The December Incident
The December Incident or the "first anti-Communist high tide" was confined to north China as the "second high tide" was confined to central China, and the "third high tide" to Shen-Kan-Ning. In retrospect, it was more like a carefully staged play than a prelude to a civil war. Both sides exercised extreme political control, and both sides adhered to the rules of the game in the united front. Politics manifested itself in speech, of which plenty poured forth from the Communist side in the form of protest. While striking each other in bloody clashes, both sides treated the incident at the time as "local" in character and refrained from naming a chief culprit. For the Kuomintang's part, this was related to the fact that it had kept secret the process of negotiation which preceded the December Incident. Not having publicized its demand, Chungking could claim innocence in the whole affair. It could also save face if it failed to roll back the CCP. But there is scarcely any doubt that the December Incident was deliberately planned by the Kuomintang to implement its various anti-Communist decisions made since January. Hatano Ken'ichi believed that the latest anti-Communist measure, adopted in October, was directly responsible for the Kuomintang's attack.[118]
Military clashes took place in three places: southeastern and northwestern Shansi and the Lungtung area of Shen-Kan-Ning. Fighting spread to the Suite area in northeastern Shen-Kan-Ning and lasted until March, 1940. Although the three armed clashes were coordinated by the Kuomintang to coincide with the December 12 start of the winter offensive against the Hankow area, each of the local incidents was the result of mounting friction that had a momentum of its own.
The Kuomintang never made public the nature of the original grant of power to the Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region government. Some sort of autonomy was granted by an executive order, but the central government never formalized it. According to Mark Selden, there was an agreement in the summer of 1937 that the boundaries of the border region were to include twenty-three hsien , though the CCP was not in control of the Suite and Lungtung areas at the time.[119] The CCP always claimed that the twenty-three hsien rightfully belonged to it. But after 1937, parallel administrations vied with each other for control of the Suite and Lungtung areas. It was never clear whether the contests in the 1939–1940 period stemmed from the Kuomintang government's reneging of its earlier promise or from its attempt to
[118] Joho[*] , No. 15, April 1, 1940, pp. 45–48.
[119] Yenan Way , pp. 138–139.
retain control of the counties which it had never conceded in the first place.
In addition, the nature of government and administration to be established by the CCP in Shen-Kan-Ning was subject to dispute. As I have noted, the united front amounted to little more than an uneasy ceasefire. Formally, the Shensi–Kansu Soviet was to become a "special region" in the hierarchy of the Chinese government administration, but the central government refused to regard the Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region as a province level government directly accountable to itself; instead, the Communist regime was compelled to deal with the provincial authorities of Shensi as its immediate superior. Boundary disputes and the like were handled at this level, while the central government preferred to take a mediational role. There was a parallel between this relationship and the Sino–Russian relationship via Sheng Shih-ts'ai's puppet regime in Sinkiang, and the Sino–Japanese relationship via Sung Che-yüan's Hopei–Chahar Political Commission prior to 1937. They closely approximated China's tradition of handling intractable barbarians on its frontier. The CCP demanded a right to deal with the central government directly.
The Kuomintang to this date remains rather taciturn about the disposition of its forces around the Shensi–Kansu Soviet after the Sian Incident in 1936. In the aftermath of the Sian Incident, central forces moved into Sian as the mutinous Northeastern and Northwestern Armies were transferred out. It is very likely that the central forces stayed on to maintain a close watch on the Communist base from a distance. In early 1939, the government established the T'ienshui Headquarters in Sian for the same purpose.[120] The blockade instituted in the summer of 1939 meant a return to conditions which prevailed before 1937. But, except in times of a military clash, the central forces seemed to have stayed well behind the provincial security forces. According to P'eng Te-huai, "peace preservation regiments" were stationed along the lines marked by Yench'uan, Suite, Michih, Hengshan, Tingpien, Yench'ih, Huanhsien, Ch'ingyang, and Ninghsien.[121] This line encircled roughly the upper half of the Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region. It must be noted that eight out of the nine hsien seats mentioned were among the twenty-three that fell to the CCP's control in early 1940. From such places, Kuomintang officials and security agents fanned out to contend with their CCP counterparts. According to Selden, the clash over the Lungtung area in May of 1939 resulted in
[120] Ho shang-chiang . . . pao-kao ," p. 211.
