David S G Goodman. Modern China. Volume 23, Issue 2, April 1997.
Throughout the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, Licheng was one of the core counties of the Chinese Communist Party’s base area in southeast Shanxi. Nonetheless, in 1941 a local sect—the Li Gua Dao or Sixth Trigram—attempted to overthrow the country government. Almost two years in the making, the Licheng Rebellion briefly and unsuccessfully erupted in violence on 12 October 1941. The challenge to the leadership and organization of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in one of its supposedly “secure” areas was acute not least because the party appears to have misread the severity of the local elite’s alienation and their potential for armed resistance.
During the last decade, the history of the CCP during the Sino-Japanese War has become more contested, differentiated, and detailed (Selden, 1995; Zhongguo KangRi, 1985; Zhongwai xuezhe, 1993; Gong Yuzhi, 1995). In particular, Hartford has emphasized the experimental and incremental nature of CCP activities, while Chen Yung-fa, Esherick, and others have highlighted the need to understand the ecology of CCP mobilization of support during the Sino-Japanese War (Hartford, 1989; Chen Yung-fa, 1986; Esherick, 1994; Keating, 1994; Goodman, 1994). Even so, the Licheng Rebellion of 1941 presents a fairly unusual opportunity to examine the CCP’s record on mobilization during the Sino-Japanese War because, unlike the more successful cases that are the usual focus of scholarship, the party’s policies on this occasion led to failure. In seeking explanations for the eventual success of the CCP, the Licheng Rebellion may then be a negative example in the testing of the familiar hypotheses about the relative importance of the appeal to socioeconomic reform, peasant nationalism, and traditional peasant values, as well as of the party’s organizational capacities.
The Licheng Rebellion resulted from a complicated mixture of factors including changes in the wider political and military environment of contemporary southeast Shanxi outside Licheng after 1939, and their impact on the county. Perhaps most important were the end of cooperation between the warlord of Shanxi, Yan Xishan, and the Chinese Communist Party, which required rapid political readjustments throughout the province, and a substantial increase in the nonproductive population of Licheng county, as various forces retreated to the mountains under the pressure of renewed Japanese advance. In addition, the nature of the Li Gua Dao as a social and religious organization, and the social composition of its members, all provide partial explanations of the Licheng Rebellion.
At the same time, by far the most significant origins of the Licheng Rebellion lie in the organizational weaknesses of the CCP itself. Neither the CCP nor the Nationalists had been organizationally strong in Licheng before 1937. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that the CCP took its popular support in Licheng almost for granted during 1940 and 1941. Starting at the end of 1939 it completely overhauled its local leadership and organization, rejecting not only those members of the local elite that had assisted its initial development in Licheng but also all native activists, favoring instead those who were both not local and considered to be from more appropriate class backgrounds. The immediate result was social polarization that threatened the CCP’s organizational capacities.
During 1940 and 1941 the local leadership seems to have concentrated on the bigger issues of concern to the CCP in the base area at that time—for example, the creation of a border region and border region government—rather than the mounting organizational problems it faced on the ground. The rapidly increasing tax burden and related issues, which were particularly acute in Licheng, were deliberately shelved until the new political structures of the border region government were in place. Certainly, in the aftermath of the Licheng Rebellion the CCP and the border region government moved quickly to modify their policies and strategies—particularly on tax and political organization—at least temporarily, in order to increase their constituency of support and to improve their ability to organize and mobilize.
Licheng and the Li Gua Dao
The JinJiLuYu (Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan) Border Region by 1941 in theory contained four base areas, of which the strongest organizationally was the Taihang Base Area, which included Licheng county (Goodman, 1994).
Licheng county lies deep in the Taihang Mountains, on Shanxi’s border with what at that time was Henan province. Three neighboring counties are probably better known in the history of the CCP during the Sino-Japanese War—Shexian (to the east), Zuoquan (to the north), and Wuxiang (to the west)—perhaps not least because they saw more Japanese activity. Although occupied three times by the Japanese during 1938 and 1939, the Licheng county seat is unusual even in the Taihang Region in that it remained under CCP control from December 1939 to the end of the war. Moreover, despite its mountainous location, Licheng was (and remains) by no means poor—it was easily the richest county in the Taihang Base Area on a per capita basis (Shanxi tongji nianjian, 1995: 580).
Licheng was considered so secure from external attack that the South Hebei (Ji’nan) Bank was originally established (despite its name) in Licheng during June 1939, from where it issued the Ji’nan Dollar as the Border Region’s currency (“Guanyu Ji’nan yinhang,” 1939). Similarly, Licheng was also the site of the Taihang Region’s most important meeting of the Sino-Japanese War. In April 1940 the CCP’s leadership from the Taihang, Taiyue, and South Hebei Base Areas met in Licheng and decided to establish first a Joint Government Administrative Office (the JiTai lianban) and then to prepare for a Border Region Government (“Beiju,” 1940).
Licheng’s relative security from Japanese incursions was as much a function of geography as anything else. It is high and deep within the western (nonescarpment) expanse of the Taihang Mountains, with its population concentrated in two interconnected river valleys that lead into the Changzhi Plain. The ability of the Japanese to sustain attacks on the surrounding counties was somewhat attenuated, and even though the Japanese army and its puppets carried out seven mop-up campaigns, after late 1939 they made no attempt to establish other than a passing military presence in Licheng.
