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The Student Movement and the Chinese Civil War, 1945–49

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Suzanne Pepper
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Extract

In the areas controlled by the Central Government, the Chinese student movement between 1945 and 1949 was essentially an anti-war movement. As the Civil War progressed during those years, the student protests became one of the Government's major political problems, referred to by Mao himself as the “second front” in the struggle against the Chiang Kai-shek Government. As such, the student anti-war movement assumed its place within the twentieth-century tradition of Chinese student activism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 48 , December 1971 , pp. 698 - 735
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1971

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References

1. “The Chiang Kai-shek Government Is Besieged by the Whole People,” Selected Works, Vol. IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), p. 135.Google Scholar This was a commentary written by Mao for the Hsin-hua News Agency on 30 May 1947.

2. These include: Barnett, A. Doak, China on the Eve of Communist Takeover (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar; Belden, Jack, China Shakes the World (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Bodde, Derk, Peking Diary: 1948–1949 (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1967)Google Scholar; Hinton, William, Fanshen (New York: Random House, 1968)Google Scholar; Melby, John F., The Mandate of Heaven: Record of a Civil War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968)Google Scholar; and Strong, Anna Louise, The Chinese Conquer China (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1949).Google Scholar Of these, only Doak Barnett discusses the student movement in any great detail. See pp. 40–51.

3. See for example, Chassin, Lionel Max, The Communist Conquest of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Tsou, Tang, America's Failure in China, 1941–50 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Feis, Herbert, The China Tangle (New York: Atheneum, 1965).Google Scholar

4. The exceptions here include two works on the economy: Kia-ngau, Chang, The Inflationary Spiral: the Experience in China, 1939–1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1958)Google Scholar; and Shun-hsin, Chou, The Chinese Inflation, 1937–1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

5. In addition to the informers and secret agents planted by the authorities in schools where activity was greatest, students sympathetic to the Government and particularly members of the KMT Youth Corps were supposed to organize and lead student activities, contest student elections and the like. The keenest interest in most schools centred around the election of the officers of the Student Self-governing Associations in which the entire student body participated. Another interviewee recalled the plight of the pro-Government students in his middle school in Fukien. The brightest and most energetic student leaders were all critical of the Government and the war, and almost always had the support of the majority of the students. Rarely were the right-wingers able to take control of the Student Self-governing Association away from them. (From interviews conducted during the spring and summer of 1969.)

6. This outline of the December First Movement is based on a comparative reading of the following: Lin, Hu, I-er-i te hui-i (Recollections of December First) (Hong Kong: Hai-hung, 1949)Google Scholar, passim; Nien-k'un, Wang, Hsüeh-sheng yün-tung shih yao chiang-hua (Talking about the Student Movement) (Shanghai: Shang Tsa ch'u-pan she, 1951), pp. 64–73Google Scholar; Ch'ing-nien sheng-huo, Vol. I, No. 1 (Liaoning, 12 1948)Google Scholar, passim; and Payne, Robert, China Awake (New York: D odd, Mead, and Company, 1947), pp. 200–260.Google Scholar These accounts were all generally sympathetic to the students.

7. The experiences of these students during the Second World War was undoubtedly one of the factors which conditioned them for their new roles as antiwar protesters. When the students of Peking, Chinghua, Nankai and many other universities set out on the arduous journey to the South-West, in most cases they left behind their families and the security of an ordered existence in some of China's top educational institutions. Having endured this uprooting experience and the uncertainties of refugee existence which included for them inadequate food, housing, educational facilities and deteriorating educational standards, ‘they had gained a keen awareness of the hardships of prolonged war. They had also grown to believe that it was their right and duty to speak out against it. Commenting on how students had been affected by their experiences during the Anti-Japanese War, an editor of the Peiping Ching-shih jih-pao, wrote: “Yesterday's students advocated ‘democracy’ and ‘science’ and opposed imperialism and feudalism. These ideals have not changed today… only the ideals of today's students have been tempered by society and their exuberance has been repressed, so that in their speech and actions they are now more determined and firmer.” Yü Ts'ai-yu, , “Tan chin-t'ien te hsüeh-sheng” (“Talking about today's students”), Kuan-ch'a (Observer) (Shanghai), Vol. IV, No. 9 (24 04 1948), p. 17.Google Scholar Fei Hsiao-t'ung also wrote a sensitive article on this topic, “Mei-yu an-p'ai hao te tao-lu” (“There is no properly arranged road”), Kuan-ch'a (Observer), Vol. II, No. 10 (3 05 1947), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

8. Ho-p'ing jih-pao (Peace Daily) (a KMT military paper) (Chungking), 21 November 1945, translated in U.S. Consulate General (and U.S. Office of War Information), Chungking, China, Chinese Press Review, 21 11 1945.Google Scholar

9. South-West Associated University was the war-time amalgam of three northern universities, Peking, Chinghua, and Nankai, which had moved to the South-West from Peiping in order to escape the Japanese occupation. The war-time university was often referred to in Chinese by the shortened form, Lienta.