[121] San-nien-lai ti k'ang-chan , p. 10.
4,639 killed on the Kuomintang side, of which about one-half were public officials.[122]
Methods of ousting the Kuomintang officials were identical with those used in other areas of north China. Rumors and charges of alleged corruption and the like were broadcast; then the "masses" were mobilized with the backing of the Communist forces to threaten the life of the officials, who were then replaced by Communist appointees. The method, which Mao later characterized as a combination of "justifiability" and "expediency,"[123] was used in handling the dispute over the Suite area between January and March, 1940, to oust the Kuomintang hierarchy of officials. Many messages were publicly issued to insure the "justifiability" of the enterprise. Outwardly, the messages were polite and humble, but their contents were stiff and uncompromising. On February 19, Hsiao Ching-kuang, the commander of the Eighth Route Army's Rear Echelon Forces, sent a request to Ch'eng Ch'ien, the commander of the T'ienshui Headquarters, asking him to instruct the governor of Shensi Province (Chiang Ting-wen) to remove the head of Anting, a Kuomintang appointee. Hsiao demanded that the situation of "one hsien having two hsien magistrates" be terminated, and he put Ch'eng Ch'ien under notice: "If Shensi Province does not remove [the Kuomintang appointee] of its own accord, then the border region has the right to escort the magistrate out of its borders."[124]
The Lungtung Incident, the most publicized one which touched off the December Incident, was preceded by similar skirmishes. As had been the custom up to then, the Kuomintang issued no public statements. Then on December 10, two days before the start of the winter offensive, one thousand troops belonging to the Kuomintang's 97th Division and local security forces launched a surprise attack on a battalion of the Communist forces in Ninghsien and wiped them out, according to the CCP's protest message. On December 14, two thousand troops attacked another battalion in Chenyüan and destroyed it. The Communist side named two regular divisions and three regiments as directly involved.[125] They belonged to the Eighth War Zone under
[122] Yenan Way , p. 119.
[123] "Questions of Tactics in the Present Anti-Japanese United Front," SW , III, 199. This translation is better in this instance than the rather bland one in the Peking edition.
[124] Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan-chung ti hsing-shih yü jen-wu [Situation and mission in the stage of stalemate] (Chin-pu ch'u-pan-she, 1940), p. 90.
[125] Wei Lungtung shih-chien chih chung-yang tien [Telegram to the Center concerning the Lungtung Incident], Ibid. , pp. 80–84. See also Hatano in Joho[*] , No. 31, December 1, 1940, p. 19; Selected Works , II, 394.
Chu Shao-liang. The fighting lasted for two weeks and covered all of eastern Kansu.
By the time the "first anti-Communist high tide" subsided in March, 1940, the Communists controlled both the Lungtung and the Suite areas. Looking back upon it, the boldness of the CCP with respect to the dispute in Shen-Kan-Ning was striking. The CCP stuck to its demand for twenty-three hsien and managed to get them all. The CCP's margin of safety was small, and it was running risks. The transfer of some Communist units into Shen-Kan-Ning did not compensate for its absolute inferiority in military power against the Kuomintang's regular forces surrounding the base. But the central government did not choose to stand its ground to escalate the tension. Unfortunately, what political considerations restrained its hands in Shen-Kan-Ning cannot be known.
In contrast, the Kuomintang acted with boldness and decisiveness in Shansi Province. There, concessions were made by the CCP. Tension in Shansi had been mounting for some time beween Yen Hsi-shan and the Shansi New Army, Yen's collateral popular force staffed by the Sacrifice League members. The New Army grew up in two places in Shansi Province under what appeared to be separate commands. In the Shangtang district in the southeast, Po I-po and Jung Wu-shang organized the First and the Third Dare–to–Die Columns with "refugee students from Peiping–Tientsin."[126] Hsü Fan-t'ing organized the Second and the Fourth Dare–to–Die Columns, the Provisional First Division, and the Worker's Defense Brigade in the northwestern corner.[127] By 1939, the New Army was virtually independent of Yen Hsi-shan; it was operating as a regional force of the Eighth Route Army in all but name. Yen attempted to reassert his control over the New Army in the summer of 1939.[128] He was reported to have asked for Chungking's assistance in the matter but was met by indifference.[129] Not to meddle directly in "local friction" was Chungking's posture. One also suspects that it was penalizing Yen Hsi-shan for giving in to the united front with the Communists in 1936.