Neither the Li Gua Dao nor the Licheng Rebellion of 1941 have a detailed history, even in the later Chinese sources that condemn the rebellion. The Li Gua Dao was apparently established in Licheng in 1936, but it developed considerable organizational strength only during 1940 and 1941. By 1941 it had 3,321 members—at the time the county CCP had 1,764 members (Zhonggong Shanxi, 1993: 56)—almost exclusively located in villages in the southern part of the county around the county seat. Indeed, the headquarters of the rebel movement were in the village of Gangdong, not much more than a stone’s throw from the temple in the nearby village of Beishe where the April 1940 Licheng Meeting occurred, and which was the site of the county government offices.
On 12 October 1941 about 400 poorly armed members of the Li Gua Dao went into action. Four of the five groups that had been organized to attack the county government and two of its subdistrict offices either rapidly dispersed when they met opposition or were persuaded by the militia to go elsewhere. The fifth and largest group gathered at Gangdong and then marched on Beishe, which was defended by the local public security forces. Li Yongxiang, the leader of the Li Gua Dao, was killed by a grenade as he led the charge. Another three Li Gua Dao members were killed along with seven local cadres and defenders of the county government (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 108-112). With the death of Li Yongxiang, the remaining leaders of the rebellion burnt their houses and together with about a hundred followers fled south to Lucheng and ultimately to Changzhi, where they sought sanctuary with the Japanese and their allies. Eventually, almost all returned.
The Li Gua Dao was a millenarian movement, and though most of the sources on its activities emanate from the CCP, nonetheless the surveys the party carried out after the event during the winter of 1941-1942 contain detail about both the ideas behind the Li Gua Dao and the interaction between the CCP and organized religion in a period of social change. In addition, and remarkably—both generally and for religious organizations in Licheng at the time—the membership of the Li Gua Dao came from the better-off and the young, and almost half were women.
Even allowing for the timing of the Licheng Rebellion before the 1942 Rectification Movement and the subsequent changes in the CCP’s work-style, the response of the local CCP to the crisis was remarkably measured. Seven of the leaders of the Li Gua Dao were found and executed immediately, and over 100 people were arrested. However, those arrested were released and most of the CCP’s effort in damage limitation went into a political education campaign rather than punitive action.
An essential part of the CCP’s response was the establishment of an investigation team commissioned to write a report on both the Li Gua Dao and the causes of the rebellion. From 25 November 1941 to 27 January 1942, the team conducted in-depth surveys of members of the Li Gua Dao and their villages. It interviewed samples of intellectuals, women, and young people, and examined a number of CCP branches in detail, finally reporting in April 1942. Its interviewing techniques were ethnographic: in the case of the interviews of women, this even extended to female investigators living with female members of Li Gua Dao in their homes for some time, getting to know them and recording their observations informally.
Religion and Rebellion
The investigation team’s report of 1942 characterizes the rebellion as “enemy action” and makes constant reference to the leaders of the Li Gua Dao having had “dealings,” “discussions,” or “relationships” with “the enemy.” However, it fails to identify “the enemy”: there appears to be an almost deliberate ambiguity that fails to differentiate between the Japanese, the Nationalist Party, and “the landlords” (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 32-36). Much later accounts (from the late 1980s and 1990s), such as the CCP’s own histories of the Taihang Region and of the CCP in Licheng county, echo the oppositional nature of the Li Gua Dao, suggesting more strongly that the Licheng Rebellion was fomented by Nationalist Party and Japanese spies though they are not credited with a direct or organizational role in the Li Gua Dao (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 106-113). However, both such a broad definition of the “enemy” and the explanation of Li Gua Dao behavior and motives it entails are unconvincing, not least because there is no evidence of any subversive activity and—as the investigation report of 1942 explicitly acknowledge—”the Nationalist Party had insignificant influence” in Licheng (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 62).
There can be little doubt that in 1941 “the enemy” in Licheng were the Japanese. In the Taihang region, relations between the CCP and the two different groups of Nationalist Party forces—those under warlord Yan Xishan, who had previously worked closely with the CCP, and those under General Wei Lihuang, who was more closely linked to the Chongqing government—had developed into a virtual civil war between December 1939 and the end of February 1940. However, in March 1940 Wei Lihuang, who had become an admirer and advocate of the CCP’s guerrilla strategy, reached an agreement with Zhu De that the CCP would withdraw from Tainan (the southern part of the Taihang Base Area), leaving it to be occupied by his forces (Taihang geming genjudishi, 1987b: 68ff, 189; Li Yong and Zhang Zhongtian, 1988: 260; Taihang geming genjudishi, 1988: 4, 163, 242; Zhao Rongsheng, 1985: 210; Snow, 1941: 2/245). Between March 1940 and May 1943 (when the Nationalist Party troops in Tainan defected), unlike elsewhere, in the Taihang Region there appears to have been almost no conflict between the CCP and the Nationalist Party forces.
