New Fourth Army: Communist Resistance along the Yangtze and the Huai, 1938-1941 (review)

Gregor Benton is a well-published British scholar whose previous work, Mountain Fires (University of California Press, 1992), won him a Joseph Levenson award, one envied by many scholars of modern China. The book deals with the three-year struggle for survival of the Communist guerrilla forces in Jiangnan (south of Changjiang) after the main Red Army forces left their Jiangxi base for the historic "Long March" and survival from Nationalist attacks. As its sequel, New Fourth Army traces almost the same guerrilla forces from their transformation in the spring of 1938 into a Nationalist army until its "official" disbandment in January 1941, following the Wannan Incident. The book is divided roughly into three parts: the rapid development of the New Fourth Army, the great success of its detachments led by Chen Yi and Liu Shaoqi in building a strong base in Subei (North Jiangsu), and the tragic fate of its main forces, including its headquarters, led by its commander Yi Ting and its commissar Xiang Ying in Wannan (South Anhui).

According to Benton, the Party center in Yan'an chose Subei as a new base, for the region was not only "emptied" of both the Nationalist and the Japanese forces but was also self-sufficient in sustaining the communist expansion "in all directions" (p. 422). The subsequent Communist success depended on the masterful grasp by their leaders of social connections, gentry culture in particular, rather than on the Marxist theory of class. In other words, Chen Yi and his lieutenants used social ties such as tongxiang (people from the same areas) and tongxue (classmates) to set up a "vast network of connections" (p. 157) before defeating the forces led by Han Deqin, Nationalist governor of Jiangsu. With the great majority of the Chinese population illiterate and living in the countryside, rural intellectuals were "particularly useful" in their service to the Communist success in Subei. With the Nationalist political infrastructure destroyed by the Japanese invasion, local gentry leaders had to abandon their middle course and follow the Communist Party. Above all, the Communist success in Subei was due to their dedication, discipline, and ability to expand "on the pretext of escaping Nationalist attacks" (p. 406).

Like his senior colleagues such as Lyman P. Van Slyke and Chen Yung-Fa, Benton believes that the Communist success resulted from more than a single cause, whether "socio-economic factors or nationalism," as mainstream historians often try to highlight. However, Benton goes beyond that to show how successfully Communist leaders manipulated gentry culture so that local gentry leaders such as Han Guojun considered them "a superior embodiment of cherished moral values"—not realizing that the Communists "were committed to destroying" their "vested interest" (p. 211). The "enlightened" gentry would become Communist targets once the latter had consolidated their position.

In sharp contrast to the Communist success in Subei, Ye Ting and Xiang Ying faced a costly tragedy in Wannan. Ironically, the Wannan Incident of January 1941, in which Nationalist troops ambushed the main forces of the New Fourth Army, killing or capturing most of them, resulted from the Communist success in Subei. The latter had convinced Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), head of the Nationalist government, to suppress an unauthorized "deployment" (p. 342) and respond to "the outcome of [Communist] aggression" (p. 399). The Wannan Incident actually developed with the Nationalist Party planning to wipe out the Communist forces, while the Communists were building up their forces to challenge the former (p. 512), yet its trigger was the indecision of the Party center in offering Ye and Xiang a timely direction. The position of Mao Zedong, the Party chief, turned from extremely cautious to exceedingly careless in the face of the government order, Mao trying to use a Communist evacuation of Wannan as a bargaining chip for the Nationalist acknowledgment of the Communist success in Subei. While Mao miscalculated that Jiang would not attack...