During the December Incident, the First, Second, and Third Dare–to–Die Columns were singled out for the initial attack. The Second Column, led by Han Chün, was in Hsihsien and Hsiaoyi in the southwest at the time, but it managed to break out and flee northward
[126] Ting Ling, I-erh-chiu-shih yü Chin-Chi-Lu-Yü pien-ch'ü [The 129th Division and the Chin-Chi-Lu-Yü Border Region] (Peking: Hsin-hua shu-tien, 1950), p. 5.
[127] Hung-ch'i p'iao-p'iao , V, 251.
[128] Johnson, Peasant Nationalism , p. 195.
[129] Joho[*] , No. 31, December 1, 1940, p. 22.
along the Yellow River.[130] The First and the Third Columns and some regular units of the Eighth Route Army in the southeast were liquidated.[131] Soon after, Communist party and government organizations in Yangch'eng, Chinch'eng, Fushan, Kaop'ing, Hukuan, and Linch'uan in the southeast were destroyed. In the southeast, 600 people were executed and more than one thousand were arrested.[132] A similar attack took place in the southwest around Hsinshui.[133]
There was confusion and mystery as to who attacked whom. Contemporaneously, the CCP never mentioned Yen Hsi-shan's name. It was not until 1944 that the CCP decided to expose Yen's part in the December Incident.[134] The role played by central forces was mentioned only indirectly. After the war, Mao singled out Chu Huai-p'ing, P'ang Ping-hsün, and Hou Ju-yung as the culprits in the destruction in the southeast.[135] In view of Yen Hsi-shan's inability to handle the Communist forces in 1936 and again after 1937, it is entirely credible that central forces carried out most of the successful assaults on the Communist forces. Independent observers credited the central forces under Hu Tsung-nan with the greatest role in destroying the New Army. According to Hatano, Hu Tsung-nan's work was like "twisting a baby's arm."[136]
The political side of the December Incident was intriguing. At the time, some people in the CCP felt that the attack was the beginning of a civil war,[137] yet the CCP refrained from blaming the incident directly on Chiang Kai-shek, Yen Hsi-shan, or Hu Tsung-nan. It tried strenuously to maintain the fiction that the whole incident was local. On December 12, for instance, P'eng Te-huai indicated this desire in a press conference. He was asked whether Chiang Kai-shek or Ch'eng Ch'ien, the commander of the T'ienshui Headquarters, knew of the various anti-Communist measures. P'eng stated that Wang Ming, representing the CCP, had had a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek and had showed him the Measures to Restrict the Activities of the Alien Parties . Chiang's reply was that he had seen the measure but that it had not been ratified yet.[138]
[130] Yen Hsi-shan p'i-p'ing [Criticism of Yen Hsi-shan] (Hsin-hua shu-tien, 1944?), p. 4.
[131] Growth of one revolutionary base , p. 42.
[132] Ibid.; Selected Works , II, 393.
[133] Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan . . . , p. 115. I am hard put to know what Han Chün's unit was doing here in this corner of the province.
[134] Amerasia Papers , pp. 769–770. By 1944 the CCP was ready to abandon the united front. See below, Chap. IX.
[135] In footnotes to SW , III, 254. But see also the passing reference to the central army in Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan . . . , pp. 115–116.
[136] Joho[*] , No. 31, December 1, 1940, p. 22.
[137] Selected Works , II, 464.
[138] Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan . . . , p. 61.