Deng Xiaoping, political commissar of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army at the time, encouraged a positive and working relationship between the CCP and the Nationalist Party in the Taihang Region, not least because he had developed a strategy designed to win over Nationalist Party officials and soldiers (Deng Xiaoping, 1942: 93), and there were members of the Nationalist Party in the border region government. Even the investigation report of the Licheng Rebellion neutrally reported that there were Nationalist Party members and Nationalist Party branches in the villages it investigated. There were, for example, reported to be twenty-nine members of the Nationalist Party in Fanjiazhuang’s 230 households, and forty-one in Lubao’s 190 households (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 84, 98). In any case, the investigation report did not take its own implications seriously, admitting that the Nationalist Party organization in Licheng “did not take the Li Gua Dao seriously … hoped to make use of it … and while a few joined to win the support of the masses, more less-senior members of the Nationalist Party joined because of their aversion to current affairs … and few participated in the rebellion” (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 28).
Moreover, there is no evidence that before the Licheng Rebellion people in the county regarded membership of both the Li Gua Dao and the CCP as antithetical or contradictory. Indeed it appears that the local population regarded the ten religious organizations that were active in Licheng as having functions unrelated to the political roles of the CCP and the Nationalist Party. The CCP’s investigation team reported that people in Licheng commonly assumed that everyone over thirty participated to some extent in one or another religious organization (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 5). Many members of the Li Gua Dao were also members of the CCP, and one of the problems for the CCP in the wake of the rebellion was that in some villages and branches the Li Gua Dao influence ran deep because of its relationship with the local party organization. This was particularly so in both Fanjiazhuang and Lubao, where it was reported that after the rebellion the CCP was unable (by April 1942) to reconvene party meetings out of fear of “resentment” (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 93).
Although the eventual politicization of the Li Gua Dao cannot be denied, its original motivation was almost certainly more religious than political, insofar as that distinction can be maintained for a millenarian movement. Li Gua Dao, also known as the Salvationist Sect of the Goddess from the Southern Sea, appears to have been a secret society established in Licheng by Li Yongxiang in 1936, possibly with outside assistance. Potential members required a reference and had to pass through an initiation ceremony. Secrecy—the first rule) of discipline was that those who talked to non-Li Gua Dao members about Li Gua Dao matters without permission would disappear into thin air—recitation of the prescribed scriptures, and special rituals for specific gods, and particularly the Goddess from the Southern Sea, were the essence of religious observance.
The scriptures—which consisted of thirty poetic stanzas and an explanatory text on self-cultivation—all had to be memorized. The stanzas were abbreviated as slogans, which give a taste of the Li Gua Dao methods and goals: “The invincible army; The Japanese army has invaded; Self-cultivation; The way of the black dragon; One religion to unify all others; Those without gratitude lose their magic arts; Become sworn brothers and sisters; Defeat the enemy by the secret magic arts; Food, spouses, and wealth; All immortals gather on the battlefield” (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 15ff).
In addition to exegesis of the thirty stanzas, the explanatory text provided further legitimation for the Li Gua Dao with an appeal to folk traditions. It begins
The Li Gua Dao has existed for a long time. When Pan Gu separated heaven and earth the sage Fu Xi created the Eight Trigrams, separated yin and yang, and laid down the principles of the Li Gua Dao. The principles of “self-cultivation” are the most important handed down from history. They contain all the secret for your success in becoming noble, having a harmonious family, running the country well, and bringing peace to the world. The text then brings the adherents to consideration of the present. [From the Shang to the Qing dynasty] … the people enjoyed peace and the good life for so long they did not look forward to paradise and became sinful. As the year of calamity is approaching, the four characters for “self-cultivation” [xiujing yangxing] were given to Shanxi from heaven. The Goddess herself came to earth with a decree and personally taught her disciples [Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 20-21].
The Li Gua Dao offered an ideology of restoration: a return to social order through self-cultivation, discipline, and spirituality. Training in traditional martial arts and qigong promoted this goal by providing members with magic powers and immortality so that they could “withstand even bullets and spears.” Members were assigned to various ranks, functional leadership positions were created, and the entire organization divided into “altars” or district committees, under a Central Altar, located at Gangdong, with Li Yongxiang as the Supreme Commander. By the time of its attack on the Licheng county government, the Li Gua Dao had members in sixty-six villages, all within eight kilometers of Licheng county town. However, despite its organizational infrastructure and belief system, the growth of the Li Gua Dao occurred almost totally in 1940 and 1941 (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 28, 30). Neither its relations with “the enemy” nor its religious foundations would then seem to provide sufficient explanation of the Licheng Rebellion.
Class and Social Change
Licheng county was fertile ground for religious activity: in 1941 it had ten religious organizations with altogether 13,500 members, or 18 percent of the formal population of 75,842. In contrast there were some 16,530 people, or 23 percent of the total population, involved in Licheng’s various anti-Japanese organizations established by the CCP under its United Front work policy (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 107). Of the ten religious organizations in Licheng during 1940-1941, the Li Gua Dao had grown rapidly to become the largest. However, the Li Gua Dao was different in three crucial ways: its general membership was drawn disproportionately from the better-off sections of the population, it contained a high proportion of young adults and women, and it had few members who were intellectuals.