10. The professors who addressed the meeting were Ch'ien Tuan-sheng, Fei Hsiao-t'ung and P'an Ta-kuei. The identity of the fourth professor is uncertain. Payne identified the fourth professor as Wu Ch'i-yuan, in China Awake, p. 203Google Scholar; Hu Lin referred to Han, Wu in Recollections of December First, p. 4.Google Scholar

11. Payne, , China Awake, pp. 221, 222Google Scholar; Liang Sou-ming and Chou Hsin-min also indicated that Li and Kuan were in control of affairs in the province at this time, in their report, Li Wen an tiao-ch'a pao-kao shu (Report on the Investigation of the Li-Wen Case) (Nanking: Chung-kuo min-chu t'ung-meng tsung-pu, 1946), p. 8.Google Scholar

The political situation in Yünnan in December 1945 was in a state of considerable flux. On the day the four young people were killed, 1 December, Lu Han was installed as the new governor of the province although he did not formally take over the duties of the office from former Governor Li Tsung-huang for several days. Lu had been appointed to the post as part of a complex manoeuvre by the Central Government designed to bring the province under its direct control. Geographically remote, Yunnan's long tradition of political autonomy had been perpetuated during the years of KMT rule in China by Lung Yün who ruled the province from the late 1920s until October 1945. He had nevertheless allied with the Central Government during the Anti-Japanese War. Yunnanese forces commanded by his half-brother, Lu Han, fought alongside Nationalist armies against the Japanese. Immediately after the War, however, the Central Government moved swiftly in an attempt to break Lung Yün's power in Yunnan. Lu Han with a major Yunnanese force was dispatched to Indo-China to accept the Japanese surrender there. Meanwhile, the Central Government's Fifth Army under General Tu Yü-ming, surrounded Kunming on 3 and 4 October and demanded the surrender of Governor Lung Yün. This he did after a minor show of resistance and Yunnan was for the first time brought under the direct control of the Central Government.

Local KMT leader, Li Tsung-huang, temporarily assumed the post of governor until Lu Han was appointed to replace him on 1 December. Li nevertheless retained his position as Chairman of the provincial KMT organization. Students were particularly hostile towards Li because of an incident many years previously in which as a young KMT official he had allegedly been responsible for the death of a student, Liang Yüan-pin, during an education reform campaign in Kunming. Both Li and Garrison Commander Kuan were soon removed from their positions apparently as a result of the 1 December incident. But this did not make Kunming any safer for critics of the Civil War and the Central Government. The following summer, the popular professor Wen I-to and Li Kung-p'u were assassinated on the streets of the city by “unidentified persons.” Liang Sou-ming and Chou Hsin-min, in their report on the murders, commented that at least when Lung Yün had controlled the province “various kinds of secret agents” had not been allowed to carry on their activities at will as they had ever since the Central Government took over there.

12. Yü Tsai hsien-sheng chi-nien wei-yüan hui (ed.), I-erh-i min-chu yün-tung chi-nien chi (Commemorative Writings on the December First Democratic Movement) (Shanghai: Chen-hua, 1946)Google Scholar, passim. The incident also aroused widespread editorial comment, for example, Chieh-fang jih-pao (Liberation Daily) (Yenan), 12 01 1945, p. 4Google Scholar, and Ta kung pao (Shanghai), 10 01 1945Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 10 01 1945.Google Scholar

13. Garrison Commander Kuan, in an interview with Robert Payne, maintained that there were such elements within the school but could provide no concrete information on them. Payne, , China Awake, pp. 214, 222.Google Scholar An article in the independent journal Kuan-ch'a (Observer) a year later also asserted that there had been Communists at Lienta although the reporter gave no indication as to their numbers or who they were. Pen k'an t'e-yüeh chi-che, “Hsi-nan lien-ta, jen-wu wan-ch'eng, hua cheng wei ling” (“Its mission completed, Lienta has disbanded”), Kuan-ch'a (Observer), Vol. I, No. 6 (5 10 1946), p. 17.Google Scholar

14. Chieh-fang ph-pao (Liberation Daily) (Yenan), the following issues: 24 11 1945, p. 1Google Scholar; 29 November 1945, p. 1; 30 November 1945, p. 1; and 12 December 1945, p. 4.