On the eleventh when I met with Commander Ch'eng, I also inquired about the Measures to Dispose of the Communist Party . Commander Ch'eng replied: "I know absolutely nothing." From this it can be seen how seriously widespread are the activities of the hidden Trotskyites and traitors. They are spreading all over the country a document which is not even ratified by Chairman Chiang; they dare to deceive the military commander defending the northwest and make secret military moves.[139]
The Communist side naturally attacked various anti-Communist measures and acts in public. As long as the Kuomintang leadership refused to be implicated in these measures, and as long as the CCP went along with the fiction, the CCP enjoyed immunity of sorts. Its public attacks sought to save the government's face. Furthermore, the CCP's stance toward the incidents in Shansi and the Lungtung Sub-district was slightly different. It was almost apologetic about the Shansi affair. Protest messages were issued, but none came from the "soldiers and people" who were attacked, as happened in other incidents. In fact, the southeastern part of Shansi under the 129th Division's command ignored the whole thing and remained silent.[140] On January 1, 1940, Hsü Fan-t'ing collected the remnants of the New Army and reorganized it under the "Northwestern Shansi anti-Japanese defend–Yen strike–the–traitors supreme command."[141] The proclamation which accompanied the occasion stressed the importance of the anti-Japanese united front and support for Chiang Kai-shek and Yen Hsi-shan, while leveling scathing criticisms at officers of the Old Army at group army, division, and brigade levels. The Japanese Army observed that this was an attempt to weaken Yen's control over his forces by discrediting his immediate subordinates and winning over the officers and men below the middle echelon.[142] On January 20, the National Defense Council ordered Yen Hsi-shan and Chu Te to arrange a ceasefire, as though Chungking had no part in the December Incident.[143] The rules of the game in united front politics were being observed by both sides.
Military friction continued in Shen-Kan-Ning and Shansi Province. But a dramatic event in late January suddenly reduced its political significance. Two of Wang Ching-wei's confidants, Kao Tsung-wu and T'ao Hsi-sheng, defected back to Chungking, causing a major setback for Japan. In Hong Kong, the former collaborators released to the press the contents of the agreement which Wang Ching-wei had been forced to accept after delivering himself into Japanese hands.
[139] Ibid.
[140] See, for instance, Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan . . .
[141] Pacification War , No. 1, p. 212; Ho Kan-chih, p. 353.
[142] Pacification War , No. 1, p. 212.
[143] Ibid.
These were Japan's peace terms. Chiang Kai-shek spurned them in an indignant speech.[144] The war was on, and so was the united front. The tension in the united front in the fall of 1939 resulted not so much from the anti-Communist measures of the Kuomintang as from the CCP's own uncertainty about Chungking's basic intentions. With that uncertainty gone, friction mattered much less. The remaining Kuomintang influence in north China, it seemed, could be put to simple test of military might. And so in January, the CCP turned its attention to the north–south link between north and central China; an advance unit of the Eighth Route Army, proceeding south from Shantung, met a New Fourth Army unit moving north through Kiangsu.[145]
On January 28, Mao wrote a directive for the Central Committee concerning the general situation. For him, the danger of a "Far Eastern Munich" was over. Though Japan continued to search for a peaceful solution, Mao was assured that Chungking would not be susceptible to its offers. He noted, "Chiang Kai-shek states that he will carry on the War of Resistance."[146] He judged that for the time being the Kuomintang's policy was " 'unification against the foreign enemy' in order to attack us."[147] Thus he pronounced that the "emergencies" which had been threatening were "so far . . . on a limited and local scale."[148] Immediately Wang Ming delivered a speech, registering his objections to Mao's judgment:
It is necessary to clearly recognize the possibility and the existence of a prospect for improvement in the situation as pointed out by the Party Center. . . . This is absolutely not to say that the danger for reversal in the current situation is no longer serious. On the contrary, what the Party Center pointed out was the dual possibilities for the current situation to reverse as well as improve itself. Under the present circumstances, moreover, the danger for a reversal in the situation . . . is still the main danger.[149]
This had been the point at issue between them since early 1939 when the Kuomintang's anti-communism came to the fore. Mao was arguing in effect that, since the Kuomintang's anti-communism was an integral part of its resistance efforts, dealing with military friction on the basis of tit for tat would not affect the united front. By a strange turn of events, he found himself defending Chungking's commitment to the war and the durability of the united front.
The manner in which the Communist forces expanded, amid in-
[144] "Wang Ching-wei's Secret Agreement with Japan" (January 23, 1940), Collected Wartime Messages , I, 358–363.
[145] Selected Works , II, 436.
[146] Ibid. , pp. 386–387.
[147] Ibid. , p. 386.