Discussions of class as consisting of quantifiable categories during the Sino-Japanese War are fraught with difficulties. Survey techniques and sampling methods were extremely crude, data are usually inconsistent and incomplete, and even the most experienced survey teams were uncertain about the precise application of specific concepts. In the words of the investigation team into the Licheng Rebellion, “Those who conducted the survey were not very clear about how to determine class status” (Lichen” kaochatuan, 1942: 8). Although the available evidence may not be suitable for rigorous statistical analysis, it can nonetheless indicate trends and possibilities.
As already indicated, Licheng county before the war was by no means poor. The 1933 Ten Year Plan for Licheng indicated that the county was a net exporter, with its wealth based on the production of millet, furs, and traditional medicines. Tenancy was generally fairly low in the Taihang region before the start of the Sino-Japanese War, and probably especially low in Licheng. All these indicators do not mean that Licheng was particularly wealthy, but rather that it was on average a relatively better-off part of the Taihang Base Area. Even after the implementation of policies to reduce rent and cancel interest on loans, the 1940 distribution of waste land, and the 1941 campaign to redeem land and settle debts, Licheng remained relatively prosperous. In 1941 Licheng county had a higher proportion of landlords and rich peasants, and middle peasants, and a smaller proportion of poor peasants than did the Taihang Region as a whole.
The Li Gua Dao was active in the more prosperous southern part of Licheng county, around the county town. Even allowing for the possibly distorting effects of this concentration, as Table 1 also indicates, there appears to have been a distinct class basis to the Li Gua Dao. Figures for the peasant membership of the Li Gua Dao suggest that though the organization only had proportionately fewer middle and poor peasants than were to be found in the county’s population as a whole, it had considerably more rich peasants. These aspects of its social formation emerge even clearer in comparison with the background of CCP members in Licheng. The Li Gua Dao was formed from rich and middle peasants; the CCP from middle and poor peasants.
The extent of the involvement of rich peasants and landlords in the Li Gua Dao is clearly observable at the leadership level: of its twenty-nine senior officials, five were landlords, thirteen rich peasants, ten middle peasants, and one a merchant (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 27). Detailed statistics of any kind are not available for the local leadership of the CCP in Licheng. However, the evidence from everywhere else in the Taihang Region during the Sino-Japanese War is overwhelmingly that while the CCP drew its members from the middle and poor peasants, and in different proportions from place to place, the leadership was usually dominated by middle peasants—either those who had been middle peasants even before the war or those who had become middle peasants as the result of redistributive policies implemented during 1937-1945.
These figures suggest that class conflict had become considerably more polarized in Licheng than it was in other areas where the CCP was attempting to mobilize support during the Sino-Japanese War. In general, as Chen Yung-fa (1986: 121ff), end Friedman, Pickowicz, and Selden (1991: 40ff) have detailed, the CCP was extremely sophisticated in its handling of class differences, using them skillfully to build support from all classes behind the United Front while still pursuing specific interests. At the same time as traditional local elites were losing their political power and seeing their economic wealth dispersed, they were offered almost no opportunities for alternative action, including the possibility of defection to the Japanese. However, in Licheng during 1940-1941, this balanced approached clearly broke down.
One cause of discontent was the level and system of taxation. Until the formation of the JinJiLuYu Border Region, the system, inherited from Yan Xishan and based on the principle of “equitable burden,” had counties determine the level of taxation and collect the tax, usually through tax farmers. The border region government eventually introduced a more administered and open development of the “equitable burden” known as the “reasonable burden,” but not until August 1941. In any case, both systems were largely based on property taxes with a fairly high threshold. There were also income tax provisions, but those engaged in “nonproductive” activities or the war effort were exempt. The results were that the burden of tax fell almost completely on the richer middle peasants, rich peasants, and landlords, all of whom had taxable property and sometimes even taxable income (Rong Zihe, 1940; “JinJiLuYu,” 1941).
The tax burden began to rise unexpectedly in Licheng during early 1940. Increased Japanese pressure starting in 1939, conflict with the Nationalist Party in December 1939, followed rapidly by the Taihang region’s central involvement in the Hundred Regiments Campaign against the Japanese and Japanese reprisals, all placed an additional burden on the more secure areas of the Taihang Region, including Licheng county. From 1939 on as the Japanese North China Army returned in force to the Taihang Region, and particularly after their recapture of Changzhi from the CCP, there was an intensifying battle for space among the CCP forces, troops and officials loyal to Yan Xishan, and Nationalist Party troops under Wei Lihuang. Apart from the concerns with supply, as government, military, and political activists retreated to Licheng, within a very short period the county had to support an additional population equivalent to almost one third of its taxable population (24,000 in an official resident population of 75,000) who were not engaged in production. By way of comparison, the average figure for the nonproductive proportion of the population across the JinJiLu Yu Border Region was 3.6 percent (Taihang geming genjudishi, 1987b: 235).
The results of the CCP’s tax policy combined with its mass mobilization strategy to contribute to further polarization and class antagonism. Though the early years of the Sino-Japanese War, the CCP in the Taihang region had expanded rapidly and very much on an inclusive basis, encouraging everyone almost regardless of class, attitudes, and politics to rally to the nationalist cause. In Licheng and other counties in southeast Shanxi, the spread of anti-Japanese resistance—led by the government and social organizations—and the expansion of CCP influence were further facilitated by the close relationship between Yan Xishan and the CCP. All classes were encouraged to join the CCP and the various anti-Japanese organizations, and the party’s campaigns of social reform were directed not at all landlords but only at “power-holding landlords.” However, this inclusiveness started to change in October 1939 with, simultaneously, increasing friction between the CCP and Nationalist Party forces in the area, and the second stage of the CCP’s mobilization strategy in the Taihang Region, which highlighted the importance of poor peasants as agents of socioeconomic change.
