Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T18:59:56.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Province at War: Guangxi During the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1937–45

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Graham Hutchings
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On the 18 April 1936 General Li Zongren gave a stirring, patriotic interview to the Canton Gazette. In the current situation argued Li, China must stand and resist the Japanese since, “despite sacrifices, a war of resistance may pave the way for the regeneration of our nation.” He was later even more emphatic, ”… a war of resistance is essential for national regeneration.” These seem rather prescient remarks in the light of subsequent events; a new type of society did emerge in parts of China during the war against Japan. Perhaps it should be noted in passing that the form of regeneration expedited by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was nevertheless hardly what Li Zongren had in mind in 1936. Indeed, he felt able to endorse it only late in life.

Type
20 Years On: Four Views on the Cultural Revolution
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 108 , December 1986 , pp. 652 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. The relevant section of the Canton Gazette was enclosed in a despatch from the Canton Consulate to the Foreign Office, 24 April 1936. P.R.O. (Public Record Office) F.O. (Foreign Office) 371 20266/F2839.

2. Li Zongren, who since January had been acting-president, left China in December 1949 to seek medical care in the United States. In July 1965 he suddenly returned to China and died in January 1969. For a recent account see Siyuan, Cheng, Li Zongren xiansheng wannian (The Later Life of Mr Li Zongren) (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1980)Google Scholar.

3. Huang Xuchu succeeded another Huang – Huang Shaoxiong – as the third senior figure of the Guangxi Clique in 1930. Lary, Diana, Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 157–58Google Scholar.

4. The reconstruction programme is comprehensively discussed by Lary, ibid. Ch. 9.

5. On the military struggle between Guangxi and Nanking see Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), Ch. 28–29Google Scholar; Lary, , Region and Nation, pp. 138–45Google Scholar.

6. See, for example, Vaidya, K. B., Reflections on the Recent Revolt at Canton and After (Canton: National Publishers, 1936), Vol. I p. 6Google Scholar; Canton to Foreign Office, 2 August 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20250/F4540.

7. In January 1936 Li Zongren felt obliged to make a statement regarding the Japanese presence in Guangxi. He claimed that there were nine instructors in the province and that some officers had made unofficial visits. G.O.C. (General Officer Commanding) Hong Kong to Foreign Office, 30 January 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20248/F459. Vaidya, , Reflections, Vol. 2 p. 8Google Scholar, claimed that there were about 60 Japanese officers in Guangxi at the end of 1935. Information on the Doihara visit comes from Canton to Foreign Office, 20 April 1936, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3126.

8. “Report by R.H. Scott following a six week tour of Kwangsi and Yunnan in January and February of 1936,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, p. 13.

9. Information on the appeal for British aid comes from the reports of personal meetings by representatives of the two sides forwarded by the Canton Consulate to the Foreign Office, P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, 18101/F4425, F4681, F6720. Huang Peisheng was vice-chairman of the Economic Council at Nanning.

10. Lary, , Region and Nation, pp. 190–91Google Scholar.

11. “Report by Acting-Consul D. Cameron on a three week tour of Kwangsi Province in April 1935,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 20241/F3917, p. 17.

12. Ibid. p. 7.

13. “Extract from a report of proceedings of senior naval officer, West River, China Station, covering the month of July 1936,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 20247/F6226.

14. This is known as the “Pakhoi Incident” (from the local pronounciation of Beihai) and is discussed by Vaidya, , Reflections, Vol. 1, p. 20Google Scholar; Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jen, p. 311Google Scholar ; and Lary, , Region and Nation, pp. 198–99Google Scholar.

15. On the background to the settlement see Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, LiMemoirs, pp. 311–12Google Scholar. The terms of the agreement are in Vaidya, , Reflections, Vol. 1, p. 12Google Scholar.

16. Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 32Google Scholar.

17. Tuchman, Barbara W., Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945 (London: Futura Edition, 1981), p. 211Google Scholar. Bai was later appointed director of military training but was given no effective command until late 1939 and again in late 1944 when, on both occasions, he was charged with the almost impossible task of defending Guangxi. See below pp. 664, 674.

18. Li first attended to mobilization in the home province. Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, Memoirs, p. 331Google Scholar. The Fifth War Zone included all of Shandong, the greater part of Jiangsu and Anhui north of the Yangzi. Li remained commander until the spring of 1945 when he was promoted to the nominally powerful position of director of field headquarters at Hancheng, Shaanxi. John, S. Service (ed. Esherick, J. W.), Lost Chance in China: The World War II Despatches of John S. Service (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 46Google Scholar.

