Chapter 8 1. Liberated Areas and National Controlled Areas

The final battle is about to begin.Due to the scale and influence of this Armageddon, it actually took place over the entire territory of the ancient land of China.If this decisive battle is like a majestic live newspaper drama in which justice defeats reaction and light defeats darkness, this ancient land is its big stage.But this ancient land is no longer the traditional land of China. It has been divided into two parts by unilateral evil: light and darkness each occupy half of the land. The ups and downs of light and darkness, one advances and one retreats, one grows and the other fades, and one wins and loses. This is the main theme of this live newspaper drama performed on the big stage of the land of China with a group of famous figures in modern Chinese history as the protagonists. .In order to better appreciate this majestic live newspaper drama, it is necessary for us to take a look at the big stage that history has provided for our ancestors.

As early as the arduous struggle of the eight-year Anti-Japanese War, the anti-Japanese army and civilians led by the Communist Party of China established anti-Japanese base areas all over the country.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the soldiers and civilians in the anti-Japanese base area further expanded the area of ​​the base area in the battle to recover the lost ground from the Japanese invaders.Therefore, at the beginning of the civil war launched by the Kuomintang headed by Chiang Kai-shek, the liberated areas controlled by our party were distributed in Liaoning, Rehe, Chahar, and Suiyuan It was revoked successively and merged into the four provinces (districts) of Liaoning, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Shanxi], Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, etc. There are 19 provinces (regions) with a total population of more than 100 million and a land area of ​​nearly 1 million square kilometers.By the end of 1948, the Communist Party of China had withdrawn from some liberated areas in the south during the nearly three-year struggle against the Kuomintang reactionaries, but had achieved greater development in more areas. The total area of ​​the liberated areas had reached 2.35 million square kilometers. The population increased to 168 million.More importantly, the major liberated areas north of the Yangtze River have been connected together and can provide strategic mutual support.For example, in the following introduction about the Battle of Huaihai, we can see the unprecedented feat of several provinces and millions of migrant workers supporting the front line.

In the vast liberated areas, there is a vibrant and thriving scene everywhere.The main reason for this situation is that our party complied with the historical trend and the will of the people in the liberated areas, and carried out mass movements ranging from anti-rape liquidation, rent and interest reduction, to land reform, which turned the peasants into masters and inspired It has many years of revolutionary enthusiasm and production enthusiasm. This earth-shaking land reform movement in rural China was a stormy class struggle.After the peasants' revolutionary enthusiasm burst out, the feudal system was destroyed step by step, and a new regime was established every day. A large number of revolutionary activists emerged and became the backbone of supporting the liberation war and defending the democratic regime.Liu Hulan, a young hero in Yunxi Zhou Village, Wenshui County, Shanxi Province, is a 15-year-old Communist Party member who emerged during the land reform. On January 8, 1947, in order to defend the interests of the party, the victorious results of the land reform of the villagers, and the People's Liberation Army, she faced the guillotine of Yan Xishan's bandit army and the "Struggle and Revenge Team" of the Landlords' Returning Home Mission.

Chairman Mao Zedong specially wrote an inscription for her: "Great life, glorious death." According to statistics in June 1949, about 100 million peasants in the liberated areas received 337.5 million mu of land and established their own democratic regime. According to later statistics), peasant associations, trade unions, and women's associations have been established everywhere, and people's armed forces such as militias and self-defense forces have been organized.Revolutionary enthusiasm aroused enthusiasm for production, and farmers who got land launched a large-scale production movement. For example, from 1947 to 1949, the Northeast Liberated Area expanded more than 30 million mu of arable land, and the yield per mu increased by a quarter.The liberated areas not only produced a large amount of food to provide sufficient military rations for the troops, but also built military factories and clothing factories to continuously provide the troops with military supplies.According to the statistics of the fifth district of Jiangsu and Anhui, there are 200,000 hand spinning wheels and more than 8,700 hand looms in rural areas.The military uniforms of our soldiers are basically produced by the two hands of rural women.