The second stage of the CCP’s mobilization strategy, which lasted from October 1939 to May 1940, concentrated on organizing the population, and particularly the poor peasants, to struggle for the first time against landlords and rich peasants. As Peng Tao, director of the Propaganda Department in the CCP Committee for the Taihang Region, openly admitted in 1943, the lines had been drawn too sharply during this second stage, and the campaigns were unbalanced: “We made mistakes and there was chaos in our handling of the transformation of class relations” (Peng Tao, 1943: 229). The regional Joint Government Administrative Office went further and admitted to breaches of human rights through overzealous mass mobilization during 1940 (JiTai lianban, 1941; Taihai geming genjudishi, 1989: 29). In the third stage, starting in 1942, the balance was restored somewhat with middle and poor peasants mobilized in more equal numbers to struggle against landlords and rich peasants, but on this occasion to struggle only against the “feudal” rich peasants and not against all those classified as rich peasants.
Less obviously related to socioeconomic trends, the Li Gua Dao drew no particular support from among intellectuals but was very popular with the young. Thirty-nine members of the Li Gua Dao were considered “intellectuals,” although most had no more than primary schooling; only three were university graduates. These thirty-nine intellectuals had class backgrounds that reinforce the image of the Li Gua Dao as a movement of the dispossessed, or at least threatened, “better-off.” Five were landlords, eighteen rich peasants, eleven middle peasants, and five poor peasants (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 26). The youth of the Li Gua Dao membership is quite remarkable. Part of this might have been due to Li Yongxiang’s leadership and personal influence: only twenty-nine years old in 1941 when he died, he appears to have been a central figure for his generation in Licheng even before the rebellion. By all accounts he was an inspired public speaker, with a considerable following attracted by his charisma.
Gender, Freedom, and Relief
Class and gender are clearly part of the explanation of the relative youthfulness of the Li Gua Dao’s social base. The extent to which women joined the Li Gua Dao was quite remarkable. By comparison, less than 4 percent of the members of the CCP in Licheng at that time were women. Even if comparison is widened to include all anti-Japanese mass organizations in the county, the proportion of women who were members was only 20 percent, and one of those organizations was the Women’s National Salvation Association.
There were women members in many of the other religious organizations in Licheng, but on the whole they were considerably older and more likely to be from poor peasant backgrounds. Although the Li Gua Dao also had its older poor peasant women, the class and age composition of its women members reveals some significant differences. Table 3 presents an analysis, based solely on the investigation team’s report, of the women members of the Li Gua Dao by age and social class. These figures suggest that the Li Gua Dao was not only at the very least a movement of women to a degree not previously experienced in the county but also one that attracted young women from wealthier, more privileged backgrounds. Just over one fifth of all the female members of the Li Gua Dao—and hence more than a tenth of its total membership—were young women from rich peasant or landlord backgrounds.
The investigation report of 1942 is full of accusations, explicit as well as implied, of sexual impropriety among members of the Li Gua Dao. In portraying the members of the Li Gua Dao as promiscuous, the investigation team was presumably attempting to undermine its high moral tone, and its undoubted romanticism and ideals of noble love. For example, Li Yongxiang is said to have had sexual relations with his cousin’s wife. One of the members of the Li Gua Dao interviewed by the investigation team claimed he had joined in order to increase the opportunities for sex, though he also reported that his hopes were not realized. In the investigation report, the section on the motivations of women members makes much of their concern with “enjoying sex and finding a good husband” as well as of what is described as the “preoccupation with sex” of the younger women members (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 59).
The truth of such allegations is doubtful; they are more likely to have been gossip and perhaps the result of leading questions after the event or interviewees who were eager to please their interviewers. The Li Gua Dao was after all a secret organization, and having a membership half of whom were women was unusual enough in itself for that time and place. Far from endorsing any doctrine of free love, the Li Gua Dao scriptures explicitly advocate sexual abstinence—for women as well as men—in order to preserve energy, and its rules of discipline contain strictures against loose sexual morals. Poetic stanza number 25 states “Drinking less is good for the memory, and having less sex is good for your health”; elsewhere, the explanatory text exhorts that “excessive pleasure-seeking should be avoided.”
On the other hand, the desire for greater freedom would appear to have motivated many women to join the Li Gua Dao, and the organization itself deliberately cultivated their support. The desire for greater freedom and even to some extent for self-expression emerges clearly from the accounts of the in-depth interviews conducted by the investigation team. The Li Gua Dao women complained of arranged marriages, abusive husbands, the claustrophobic control of mothers-in-law, and the inconveniences of living at home with one’s parents.