19. Ke-tong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, Memoirs, pp. 322–24Google Scholar.

20. “Report on a tour through Kwangsi, Kwangtung and Hunan provinces,” November 1937, P.R.O. W.O. (War Office) 106 5303, p. 4. A similar impression was conveyed to me in an interview with an English medical missionary resident in Nanning 1937–42, conducted in south London, 29 April 1983.

21. Jiuwang ribao (National Salvation Daily), 15 January 1938, p. 1.

22. Dunzhi, Pang, Qingsuan guixi (Expose the Guangxi Clique) (Canton: Nanqing chubanshe, 1950), p. 1Google Scholar.

23. Xuchu, Huang, “Banian kangzhan huiyilu” (“Recollections of the eight-year War of Resistance”), Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 81 (11 1960), p. 2Google Scholar. The claim is also made by Shi, Yin (pseud.), Li Jiang guanxi yu Zhongguo (The Li-Chiang Relationship and China) (Hong Kong: Ziyou chubanshe, 1954), p. 62Google Scholar. Yin Shi was the pseudonym of Cheng Siyuan, Li Zongren's secretary.

24. Li Zongren recalled (with some licence, presumably) that after the outbreak of war “peasants from all over the province flooded into the government district offices to report for duty. The number who volunteered far exceeded our needs and we had to cast lots to decide on those to be taken.” Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, Memoirs, p. 323Google Scholar. On the other hand, with the large scale transfer of troops to the war areas, some of the inhabitants of the Guizhou and Hunan border areas of the province (including a section of the local militia) chose a bandit life in the hills in preference to active service. “Canton intelligence report for the year ended 1938,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 22130/F11450. This, however, was the exception rather than the rule during the early phase of the war.

25. Figure cited by Lary, , Region and Nation, p. 189Google Scholar.

26. Huagong, Yang and Qiantai, Huang, “Liangge butong shidaide Guangxi gongye” (“Industry in Guangxi during two different periods”), Xueshu luntan (Knowledge Forum), Nos. 3–4 (1979), p. 43Google Scholar.

27. Long before the war the French built a line from Haiphong to Langson, a few miles short of Zhennanguan on the Guangxi-Indo-China frontier. Fear of French designs on Guangxi, however, disinclined the provincial leadership to permit railway construction across the frontier. “Report on K wangsi province by Captain A. T. Wilson-Brand after a tour in March and April 1934,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 18153/F5182, p.16.

28. Ling, Hung-hsun, “China's epic struggle in developing its overland transportation system during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945” in Sih, Paul K. T. (ed.), Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 (New York: Exposition Press, 1977), pp. 250–56Google Scholar.

29. Part of the 1936 agreement required the transfer of the provincial capital from Nanning to Guilin. Guilin was the capital in imperial times.

30. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Guilin shihua (Historical Talk About Guilin) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1979), pp. 133–34Google Scholar.

31. Ibid. p. 134.

32. Ibid. p. 133.

33. Epstein, Israel, The Unfinished Revolution in China (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1947), p. 131Google Scholar.

34. Rosinger, Lawrence K., China's Wartime Politics, 1937–1944 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), pp. 56–58Google Scholar. In September 1940 the National Government announced the cancellation of plans to convene the National Assembly on the grounds that the nation's primary efforts had to be devoted to prosecuting the war. Ibid. p. 60.

35. The Manifesto is printed with notes and an introduction by Rosinger, in Amerasia, Vol. 4, No. 8 (10 1940), pp. 368–75Google Scholar.

36. Ibid. p. 373.

37. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 129–31Google Scholar.

38. Jishan, Yuan, “Ji balujun Guilin banshichu beiche” (“Recollections of the Guilin Eighth Route Army office's withdrawal north”), Geming huiyilu (Recollections of the Revolution), No. 7 (1982), p. 207Google Scholar.

39. Quan, Zhou, Guixi jiepou (Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique) (Hong Kong: Qixingshuwu, 1949), p. 20Google Scholar.

40. Te-kong, Tong and Tsung-jen, Li, Memoirs, p. 386, n. 1Google Scholar.

41. Quan, Zhou, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, p. 35Google Scholar. According to Zhou, Huang “stole” some of these progressive ideas from Stalin.

