CCP Military Resistance during the Sino-Japanese War: The Case of Beiyue and Jidong

C C P M ilita r y R e s is ta n c e d u r in g th e S in o -J a p a n e s e W a r : T h e C a s e o f B e iy u e a n d J id o n g B y Y a n g W u The Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 in North China, in the official historiography of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),is considered one of the most glorious episodes ofthe party's history. Much of the CommunistParty's justification for taking power came from its claims of wartime achievement. According to Communist claims, in the eight years. of war the CCP gained military and political control over most of this area, which had previously seen little Communist activity,andtransformed it into their main military and political base. of support ..Chinese publications frequently state that the CCP'smilitary action had mobilized the people and thrown the Japanese into the"vast ocean" of a people' s war, thereby winning popular support and laying the foundations for the victory of the Communist revolution.l Over the last five decades, a number of Western studie.shave also concluded that. anti-Japanese. resistance played averyimportantrole.in the CCP's mobilization of the North China people. In his 1962book PeasantNationalism and Communist Power, Chalmers Johnson, who helped pioneer the study of CCP wartime mobilization, argued that Communist appeals for patriotic re~istance under their banner .had tapped into growing nationalist sentiments .in the North China countryside. These sentiments, fostered by Japanese brutality, forged a bond between the party and peasants which grew stronger with resistance and Japanese retribution .. 2 Other. historians, such as Odoric Y.K. Wou in his 1994 book Mobilizing the Masses: Building Revolution in Henan, alsoargued that •.• the. CCP attracted. support by organizing resistance. and presenting themselves through propaganda as "determined" to drive away Japanese and puppetinvaders. Through these activities, according Wou, the Communists came to represent the needs of the peasants, who were outraged by and desperately sought defense against Japanese brutalities, and won peasant trust as a result. 3 However, few detailed studies have been done on the CCP' smilitary resistance and its effectiveness against Japan. Though studiesofCCP mobilization have pointed to the importance of the party's portrayal of its anti-Japanese resistancein fostering its mobilization efforts, they have not assessed whether the Communists actually livedup totheir claims. Neitherhas there been a clear consensus on the role of military resistance in CCP success. While Johnson and Twentieth-Century China, Vol. 29, No. l(November, 2003):65-104 66 Twentieth-Century China Wou have alluded to its importance, other historians, such as Kathleen Hartford, have often played down the significance of resistance, pointing instead to CCP social reforms such as rent reduction and local elections as the source of the party's success. In her study, "Step-by-Step: Reform, Resistance and Revolution in the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region," Hartford notes that peasants in many areas often did not actively participate in resistance until after the CCP implemented reforms. Japanese brutalities, Hartford claimed, rather than strengthening CCP support as suggested by Johnson and Wou, actually caused it to decline in many places.4 These divergent arguments suggest several questions: How effective were the Communists against the Japanese? What threat did they really pose to the Japanese? Did they truly do their best to fight Japan? What real role did anti-Japanese resistance play in the mobilization process? Over the last five decades, scholarly works published in People's Republic China (PRC), Taiwan, Japan, and the West have promoted several opposing interpretations on the CCP's wartime role. Most of these works have been politically motivated, and their interpretations have changed radically over the years. This has been particularly the case with works published in Taiwan and the West. For decades, the Nationalist government of Taiwan, which was the archrival of the Communists, claimed that the CCP did not seriously fight the Japanese, and refused to admit any significant Communist military activity during the war. After Taiwan's democratization, however, historians began to study Communist military...