Women most frequently cited freedom of choice in marriage and the ability to move beyond the confines of either the parental or the family home as their goals in joining the Li Gua Dao. “Going out” was of particular concern: it was said of one Li Naiting, for example, that “She was the only child of her parents and was not allowed to go out for public activities.” The pressures for this kind of freedom were so intense that it would appear that some women joined the Li Gua Dao just because membership and the compulsory attendance at various meetings presented an opportunity to move around freely outside the home.
The Li Gua Dao for its part was prepared to welcome its women members as equal, if sometimes different, members. Women could also become “immortal” warriors, and those mobilized on 12 October certainly included women as well as men, though how many is not recorded. Male members of the Li Gua Dao were formally called dazhong and female members erzhong, and all were addressed as “brothers and sisters.” The near-equality of gender distribution in the membership as a whole was reflected in the leadership. In addition, of the top two posts, one was reserved for a man—Li Yongxiang—and the other for a woman—Li Lianfeng, the wife of one of Li Yongxiang’s brothers. Two senior women members were given responsibility for looking after female members within the organization.
The analysis of the motivation of women members of the Li Gua Dao also provides clues to the growth of the movement, especially in 1940-1941. The desire for protection against the dual threats of Japanese incursions and the depredations of disease increased dramatically at that time. Japanese mop-up campaigns against Licheng started during the second half of 1940 and seem to have come as a shock to many of the county’s inhabitants. In 1940 and 1941 houses and crops were burned and draft animals destroyed. It is estimated that losses in the county amounted to an average of 145 yuan per capita (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 122), well beyond the annual average income. Li Gua Dao offered not so much organized resistance to these attacks, but invincibility: through self-cultivation it would be possible to avoid being killed.
A second but probably more significant part of the appeal of the Li Gua Dao during 1940 and 1941 was its practice of medicine. Apparently a number of the leaders of the organization had some medical knowledge. By early 1940 four Li Gua Dao leaders—Li Yongxiang and his brother Li Yonggui, and Chang Huating and his son Chang Jihu—were fully employed as medical practitioners; they were even granted special privileges by the CCP in consequence (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 13). These four, and others, provided medical treatment and advice and proselytized at the same time: they treated patients and urged them to join the Li Gua Dao. This strategy became particularly successful in and after May 1940 when Licheng was particularly hard hit by cholera. In the next two years recurrent and severe epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and dysentery swept the county.
Political Organization and Leadership
From its religious ideology and the changing socioeconomic environment in Licheng during 1940-1941, the Li Gua Dao gained motivation, the opportunity to expand, and a certain amount of organizational strength. However, its real strength, particularly as it approached rebellion, derived from its base in the local elite, and the problems that developed in the wake of the CCP’s changed strategy of political development. In Licheng the initial impact of the CCP’s “consolidation” and reorganization of 1939-1940, and the formation of new village and county governments, was to weaken the party’s organizational capacity. The reorganization alienated significant sections of the local elite who then became the leadership backbone of the Li Gua Dao.
Unlike other of the more secure parts of what later became the Taihang Region, Licheng county had no significant CCP organization before 1937. The CCP first appeared in Licheng when the members of the 344th Brigade of the 115th Division and eight members of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army (led by Wang Zhen) arrived to establish a base in November 1937 (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 35). They adopted a policy of cooperation with both the civilian authorities and the local elite, designed to establish both anti-Japanese organizations and CCP branches, and essentially to reform the existing system of politics from within (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 60-63; Taihang geming genjudishi, 1989: 12). In Licheng, which was part of the Third District of Shanxi (as established by Yan Xishan), the support of the civilian authorities was not inconsiderable since the district commissioner was Bo Yibo, who was also the secretary of the CCP Shanxi “Open” Committee. In the mid-1930s one consequence of Yan Xishan’s cooperation with the CCP had been the establishment of the Sacrifice League for National Salvation throughout Shanxi. With the outbreak of war, the Sacrifice League raised the so called New Army from Taiyuan, and columns then marched to different parts of Shanxi, with (in the Taihang region) one column under Bo Yibo’s leadership going to Qinxian and another under Rong Zihe going to Changzhi (Bo Yibo, 1943: 25).
In Licheng the support of the district commissioner gave CCP activities much needed legitimacy. Local branches of both the CCP and the Sacrifice League were established rather rapidly through a strategy of—in Liu Shaoqi’s words, when commenting on the development of the CCP in Shanxi during the Sino-Japanese War—”establishing the leading organs and then rapidly recruiting the broad masses to flesh out the lower levels” (Liu Shaoqi, 1943: 263). By April 1938 there were already 2,202 CCP members in 141 party branches (Zhonggong Shanxi, 1993: 2). The United Front appeal to the traditional elites at both county level and in the villages was not always successful, and often there was individual resistance, but on the whole it enabled the CCP to establish a presence where none had existed before. County and village officials were drawn into the anti-Japanese cause, and sometimes were recruited into the CCP (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 50-52 In the villages the niceties of distinctions between anti-Japanese and CCP activities were even less in evidence. Senior village leaders and the heads of village associations (she or tudishen) were recruited into the CCP, as were complete, village associations. For example, the head of Lubao village—a Mr. Jiao—was a member of the CCP, as was the West she, one of three in Lubao (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 89).