42. The Zhuang Soviets are discussed by Lary, Diana in “Communism and ethnic revolt: some notes on the Chuang peasant movement,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 49 (01–03 1972), pp. 126–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Hutchings, Graham, “The troubled life and after-life of a Guangxi communist: some notes on Li Mingrui and the communist movement in Guangxi province before 1949,” CQ, No. 104 (12 1985), pp. 700–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. bianxiezu, Zhuangzu jianshi (Zhuang Nationality History Group) (comp.), Zhuangzu jianshi (A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality) (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1980), p. 166Google Scholar.

44. Ibid. p. 169.

45. Details of earlier communist activity are provided in zhengzhibubian, Guangxi junqu (Guangxi Military Region Political Department) (ed.), Guangxi geming huiyilu (Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi) (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1959), pp. 142–150Google Scholar; and Shengwen, Tan, “Yu Zuoyu he ta cangjia lingdao Longzhou qiyi” (“Yu Zuoyu and the Longzhou Uprising he led”), Geming huiyilu (Recollections of the Revolution), No. 7 (1982), pp. 116–39Google Scholar.

46. War Time Work Leagues were organizations of primarily young people designed to prosecute the war short of formal combat.

47. zhengzhibubian, Guangxi junqu, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, pp. 173–79Google Scholar; 188–90.

48. Quan, Zhou, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, pp. 15–16Google Scholar. Dunzhi, Pang, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 1Google Scholar.

49. Certain provincial towns had been subject to frequent air raids since December 1937 when six people were killed in Wuzhou. From Canton to Foreign Office, 11 April 1938, P.R.O. F.O. 371 22038/F4036. The following account of the south Guangxi campaign is based mainly on military intelligence materials in the Public Record Office; Xuchu, Huang, “Banian kangzhan huiyilu” (“Recollections of the eight-year War of Resistance”), Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 81 (11 1960), pp. 2–4Google Scholar; Wu, Hsiang-hsiang, “Total strategy used by China and some major engagements in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945” in Sih, (ed.), Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War, pp. 37–80Google Scholar; Dorn, Frank, The Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbour (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 284–302Google Scholar.

50. Hsi-sheng, Ch'i, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Political Collapse, 1937–1945 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982). p. 58Google Scholar.

51. Wu, Hsiang-hsiang, “Total strategy used by China,” p. 63Google Scholar.

52. Dorn, , The Sino-Japanese War, p. 288Google Scholar.

53. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

54. Dorn, , The Sino-Japanese War, p. 296Google Scholar.

55. Compare, for example, Shi, Yin, The Li-Chiang Relationship and China, p. 80Google Scholar, with bianxiezu, Zhuangzu jianshi, A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality, pp. 171–72Google Scholar.

56. Dorn, , The Sino-Japanese War, pp. 301–302Google Scholar.

57. G.O.C. Hong Kong to Foreign Office, 29 December 1939, P.R.O. F.O. 371 23419/F13161.

58. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

59. Hsi-sheng, Ch'i, Nationalist China at War, pp. 89–93Google Scholar.

60. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 136–38Google Scholar; Dunzhi, Pang, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 18Google Scholar; Jishan, Yuan, “Recollections of the Guilin Eighth Route Army office,” p. 207Google Scholar; bianxiezu, Zhuangzu jianshi, A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality, p. 172Google Scholar.

61. Pang Dunzhi, loc. cit. zhengzhibubian, Guangxi junqu, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, pp. 179, 211–12Google Scholar.

62. Kongliao, Sa, Guiyu jiaowai (Outside Guilin and Chongqing) (Hong Kong: Chunfeng chubanshe, 1947), pp. 64–68Google Scholar. Sa, a newspaper correspondent. was arrested in Guilin during May 1943 and was imprisoned in the city until June of the following year when he was flown to Chongqing to serve a further year's confinement. The reasons for his arrest were never made clear.

63. Kongliao, Sa, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, p. 3Google Scholar.

64. Support for this view comes from Xiang, Huai, Li Zongren yu zhong-mei fandongpai (Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique) (Hong Kong: Yuzhou shuwu, 1948), p. 31Google Scholar. According to this source, these agents represented the CC Clique.

65. Sa was given to understand that his own case was outside Provincial Chairman Huang Xuchu's control and was dependent on instructions from Chongqing. Kongliao, Sa, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, p. 27Google Scholar.

66. This episode is also referred to by Quan, Zhou, Anatomy of the Guangxi Clique, p. 3Google Scholar, and Dunzhi, Pang, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 18Google Scholar.