15. This account is based on the following sources: Hua-pei hsüeh-sheng yün-tuag hsiao shih pien-chi wei-yüan hui (ed.), Hua-pei hsüeh-sheng yün-tung hsiao shih (A Short History of the North China Student Movement) (n.p., 1948), PP. 12–32Google Scholar; I-chiu-szu-pa nien shou-ts'e (1948 Handbook) (Hong Kong: Hua shang pao), pp. chia 57–58; En-tse, Hu, Hui-i ti-san-tzu kuo-nei ko-ming chan-cheng shih-chi te Shang-hai hsüeh-sheng yün-tung (Recollections of the Student Movement in Shanghai During the Third Revolutionary War) (Shanghai: Jen-min, 1958), pp. 16–19Google Scholar; Chieh-fang jih-pao (Liberation Daily) for the period; U.S. Consulate, Peiping, Chinese Press Review, for the period; U.S. Consulate General, Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, for the period; and an account in English based on Chinese and English language newspapers in Peiping, in Thurston Origgs, Americans in China: Some Chinese Views, pamphlet No. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Foundation for Foreign Affairs, 1948), pp. 7–14.

16. The China White Paper, II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 694.Google Scholar This figure was down from a peak strength, at the end of 1945, of about 113,000 men.

17. See below, pp. 710–11 and footnote 21.

18. One of these exceptions was an assault by a large group of men in army uniforms on a propaganda team of the students' Anti-U.S. Brutality Association in Chungking in early February. Several students were injured. Ta kung pao (Shanghai), 7 02 1947Google Scholar and 10 February 1947, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 1 02 1947 and 10 February 1947.Google Scholar

19. “Statement by President Truman on U.S. China Policy,” in The China White Paper, p. 694.Google Scholar

20. Tsou, Tang, America's Failure in China, p. 444Google Scholar; and Clubb, O. Edmund, Twentieth Century China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 279.Google Scholar

21. For example, on 10 April 1946, the Ho-p'ing jih-pao, a Kuomintang military paper, reported that “The number of incidents in which American servicemen create nuisances due to drunkenness is daily increasing. Only one-tenth of the total number of cases are those of wilful offences. Otherwise, any number of people have just been beaten up for no reason.” On 11 September 1946, the Wen-hui pao, a leftist paper, reported that “According to information supplied by the Hospital [St. Marie's in Shanghai], there were 35 cases in which Chinese people were wounded due to reckless driving of U.S. Army trucks and jeeps in August… 12 were seriously wounded and 5 died. Based on the report of St. Marie's Hospital alone, there was an average of one Chinese hit and wounded by U.S. trucks and jeeps every day in that month.”

22. This account of the May 1947 demonstrations is based on the following: Lei, Ch'en, Hsiang p'ao-k'ou yao fan ch'ih (Asking For Food from the Muzzles of Guns) (Shanghai, Hu-pin, 1947), pp. 1–134Google Scholar, passim; Hua-pei hsüeh-sheng yün-tung hsiao shih pien-chi wei-yüan hui (ed.), Short History of North China Student Movement, pp. 33–89Google Scholar; I-chiu-szu-pa nien shou-ts'e (1948 Handbook), pp. chia 58–61Google Scholar; En-tse, Hu, Recollections of Student Movement in Shanghai, pp. 21–41Google Scholar; Nien-k'un, Wang, Talking about the Student Movement, pp. 82–86Google Scholar; U.S. Consulate, Peiping, Chinese Press ReviewGoogle Scholar, for the period; U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, for the period; U.S. Cons. Gen., Tientsin, Chinese Press Review, for the period; and U.S. Cons., Kunming, Chinese Press Review, for the period.

23. Wen-hui pao (Shanghai), 29 and 30 04 1947Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 29 and 30 04 1947Google Scholar; Ta kung pao, 29 04 and 14 May 1947Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 29 04 and 14 May 1947.Google Scholar

24. They pointed out that since prices had risen four times in Nanking between December 1946 and May 1947, their food allowance should now be four times the CN$24,000 sum granted in December. In reality, they were receiving CN$60.000 or less per month. In their report, students from the Medical School noted that the average Chinese student required 2,584 calories per day, and showed how, given the current prices in Nanking, the students were only able to consume 1,859·2 calories daily on a monthly food allowance of CN$60,000. Someone else estimated that the cost of two minutes and 37 seconds of the Civil War was equal to the food expenditure of the entire student body of 4,500 for one month.