The CCP maintained its strategy of inclusiveness in political development until late in 1939 in Licheng. Change came in a number of forms, including a party “consolidation” and reorganization, the reorganization of the county administration, and the introduction of elections for village governments. The December Incident of 1939 that marked Yan Xishan’s decisive break with the CCP, the Sacrifice League, and its New Army added a new urgency to the reorganization of the CCP, anti-Japanese organizations, and political leadership generally in the Taihang region. In particular, the dismantling of the Sacrifice League and the absorption of its members directly into the CCP caused considerable confusion. Local elites, who retained some authority under the essentially inherited political system, immediately became politically suspect because of their real or assumed former relations with Yan Xishan. The CCP quickly launched a movement to remove local “natives”—a category that extended far beyond the limits of the traditional local elites.
The party embarked on “consolidation” out of a perceived need to ensure greater political reliability within the CCP after the massive expansion that had marked the previous two years. Those who had joined during 1937-1939 were reviewed in order to remove what Peng Tao described as “activists who were not class conscious elements” (Peng Tao, 1943: 229). The result was a dramatic change in the social basis of the CCP in Licheng. The wealthier and less politically committed, as well as many poor peasants who had joined enthusiastically in the first few years of the Sino-Japanese War, were denied renewal of their CCP membership. In the last three months of 1939 alone, CCP membership in Licheng was “consolidated” down from 2,206 to 802. However, as it was built up again to autumn 1941 (when total membership stood at about 1,700), a disproportionate number of the new members were poor peasants (Xu Zirong, 1942: 236ff; Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 79-83).
At the same time, the CCP removed many of its cadres from positions of leadership and transferred them to other locations. The party seems to have targeted native cadres, apparently in the hope of avoiding the development of localism. The party rarely disciplined or criticized local cadres; that was not the point of the exercise. Rather, it simply reassigned them, often to distant locations. Huo Fan, for example, later the deputy secretary of Licheng County CCP at the time of the Li Gua Dao rebellion (and later still the long-term Licheng CCP secretary during the Sino-Japanese War), was a native of Licheng who had returned in 1938 from schooling in Beijing to work in the county office of the Sacrifice League. After a period working in the CCP’s Propaganda Department in Liaoxian, in early 1940 he was posted back to Licheng as CCP secretary but within a couple of months found himself reassigned as deputy secretary. There was a tension between, on the one hand, local cadres with first-hand knowledge, experience, and familiarity and, on the other hand, cadres from other areas and particularly Taiyuan, Beijing, and other cities of North China who were more sophisticated and generally knowledgeable in the ways of the CCP and thus tended to regard their local colleagues as ignorant rustics. This tension between “insiders” and “outsiders” was of course not unique to Licheng. Throughout the base areas of North China during 1940-1941, the problem recurred frequently, causing Mao Zedong to call for restraint and an end to sectarianism (Mao Zedong, 1942: 45).
In early 1940 the CCP also completely reorganized the Licheng county administration with significant consequences for later events. Most spectacularly, the founder of the local branch of the Sacrifice League, Kang Zhenpu, was dismissed. The leading positions in most of the departments of the county government, and all the leading personnel of the departments of finance, civil affairs, armed personnel, and public security, were changed, as were all the district heads within the county. Three later Li Gua Dao leaders were removed from their positions of leadership in departments of the county government at this time: Sui Qi and Zhao Liancheng from the Department of Armed Personnel, and Chang Huating from the Department of Public Security.
One result of the CCP’s “consolidation” and political reorganization was that a substantial element of the local elite who had been brought within the CCP’s orbit at the start of the War of Resistance were at risk of being alienated. This danger was heightened with the introduction of village elections that started in early 1940 and ran until the middle of 1941. Village leadership had previously been the preserve of landlords and rich peasants, but with the CCP-organized elections and the encouragement of the political participation of middle peasants and poor peasants, all this was to change. By May 1941, 44 percent of the elected village heads in Licheng were poor peasants, 40 percent middle peasants, 3 percent rich peasants, and 1 percent “enlightened” landlords and gentry (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 101).
The disaffection of the local elite was clearly a major factor in the development of the Li Gua Dao. This is clearly evident in the comments made to the investigation team about politics and is reflected in the report of 1942. Quite apart from the cases of those most senior leaders of the Li Gua Dao who had been removed from the county administration, others in the Li Gua Dao were members of the local elite and had previously been involved in the county and local administrative system. For example, Yang Xiantang, from Wangjiazhuang, was a rich peasant who had been village head and a staunch supporter of Yan Xishan, who believed the latter had been supplanted by the CCP in 1939. On his own admission his decision to join the Li Gua Dao, where he rose to become the commander of one of its local units, was completely political. Li Wuting was a university engineering graduate who thought the land redemption campaign unfair since, in his view, landlords had not been able to speak in their own defense and peasants got whatever they wanted. He argued that the “government’s progressive programs are not suitable for the backward life of the masses.” Qiao Hongtai of Qiaojiazhuang worked in the Licheng county government and “participated in resistance activities” at the start of the Sino-Japanese War. However, he was disaffected by the CCP’s tax policy and, refusing an offer of work in the new government in 1940, he took up a teaching position in the Licheng First Senior Primary School (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 36, 62, 75).