The liberated areas, where both revolution and production are hot, are the guarantee of victory in the war of liberation. In order to defend the fruits of victory, the vast number of overturned peasants enthusiastically joined the army, continuously replenishing a large number of soldiers for the people's army.During the War of Liberation, 1.6 million peasants joined the army in the Northeast Liberated Area, and nearly 1 million peasants joined the army in the North China Liberated Area. The number of soldiers in the counties of the Taihang District in the North China Liberated Area accounted for 4% to 8% of the total number of soldiers.From July 1946 to the end of large-scale domestic combat operations in June 1950, our army supplemented a total of 4.5 million troops, except for a small number of "liberation fighters", all of whom were turned farmers from the liberated areas.In addition to formally joining the army, there are also a large number of militias in the liberated areas. They are an important force to assist the PLA in fighting and repairing fortifications, and they are also an important force to contain the enemy.According to incomplete statistics, during the War of Liberation, there were more than 2.28 million militiamen, participated in more than 114,000 battles, and wiped out more than 200,000 enemies.

In addition to joining the army to fight, peasants in the liberated areas supported the war of liberation by using various actions to support the front line, which was called "supporting the front" at that time.The content of the pre-support is very wide, the most important are the two categories of logistics support and field service.In logistics support, the supply of food, clothing, and ammunition is the key point. The public food provided by the North China Liberated Area alone is as high as 1.25 billion kilograms.In field services, including construction of fortifications, field ambulance, ammunition transportation, escorting prisoners, etc., the Liberated Area organized a large number of migrant labor groups to accompany the army. From July 1946 to September 1948, the Shandong Liberated Area dispatched 5.8 million former migrant workers , 4.8 million people were mobilized in central Hebei.

The support of the people in the liberated areas played a very important and decisive role in the victory of the war of liberation.Mao Zedong made a concluding remark at the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee: Our war of liberation was mainly won by these 160 million people.With the victory of land reform, there was the victory of overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek. Contrary to the thriving situation in the Liberated Areas, the half of the country under the Kuomintang rule has become increasingly dark, rotten and crumbling.The all-out civil war launched by Chiang Kai-shek was originally against the will of the people. In order to support the operation of this huge war machine and other astronomical expenditures of the Kuomintang government, the Kuomintang government can only adopt two methods: one is to seek aid from the United States by betraying the country and asking for help. , and the other is to strengthen the plunder of the people of the whole country.

The eight-year war of resistance has already caused incalculable damage to the national economy.After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, only by concentrating on repairing the wounds of the war, recuperating, and developing production can the economy gradually recover.But the Chiang Kai-shek clique didn't put their minds on this at all, but focused on fighting a civil war.Although 80% of the Kuomintang government's fiscal revenue is used for military expenditures, it is only a drop in the bucket.So Chiang Kai-shek did not hesitate to auction China's sovereignty to the United States in exchange for U.S. dollars.To this end, the United States and Chiang Kai-shek concluded a series of public and non-public treaties, the most important of which was the "Sino-US Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation" signed on November 4, 1946.The main terms of this so-called commercial agreement were proposed by the United States.According to this treaty, the U.S. military can be stationed in China for a long time, U.S. aircraft and ships can sail freely in China, and U.S. personnel in China are not subject to China's legal sanctions.Obviously, this was not a commercial agreement, so people of insight at the time called it the "New Twenty-One", which is exactly the same as the "Twenty-one" when Yuan Shikai sold his sovereignty to Japanese imperialism.Just because Chiang Kai-shek turned China into a de facto colony of the United States, the US military can do whatever it wants in China. At the end of 1946, the U.S. military stationed in Tianjin had such a regulation: If a Chinese is crushed or killed, the compensation is 100,000 yuan in French currency; if a donkey is crushed or killed, the compensation is 135,000 yuan in French currency.In the eyes of American soldiers, the Chinese are not as good as donkeys!

While begging for U.S. dollars, the Kuomintang government did everything possible to increase the scale and intensity of excessive expropriation and extortion, in order to seek the people's aspirations. As a result, the economy was depressed, all industries were ruined, inflation was caused, and the people were in dire straits. In 1947, when the Chiang Kai-shek government launched an all-out civil war, the Chiang Dynasty’s annual fiscal expenditure was 40.91 trillion yuan in French currency, but its annual fiscal revenue was only 13.83 trillion yuan (the famous economist Ma Yinchu also had a statistic at the time, It is believed that 92% of the annual income of the Chiang Dynasty is obtained by issuing banknotes), the inevitable result of this appalling deficit is to make the money-printing machine start at full speed, and fill this bottomless pit with a larger deficit.As a result, currency depreciation and price inflation, which are rare in the world, occurred in the Kuomintang-controlled area. In 1947, prices generally rose by 20 times, and some reached 30 times.The price of rice in Shanghai rose from 60,000 yuan per load at the beginning of January to 1.1 million yuan by the end of the year.