67. Kongliao, Sa, Outside Guilin and Chongqing, pp. 32–38, 71Google Scholar.

68. Hsi-sheng, Ch'i, Nationalist China at War, p. 154Google Scholar.

69. As far as Guangxi was concerned, it was later argued that this policy considerably weakened the much vaunted militia system which traditionally consumed a significant percentage of provincial income. In the end, moreover, the policy proved self-defeating; it made it impossible for local forces to be raised against the communists during the Civil War. See Shi, Yin, The Li-Chiang Relationship and China, pp. 80–82Google Scholar.

70. Xuchu, Huang, “Recollections of the eight-year War of Resistance,” Pt 2, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 82 (12 1960), p. 7Google Scholar.

71. According to Xiang, Huai (Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 25)Google Scholar the compilation of land registers in Guangxi was associated with a good deal of corruption. The bribes of rich peasants and landlords often secured the registration of less land than they actually owned, to their considerable advantage when taxes were due.

72. Guangxi and Guangdong together made up the Fourth War Zone.

73. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

74. Ye, Yi, Guiqian lushang zayi (Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou) (Hong Kong: Zhicheng chubanshe, 1970), pp. 37, 49–50Google Scholar. Dunzhi, Pang, Expose the Guangxi Clique, p. 8Google Scholar.

75. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

76. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 3 May 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/2916.

77. Ibid.

78. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 March 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.

79. Ibid. 23 May 1944.

80. “Kweilin Intelligence Summary,” January 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404.

81. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 9 September 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/2916. His Majesty's Consul-General regarded such rice exports as “criminal.”

82. “Kweilin Intelligence Summary,” 18 August 1944; 2 September 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 208 404.

83. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 9 September 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/2916.

84. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 September 1943, P.R.O. F.O. 371 35853/F4331.

85. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 8 January 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.

86. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 6 May 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.

87. A 505 per cent general increase over July 1942 was recorded in December 1943 and a 570 per cent increased by January 1944. From Guilin to Foreign Office, 11 February 1944, P.R.O. F.O. 371 41608.

88. Radio Broadcast reported by Guilin Consulate to Foreign Office in June 1944 Newsletter, P.R.O. F. O. 371 41608.

89. This brief discussion of Operation Ichigo is drawn mainly from Xin, Li, Ming, Peng, Sibai, Sun, Shangsi, Cai, Xulu, Chen (eds.), Zhongguo xinminzhuzhuyi geming shiqi tongshi (A History of China During the Period of the New Democratic Revolution), Vol. 3 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980 edit.), pp. 320–23Google Scholar; Puyu, Hu (ed.), Kangzhan shihua (Historical Talk About the War of Resistance) (Taipei: National Defence Department, 1972), pp. 183–84Google Scholar; Hsi-sheng, Ch'i, Nationalist China at War, pp. 68–82Google Scholar.

90. Chongqing to South-east Asian Command, 24 June 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 139Google Scholar.

91. Xuchu, Huang, “Guangxi dierci lunxian yu shoufu” (“The second occupation and recovery of Guangxi”), Pt 1, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 89 (06 1961), p. 3Google Scholar. Chongqing to South-east Asian Command, 24 June 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404.

92. “Kweilin Intelligence Summary,” 2 September 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 208 404. Ye, Yi, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 19, 30Google Scholar.

93. A recent account dates the issue of the evacuation order to 11 September 1944. Zhang Yigui and Zhang Jiafen, loc. cit.

94. The following account of the evacuation of Guilin is based mainly on Ye, Yi, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 1–56Google Scholar; Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation and recovery of Guangxi,” pp. 2–4Google Scholar; Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, pp. 139–40Google Scholar; and an interview with an English missionary, himself evacuated from Guilin during this period, conducted in Oxfordshire, 19 May 1983.

95. Ye, Yi, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, pp. 3, 23–25Google Scholar.

96. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 2, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 90 (07 1961), p. 9Google Scholar.

97. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 1, p. 3Google Scholar; Pt 2, p. 9.

98. “Kweilin Intelligence Summary,” September 1944, P.R.O. W. O. 208 3260. This eye-witness report dating from early September was by a British Officer, Col. Lindsay Ride.

99. White, Theodore H. and Jacoby, Annalee, Thunder Out of China (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980 edit.), pp. 190–93Google Scholar. The British underground organization was known as the British Army Aid Group (BAAG) and was formed, among other things, to gather intelligence and facilitate the escape of prisoners of war from Japanese camps in Hong Kong. Commanded by Lindsay Ride, BAAG Headquarters was located in Guilin between 1942 and 1945. See Lindsay, Oliver, At the Going Down of the Sun (London: Sphere Books, 1982), Ch. 8Google Scholar; Ride, Edwin, British Army Aid Group: Hong Kong Resistance, 1942–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

100. Ye, Yi, Sundry Recollections of the Road from Guangxi to Guizhou, p. 4Google Scholar.

101. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 2, p. 5Google Scholar.