The result of these political changes was then that in Licheng in the short term the CCP’s capacity to rule was weakened. The CCP’s presence in Licheng had never been strong before 1940, and indeed it took some time before the party’s organizational infrastructure was established. The First Licheng County CCP Congress, for example, was not held until July 1941. Much of the emphasis—and time—in the CCP’s work in the region had been devoted to the organization of first the Joint Government Administrative Office and later the border region government. As a result, the CCP was not fully established in many villages, and even where it was, party committees and mass organizations were frequently divided. The investigation report of 1942 recited a litany of weak party organizations and divided CCP committees in all the villages it examined. Sometimes the cause of division was traditional, as in Lubao, where the village’s three she had a history of intense conflict, and sometimes the causes were more recent, as in Shangguihua, where the impact of the CCP’s tax policy proved divisive, or Fanjiazhuang, where the speed and direction of socioeconomic reform were at issue (Licheng kaochatuan, 1942: 88, 93, 84). The weakness of the CCP at the time is reflected in the comment of a leading cadre, interviewed more than fifty years later: “We knew something was going on, but we didn’t know where they were meeting or what they were doing.”
The reorganization of the local CCP necessitated by the break with Yan Xishan and the CCP’s changed strategy on social and political development had potentially disastrous results in the short term. Those who had previously been prepared to support the CCP’s anti-Japanese nationalism became considerably more wary. This was particularly true of the local elite. At the same time, as the CCP reassigned its personnel, it replaced knowledgeable insiders with outsiders who had not earned the trust of the local population. A political vacuum emerged in 1940-1941, which, in some of the villages of southern Licheng, the Li Gua Dao filled, at least for a short time.
The Lessons of Licheng
The rebellion of October 1941 clearly traumatized the CCP in Licheng. More than fifty years after the event, the sense of trauma still lingers. The Licheng CCP’s own history published in 1991 describes the rebellion as “an evil deed,” but fails to provide a real explanation for the uprising. The history blames Nationalist Party spies but offers no evidence of a connection between the Nationalists and the Li Gua Dao. Nonetheless, it is the “spies”—and not the Li Gua Dao organization or its activists—that the history claims “represented Licheng’s reactionary landlords, prominent feudal figures and a few reactionary intellectuals” (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 112).
In the wake of the Licheng Rebellion, the CCP changed its policies. The party realized that the policy on supply and taxation had been neither thoroughly considered nor adequately developed. The Joint Government Administrative Office had new draft legislation in preparation and the Border Region Government was able to introduce a new taxation system in the second half of 1941. This was followed the next year by the preparation of a “universal progressive tax,” which still taxed wealth, but taxed wealth as calculated on the productive capacity of property over an average number of years (JinJiLuYu, 1943: 1051). At the same time, in Licheng a fairly concerted attempt was made to reduce the numbers of people engaged in nonproductive occupations, exempt from tax and needing to be supported themselves (Zhonggong Licheng, 1991: 127ff).
In general, the CCP retreated from the narrow fundamentalism evident in its policies and appeal during 1940 and 1941. Indeed, at its first meeting, the Border Region Government admitted that “leftist” tendencies had emerged in the encouragement of socioeconomic change (Liu Chen, Zhang Gongde, and Wang Minzheng, 1990: 23, 30ff). The CCP decisively revamped its policy on mass mobilization in the Taihang Region and returned to a more balanced approach. Once again, the party took account of the complicated social and economic environment in which the CCP had to work. Although it might have been too late to do much about the Li Gua Dao-influenced villages of southern Licheng, elsewhere the party strove to ensure the support of rich peasants, or at least to avoid alienating them. In a similar vein, the Women’s National Salvation Association learned the lesson of the Licheng Rebellion and launched a full-scale inquiry into the problems and shortcomings in its implementation of policy on women and the organization of the women’s movement (JinJiYu qu funu, 1942: 419).
Although too many conclusions cannot be drawn from the examination of one county (and really only part of that county) during two or three years, the Licheng Rebellion of 1941 indicates clearly how contingent the growth of the CCP was during the Sino-Japanese War. The party was not able to take anything for granted, not even the support of one of its most secure areas where there were considerable concentrations of its own cadres and activists. It had to work hard to ensure that it maintained a balance in its program of socioeconomic reform. Only by doing so could it maximize support for political and military mobilization.
The CCP also had to work hard to maintain local activism and to ensure its policies were accepted. The rebellion in Licheng indicates that rural resistance and traditionalism were never far below the surface of political life in the base area. Even the support of the local population on nationalist grounds could not be assumed. In Licheng at least, popular support for the Sacrifice League did not transfer automatically into support for the CCP. Moreover, during 1940-1941 the severity of Japanese incursions into Licheng served to widen the distance between the CCP and the local population as the latter came to feel they were no longer being protected.
The causes of the Licheng Rebellion ran much deeper than the temporary failure of the CCP’s organization. Nonetheless, had the Licheng CCP been better organized and more firmly grounded in village party branches, it probably would have had better intelligence about the activities of the Li Gua Dao. The organizational difficulties for the CCP in Licheng, at least until late 1939, sprang from the party’s dependence on the relationship with Yan Xishan and the Sacrifice League. While this provided a useful foundation for establishing a CCP presence, it also limited the development of the CCP’s own organizational capacity and, paradoxically for a county in the heart of a base area, meant that party-building did not really start until the early 1940s.