This increase is only insignificant compared with the future.By 1948, the price of rice in Shanghai rose from 1.5 million yuan per load in January to 65 million yuan in August, and the average price in Shanghai rose by 500 to 1,100 times in eight months.Ordinary people could buy two scalpers in 1937, but by July 1947, they could only buy one third of a box of matches.The value of the legal currency issued by the Kuomintang government is not as good as its own paper and printing costs. The skyrocketing prices are a sign of the collapse of the entire economy.In the countryside, agricultural productivity declined sharply due to heavy taxes and hard-working Latins. In 1947, Jiangsu Province, which had always been the most prosperous in the past, accounted for three-fifths of the total cultivated land area, Anhui Province and Henan Province each accounted for one-third, and Guangdong Province was the highest, reaching three-quarters; The area is between 20% and 40%, and the agricultural output is 40% lower than that in 1936.The farmers couldn't bear it anymore, and they rose up to fight against grain donations and arrests.Some people in the Kuomintang have seen the current situation in the countryside and know that the tragedy is unsustainable. In order to maintain their rule and confront the liberated areas led by our party, they also proposed to implement the "two-five-year rent reduction" in the Kuomintang-controlled areas. To carry out land reform, we must "land to the tiller".For this reason, the Kuomintang government once issued an order to reduce rents, issued an order to organize "cooperative farms", and finally issued the "Draft Rural Reform Law" in 1948, announcing land reform.Since the Kuomintang itself is a political party representing the interests of the big landlords, it is already rotten, so these tricks are just a dead letter, and it is impossible to put them into practice.Not to mention the land reform, it is the "Twenty-Five Rent Reduction". According to the survey of 14 counties in 3 provinces by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Kuomintang Executive Yuan, "none of them have reported the situation and effect of the implementation, and they have not yet been implemented." It was a laughing stock.