[148] Ibid. ,
[149] Hsiang-ch'ih chieh-tuan . . . , p. 31.
tense political struggle and limited war, conformed to the strategy and tactics laid down by Mao in the course of his dispute with his internal critics. By way of conclusion, I will summarize their salient points and evaluate them. Mao's cherished slogan, "independence and initiative of the Communist party in the united front," meant in practice that the CCP would take all of the strategic exterior-line in disregard of the Kuomintang's restrictions. But this basic strategy had to be implemented with prudence; it had to be guided by tactical rules which combined political negotiation with a limited use of military power. The end was to create a series of accomplished facts and to secure the government's approval for them. As Mao put it,
At present there are things for which we should secure prior consent from the Kuomintang. . . . There are other things which the Kuomingtang can be told after they have become accomplished facts. . . . There are also things . . . which we shall do without reporting for the time being, knowing that the Kuomintang will not agree. There are still other things which, for the time being, we shall neither do nor report, for they are likely to jeopardize the whole situation. In short, we must not split the united front, but neither should we allow ourselves to be bound hand and foot. . . .[150]
Each expansion was to be accomplished by following the principles of "self-defense," of "victory," and of "a truce."[151] Each was to be carried out in an area where the Communist forces held a local military superiority (with the exception of Shen-Kan-Ning). To reverse it, the Kuomintang would have to exercise its military power: hence, the "provocation." If the Kuomintang could not contain the expansion locally, it might have to exert pressure at the top—in secret. Or it might overlook it. Then sooner or later the CCP would come forward of its own accord and ask for a truce to legitimize the accomplished fact. Or the Kuomintang might brandish the ultimate weapon: it could threaten to end the united front. Yet each act of expansion was small and limited. In fact, the CCP was confronting the Kuomintang with a choice between two alternatives on each occasion: to split the united front or swallow a small Communist demand of the moment. Mao's calculus was that the Kuomintang would take the lesser of two evils. He implied furthermore that it would go on doing so until the balance of power shifted in favor of the CCP.
The last proposition must have seemed preposterous to Mao's op-
[150] "The Question of Independence and Initiative within the United Front" (November 5, 1938), Selected Works , II, 216.
[151] "Current Problems of Tactics in the Anti-Japanese United Front" (March 11, 1940), Ibid. , p. 426. This, written by Mao in self-defense against his critics, is a summary of the manner in which he handled the "first anti-Communist high tide."
ponents. They confronted him, I infer, with the question: Does Chiang Kai-shek have the power to reverse the war policy and still carry the Kuomintang and the rest of the nation with him? Mao did not deny that Chiang had had such power; his strategy of piecemeal expansion was designed precisely to prevent Chungking from ending the united front. Yet, at the same time, Mao had to deny it . Thus he elaborated the theory of "united front from below," which he had expounded earlier at Wayaopao. He held that China suffered from many cleavages. The most important divisions were between the "progressive forces," the "middle forces" including warlords (the "regional power groups"), and the "die-hard forces." Because of the contradictions among these political forces, Mao implied, the CCP could manipulate them to maintain a loose coalition that favored the resistance for the time being.[152] This was the united front over which the CCP was to exercise leadership.
The differences between Mao and Wang Ming stemmed ultimately from their different views of Chinese society and of the Kuomintang. Mao held that "the Kuomintang is a heterogeneous party."[153] Chou En-lai made the point to John S. Service in 1944:
Chiang Kai-shek is . . . caught between many forces which he cannot master, and against which he can only hope to maintain his position by adroit manipulation.[154]
Mao was saying that the Kuomintang was incapable of making a daring tactical reversal of the sort which the CCP, a totalitarian movement, made in 1935 and 1936. However, in the sense that the unity of the "united front" under the CCP's leadership presupposed divisions in the Kuomintang, Mao was begging the question. Someone in the CCP retorted that "the anti-Japanese front cannot be divided into the left, middle and right."[155] In 1939 and 1940, the proposition that the Kuomintang was forced to stay in the war by the united front under the CCP's leadership had a hollow ring. Yet the CCP was making a steady advance toward that goal.
[152] Ibid. , pp. 422, 424.
[153] Ibid. , p. 427; Ibid. , III, 222.
[154] Amerasia Papers , p. 770.
[155] Mao Tse-tung, "Speech at the Enlarged Meeting of the Military Affairs Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the Foreign Affairs Conference" (September 11, 1959), Chinese Law and Government , Winter 1968–1969, p. 80.