their homes (sao di chu men) but treated landlords and rich peasants quite fairly. In the land reform in this area, landlords and rich peasants were allowed to have shares of land equal to those of poor peasants. Mao praised this moderate measure and told Nie Rongzhen, the party secretary and chief commander in the district, that Stalin’s policy of destroying rich peasants...