25. The furore which this incident aroused was such that President Chiang himself finally issued a statement condemning it. In the early hours of 1 June, several students and at least five professors were awakened and marched out to waiting police vans. The entire campus was aroused in the process and a large group of students surrounded one of the vans determined to prevent its departure. Several rounds of gunfire were aimed ostensibly over the heads of the protesting students but, as it happened, a dormitory was in the line of fire. Examinations of the dead and injured revealed that their wounds had been inflicted by dum-dum bullets, the use of which is prohibited in international law. The head of the Detective Dept. of the Wuhan Garrison Command was ultimately held responsible for the “negligence” of his subordinates. He was discharged from his post and soon thereafter his body was found in the Yangtze River, reportedly a suicide.

26. Lei, Ch'en, Asking for Food, pp. 25–30.Google Scholar

27. The association did apparently continue to function despite the Government's dissolution order. It was reported that the All-China Students Association was the organizer of the student aid campaign which got under way in late July. Moreover, in Peiping the honorary advisers of the campaign were the Presidents of Peking, Ch'inghua and Yenching Universities. Although municipal officials declared it to be illegal, no effort was made to interfere with the aid campaign. The students organized door-to-door brigades and street propaganda teams which solicited contributions. They also sponsored sales and entertainments. Some CN$500,000,000 was collected in Peiping which was distributed to about 1,500 needy students. The All-China Students Association was formally re-established under Communist auspices in Peiping in March 1949.

28. An-p'ing, Ch'u, “Hsüeh-sheng ch'e ch'i-i ch'i, li-shih cheng tsai ch'uang tsao” (“The students have raised the flag of rebellion, history is being made”), Kuan-ch'a (Shanghai), Vol. II, No. 14 (31 05 1947) pp. 3–4Google Scholar; in his second editorial, he took the Ta kung pao severely to task for not having come out strongly in support of the student tide. He suggested that if the editor-in-chief, Wang Yün-sheng, had not been out of town and the editorial-writing had not fallen into other hands, the paper would not have made such an error. “Lun Wen hui, Hsin min, Lien-ho wan pao pei feng chi Ta kung pao tsai che ts'u hsüeh ch'ao chung so piao-shih te t'ai tu” (“On the banning of the Wen hui pao, Hsin min wan-pao and Lien-ho wan-pao and the attitude of Ta kung pao during this student tide”), ibid. pp. 5–7. The Ta kung pao was then a liberal paper associated with the Political Study Clique of the KMT. Kuan-ch'a was an independent liberal weekly and the most popular political journal in China during the Civil War years.

29. Hua-pei hsüeh-sheng yün-tung hsiao shih pien-chi wei-yüan hui (ed.), Short History of North China Student Movement, pp. 69–74.Google Scholar Although the authors were anonymous, the content of the evaluation seems to indicate the fine hand of a serious political organizer. One can only suspect what the origins of such talent might have been in North China in 1947.

30. This summary of the anti-American demonstrations and the Anti-Oppression Anti-Hunger Movement which preceded them is based on the following: Hui, Chang (ed.), Shang-hai chin pai nien ko-ming shih hua (History of the Revolution in Shanghai during the past 100 Years) (Shanghai: Jen-min, 1963), pp. 201–8Google Scholar; Entse, Hu, Recollections of Student Movement in Shanghai, pp. 41–56Google Scholar; I-chiu-szu-chiu nien shou-ts'e (1949 Handbook) (Hong Kong: Hua shang pao), pp. chia 112–118Google Scholar; U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, for the period; U.S. Cons. Gen., Tientsin, Chinese Press Review, for the period; and U.S. Oons., Kunming, Chinese Press Review, for the period.

31. Hsin-min-wan pao (Shanghai), 13 06 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, , Chinese Press Review, 14 06 1948.Google Scholar

32. See below, p. 730.

33. “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party,” Selected Works, Vol. II (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), p. 322.Google Scholar

34. Chieh-fang jih-pao (Yenan), 12 12 1945, p. 4.Google Scholar

35. Chieh-fang jih-pao, 9 01 1947, p. 1.Google Scholar

36. “The Present Situation and Our Tasks,” Selected Works, Vol. IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), p. 170.Google Scholar

37. “On Some Important Problems of the Party's Present Policy,” Selected Works, Vol. IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), p. 184.Google Scholar