In the towns, all trades were depressed, and factories and firms were struggling.Due to soaring prices and heavy taxes, Shanghai's operating rate was only 20% in 1947, and 95% of Tianjin's factories were closed or partially closed. From a national perspective, 80% of the entire industrial system has collapsed. In 1948, the situation was still deteriorating. According to Xu Huidong, chairman of the Peiping City Senate, at a meeting of the Kuomintang Central Committee, Peiping "suicides occur every day, and there must be more than a dozen shops that petition the social bureau for permission to close their businesses every day. Buses stop running. , the factories shut down one after another.” In the face of such a situation of economic collapse, the Kuomintang government carried out the notorious so-called currency system reform. On August 19, 1948, it promulgated the "Financial and Economic Emergency Punishment Order", announcing the issuance of 2 billion yuan of gold yuan notes as the standard currency across the country. Within a limited time limit, 3 million yuan of legal currency is converted into gold round coupons at a price of 1 yuan to receive and exchange legal currency.At the same time, it was announced that all privately owned gold, silver, and foreign currencies in the country would be exchanged, and those who did not exchange them within the time limit would be confiscated. It was also announced that workers were prohibited from striking.This "reform" is actually a plunder and looting of the people of the whole country.Since the Kuomintang government enforced it by force in various places, the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in the cities suffered the most from the looting.According to the official report of the Kuomintang, gold worth 170 million U.S. dollars was forcibly confiscated in Shanghai alone. At the same time, Rong Hongsheng of the Shenxin Group and Guo Dihuo of the Yongan Group were arrested, and the official " Parity", so that industrial and commercial people suffered greater losses.No one knows exactly how much gold, silver, and U.S. dollars the Chiang Kai-shek clique looted during this looting.What's more serious is that the viciousness of the Kuomintang completely lost the confidence of the masses in the economic policies of the Kuomintang government. There was a wave of panic buying across the country, and prices continued to soar.Taking rice in Shanghai as an example, when the Kuomintang authorities imposed a price limit on November 1, 1948, the price was 20.9 yuan per load of gold-yuan coupons. By May 1949, the price had risen to 175 million yuan. The issuance of golden round coupons has increased from 2 billion to 20.8 billion in 4 months, and it has become a piece of waste paper like the past fiat currency. On April 15, 1949, the value of the gold round coupons depreciated by 40% in one day. Compared with the price comparison at the time when the gold round coupons were issued, the price ratio between gold and gold round coupons on this day was 37,000 times that at that time.By May 1949, a total of more than 67 trillion yuan of gold coupons had been issued. Compared with the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the circulation of banknotes had increased by 380 million times, which can be said to have created an unprecedented world record. (In July 1949, the Kuomintang government also issued silver round notes to replace the waste paper gold round notes. As a result, they were basically ignored and became waste paper. It can be said that it created another joke about issuing banknotes.) Under such circumstances, many situations that are unimaginable to today's readers have appeared all over the country: either bartering, or circulation of decades-old silver dollars and various copper coins that are still preserved by the people, or Rice (mainly in the countryside) and cotton yarn (mainly in the cities) were exchanged as equivalents. Under such circumstances, the collapse of the Kuomintang government is irretrievable.In the words of the people at the time, it is unacceptable for the Kuomintang government not to collapse! Faced with all kinds of perverse actions of the Kuomintang government, the masses of the Kuomintang-controlled areas rose up to fight against it one after another, forming a vigorous patriotic anti-Chiang movement. The vanguard of the patriotic anti-Chiang movement was the students.The patriotic anti-Chiang movement of the students continued during the civil war, one after another, and almost never stopped.The patriotic anti-Chiang movement of the students aroused and promoted the patriotic anti-Chiang movement of other strata in the Kuomintang-controlled areas. On the evening of December 24, 1946, Shen Chong, a female student of Peking University, was dragged to Dongdan and raped by two captains of the US Marine Corps, Pearson, in downtown Xidan, Beijing.The news of this incident was first strictly blocked by the reactionary Kuomintang authorities, but in turn they slandered the female college student as "a woman from a good family".In short, they tried every means to exonerate the U.S. military, and students were strictly prohibited from pointing fingers at the U.S. military that supported and helped the Chiang Dynasty to fight the civil war.The Kuomintang authorities' perverse actions aroused the anti-riot movement of students across the country. In January 1947 alone, more than 500,000 students in dozens of large and medium-sized cities across the country held demonstrations, demanding that the US military withdraw from China immediately.At the same time, people all over the country expressed solidarity with the students' patriotic actions.Under the strong pressure of the people of the whole country, the criminal Pearson was sentenced to 15 years in prison (half a year later, the sentence was revoked by the commander of the US Marine Corps). In the first half of May 1947, the price of rice in Nanjing rose by 60%.Food prices soared, making it impossible for students to live and study normally.As a result, various universities held strikes on May 13, and more than 3,000 student representatives petitioned the Ministry of Education on May 15, demanding that students' food expenses be increased according to rising prices.The reactionary authorities not only unreasonably rejected the legitimate demands of the students, but also issued the "Temporary Measures for Maintaining Social Order" on the 18th, announcing that "emergency measures should be taken and effective sanctions be imposed" on all petitions and school strikes involving more than 10 people across the country.In order to resist the tyranny of the Kuomintang authorities, on May 20, more than 6,000 student representatives from 16 universities in Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou held demonstrations in Nanjing.The Kuomintang army and police carried out a bloody suppression of the student representatives. More than 500 students were beaten, of whom more than 50 were injured, and 8 were seriously injured. This is known as the "May 20th" tragedy