102. Communist accounts attribute the destruction of Guilin to retreating Nationalist troops. See, for example, Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 140Google Scholar. Ride, , British Army Aid Group, p. 255Google Scholar, suggests that it was largely the work of Japanese agents with incendiary pistols.

103. China Intelligence Secret Telegram, 17 August 1944, P.R.O. W.O. 106 3583A. Eastman, Lloyd E., “Regional politics and the central government: Yunnan and Chungking,” in Sih, (ed.), Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War, pp. 114–15Google Scholar. A Guangxi man, though not part of the formal provincial leadership, Li Jishen, if anything, exceeded what might be regarded as the traditional Guangxi hostility towards Chiang Kai-shek. Li broke decisively with Chiang in January 1948 when he played an important part in the formation of the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee.

104. “Report from J. S. Service, Yenan 21 March 1945 on situation in Kwangsi,” in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1945, Vol. 7 (Washington, D.C. State Department), p. 295Google Scholar.

105. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 4, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 92 (09 1961), p. 8Google Scholar.

106. Ibid. and Pt 5, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 93 (October 1961), p. 6.

107. Huang Xuchu praised Xiao for training a section of the local population and attacking Yishan city, facilitating its early recovery. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 4, p. 8 and Pt 5, p. 6Google Scholar.

108. zhengzhibubian, Guangxi junqu, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, pp. 202–218Google Scholar.

109. “Canton Intelligence Report for the Year Ended 1938,” P.R.O. F.O. 371 221230/F11450, p. 1.

110. bianxiezu, Zhuangzu jianshi, A Short History of the Zhuang Nationality, p. 173Google Scholar. zhengzhibuian, Guangxi junqu, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, p. 244Google Scholar.

111. zhengzhibubian, Guangxi junqu, Recollections of the Revolution in Guangxi, p. 232Google Scholar.

112. Ibid. pp. 235–36.

113. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 4, p. 7Google Scholar. While admitting that there were no “liberated areas” in Guangxi, Huang listed a number of south-east xian in the province in which communist activity had spread from neighbouring Guangdong. See “The second occupation,” Pt 3, Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn), No. 91 (08 1961), p. 9Google Scholar.

114. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 4, p. 7Google Scholar.

115. Guangxisheng zhengfu gongbao (Guangxi Provincial Government Report), 16 January 1947, p. 11.

116. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 141Google Scholar.

117. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

118. Xuchu, Huang, “The second occupation,” Pt 5, p. 5Google Scholar.

119. For the behaviour of the returning Nationalist forces in Shanghai and Canton see Pepper, Suzanne, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle 1945–1949 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 16–28Google Scholar.

120. Huang Xuchu, loc. cit.

121. Xiang, Huai, Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 22Google Scholar.

122. Ibid. pp. 22–23. Yigui, Zhang and Jiafan, Zhang, Historical Talk About Guilin, p. 143Google Scholar. North Guangxi was still reported a starvation and rice shortage area in the summer of 1947. While crop conditions elsewhere in the province were reported good, food shortages were anticipated in south-west Guangxi. “Report to President Truman by Lieutenant Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. Army,” in U.S. Department of State, The China White Paper, Vol. 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), pp. 797–98Google Scholar.

123. Xiang, Huai, Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 24Google Scholar.

124. Shengjun, Liang, Jiang-Li douzheng neimu (The Hidden Struggle Between Chiang and Li) (Hong Kong: Yalian chubanshe, 1954), pp. 197–98Google Scholar. Shengjun, Liang, Chise kongbuxiade Guangxi (Guangxi Under the Red Terror) (Hong Kong: Ziyou chubanshe, 1951), p. 11Google Scholar.

125. The post-war struggle between the Guangxi group and Chiang Kai-shek is the subject of Liang Shengjun, The Hidden Struggle, and Yin Shi, The Li-Chiang Relationship and China.

126. The phrase is attributed to Manhong, Yuan, head of the Hunan-Guangxi-Guizhou Railway Bureau by Xiang, Huai, Li Zongren and the Sino-American Reactionary Clique, p. 24Google Scholar.

127. Chongqing to Foreign Office, 28 June 1945, P.R.O. F. O. 371 46135/F4130.