38. she, Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien (ed.), Chung-kuo hsüeh-sheng yün-tung te tang-ch'ien jen-wu (The Present Tasks of the Chinese Student Movement) (Peiching: Ch'ing-nien ch'u-pan she, 1950), pp. 20–22Google Scholar, and passim; similar arguments were made in shih, Hsin-hua jih-pao tzu-liao (ed.), Lun chih-shih fen-tzu (On Intellectuals) (Su-nan hsin-hua, 1949), pp. 33–37Google Scholar, and passim; these issues were also discussed in the documents and reports of the 14th All-China Students Representative Conference held in March 1949 in Peking, many of which are reprinted in Chung-kuo hsüeh-sheng ta t'uan-chieh (Chinese Students Unite) (Hong Kong: Hsin min-chu ch'u-pan she, 1949).Google Scholar

39. chü, Szu-fa hsing-cheng pu tiao-ch'a, (ed.), Kung-fei hsüeh-yün kung-tso te p'ou-shih (Disclosures of Communist Bandit Work in the Student Movement) (Taiwan: Szu-fa hsing-cheng pu tiao-ch'a chü, 1961), passim.Google Scholar

40. Nien-k'un, Wang, Talking about the Student Movement, passimGoogle Scholar; En-tse, Hu, Recollections of Student Movement in Shanghai, passim.Google Scholar

41. From interviews conducted during the spring and summer of 1969.

42. From a reprint of the article in she, Hua-tung jen-min ch'u-pan (ed.), Tsai tou-cheng li chuang-ta (Growing Up in the Struggle) (Shanghai: Hua-tung jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1951), pp. 86–100.Google Scholar

43. One of the KMT Government's final acts in Shanghai was to try to destroy the Party's strength at Chiaota. In early 1949, after the fall of Peiping and Tientsin to the Communists, the Party organization at Chiaota underwent considerable expansion in preparation for the liberation of Shanghai. 400 Chiaota students had been drawn into the Communist-sponsored New Democratic Youth League by April 1949. On the night of 26 April, KMT military police invaded the campus. The police blacklist contained 300 names but as it turned out only about 40 were arrested that night. At least two of these students were executed shortly afterwards. They were Mu Han-hsiang, a member of the Party's general branch committee at Chiaota, and Shih Hsiao-wen, a member of the Student Self-governing Committee and of the New Democratic Youth League. Communist troops took Shanghai on 25 May. Ibid. pp. 97–100; and Chieh-fang jih-pao (Shanghai), 31 05 1949Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 29–31 05 1949.Google Scholar

44. The China White Paper II, p. 842.Google Scholar

45. Li pao (Shanghai), 27 05 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 27 05 1948.Google Scholar

46. Ta kung pao (Shanghai), 15 04 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 15 04 1948Google Scholar; the paper reiterated this position on several occasions. For example on 16 July 1948 an editorial declared, “We may say that anyone who uses violence against youths does not understand their psychology nor does he know what education is. To consider all youthful students as bandits is to force them to join the opposing camp.”

47. New Road (Peiping), 28 08 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 17 09 1948Google Scholar. Comparable views were expressed in the Reconstruction Review, a liberal Shanghai periodical, 5 September 1948 and in several issues of Kuan-ch'a, for example, Vol. V, No. 2 (4 September 1948), p. 3, and Vol. V, No. 4 (18 September 1948), p. 3.

48. The Yü Tzu-san case received extensive press coverage. The account here is based largely on the following: Ta kung pao (Shanghai), 2 11 1947Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 3 11 1947Google Scholar; Chung-yang jih-pao (Shanghai), 21 11 1947Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Chinese Press Review, 21 11 1947Google Scholar; Hsin-wen pao (a KMT-supervised paper) (Shanghai), 20 11 1947Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 21 11 1947Google Scholar; and Hsin-wen pao (Shanghai), 8 01 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, Chinese Press Review, 8 01 1948.Google Scholar

49. “The Present Situation and Our Tasks,” Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 170.Google Scholar

50. Barnett, A. Doak, China on the Eve of Communist Takeover, pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

51. New York Times, 20 06 1948, p. 37.Google Scholar

52. Tung-nan jih-pao (Shanghai), 24 12 1948Google Scholar, trans, in U.S. Cons. Gen., Shanghai, , Chinese Press Review, 24 12 1948.Google Scholar

53. The results of the survey were reprinted in Kuan-ch'a (Shanghai), Vol. IV, No. 20 (17 07 1948), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

54. Melby, , The Mandate of Heaven, p. 153Google Scholar. Melby suggests that prior to this time there was some indecision within the Government over what course to follow.