in history. After the "May 20th" tragedy, the Chinese Student Federation, a national student organization, was established in Shanghai on June 18, and the slogan "Anti-Hunger, Anti-Civil War" resounded throughout the country. Driven by the student movement, anti-Chiang patriotic movements in other sectors of the country also emerged one after another and became more and more powerful. At that time, it was the peasants who suffered the most and had the hardest life.They were already quite poor, and the massive conscription and food requisition brought about by the all-out civil war made it impossible for farmers to maintain the most basic life.At that time, the grain requisition for farmers was divided into three parts: grain requisition, purchase, and loan. According to the statistics of Gansu Province, the total amount exceeded 20 times that before the Anti-Japanese War.In addition to grain collection, there are various exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes. According to the statistics of a province in Sichuan, there are more than 190 kinds in total. Therefore, there was a popular couplet at that time: "It has never been heard that there is a tax on manure since ancient times, but now there are only farts without donations." The frenzy of "grabbing strong men" caused by the civil war caused the rural areas to lose a large number of labor force.According to the greatly reduced figures officially announced by the Kuomintang, the CCP has recruited 3.5 million soldiers in three years.The government forced the people to rebel, and the peasants had no choice but to rise up to save themselves.According to the official statistics of Sichuan Province alone, in early 1947, "civil uprisings" centered on opposition to conscription and grain requisition took place in more than 130 counties. Many uprisings took up arms and developed into people's armed forces.Even in the suburbs of Beijing and Shanghai under the eyes of the Nanjing government, farmers in more than a dozen counties have formed their own armed forces and have been active for a long time.These activities made it impossible for the Kuomintang government to complete the plan of conscription and food collection, and became an important reason for the successive defeats on the battlefield.Among the anti-Chiang patriotic movements of the people across the country, the largest and most influential one was the "228" armed uprising of the people of Taiwan.The people of Taiwan, who had been colonized and ruled by Japanese imperialism for 50 years, realized: "Think about the central government, hope for the central government, and it will be even worse if the central government comes!" When they couldn't bear it anymore, the people of Taiwan staged an armed uprising.Chiang Kai-shek carried out a massacre, killing as many as 30,000 people. In the face of waves of anti-Chiang patriotic movements against civil war, tyranny, dictatorship, and plunder, and in the face of successive defeats on the battlefield of the civil war, the Chiang Kai-shek clique did not wake up at all, but intensified its campaign against the people. More brutal repression. On July 4, 1947, the Sixth State Council of the Kuomintang government adopted Chiang Kai-shek's "General Mobilization Order to End the Rebellion", and then issued a series of emergency decrees on "putting down the rebellion".According to these decrees, people and things throughout the country can be requisitioned in the name of civil war, and any words or deeds that interfere can be punished by the authorities at will, which further dragged the Kuomintang-controlled area into the darkest period of fascist dictatorship. However, no matter how desperate the Chiang Kai-shek clique is, the disintegration of the Kuomintang-controlled area is a foregone conclusion and irreversible.Because the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang regime for many years is exhausted. The key point is that its many perverse actions have completely lost the hearts of the people.Some veterans of the Chinese Kuomintang summarized it in the declaration of the founding of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee: Political training is in name but autocracy is in fact deprivation of the people's freedom, government officials bribe the public; the party and government are divided into inner and outer circles, and the army is divided into direct and miscellaneous brands; Private relatives occupy the important places, and honest and gentlemen regard them as enemies; right and wrong are not distinguished, and discipline is not correct, so that the people fear officials like tigers and wolves, and fear the party department like snakes and scorpions, forming a general tendency to renounce the government. Even the "Central Daily", the mouthpiece of the Kuomintang, published an editorial on November 4, 1948, titled "Hurry up and clean up people's hearts." Under such circumstances, not only the corruption within the Kuomintang ruling group remained unchanged, but also various internal contradictions became increasingly acute.The American ambassador to China, Leighton Stuart, once clearly pointed out: "The corruption and reactionary forces pervading within the Kuomintang are well known and needless to be said. However, it must be remembered that one-party rule will always lead to corruption. During the entire period of this party's power Disagreements within the Party have never ceased." Chiang Kai-shek himself said in June 1948: "From the central government to the provinces and counties, factional strife within the Party has intensified and is endless." He just dared not say this situation inevitable outcome.This ending was stated by Leighton Stuart on November 6, 1948: "It is with great reluctance that we come to the conclusion that the early collapse of the present KMT government is inevitable." Why is it "inevitable"? The head of the US government's military delegation to the Kuomintang government, Badawi, said in a report on November 18, 1948: "Since I came here, there has not been a single combat failure due to lack of ammunition or equipment. In my opinion, These military fiascos can all be attributed to the worst leadership in the world, along with many other factors that lower morale. These factors lead to a complete loss of the will to fight." The famous American scholar Fairbank said in his book: "The collapse of the national government was not only military, but also economic, political and moral." Because "incompetence and corruption made the Kuomintang completely lose the hearts of the people in China." U.S. Secretary of State Acheson pointed out in his report to U.S. President Truman: "The Kuomintang army was not defeated, they disintegrated on their own", because "the people of China are in the hands of the Communists." The Americans were once Chiang Kai-shek's closest allies and biggest supporters. The above-mentioned statements are already very polite to the Chiang Kai-shek clique, but they cannot be more polite.Because the inevitable failure of the Chiang Kai-shek clique is indeed beyond doubt.