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The New Chinese Communist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Allen S. Whiting
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Extract

A Major obstacle to analysis of Communist movements is the, absence of firsthand evidence on attitudes and motivations affecting tension and cohesion. The refusal of four thousand members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Youth Corps to return to the mainland after the Korean War offered an unusually large and representative cross-section of these two organizations for systematic interrogation. The results of such an interrogation conducted by the author in April 1954, while in no way conclusive, provide suggestive statistical and analytical information concerning the composition and motivations of the post-Yenan Chinese Communist.

According to official Communist figures, the Chinese Communist Party numbered approximately three million in December 1948 and more than five million in June 1950. This increase of two million members in eighteen months represents the most rapid expansion of Party rolls in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. It occurred after victory was in sight, but before rigorous measures to consolidate control erupted in the “Three Anti” and “Five Anti” movements of 1951. Those who joined the Party during this period form a group strikingly different from the elite of the Chinese Communist movement, which is composed of devoted revolutionaries trained in the rigorous experiences of the Long March and the wartime days of Yenan.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , July 1955 , pp. 592 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1955

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References

1 This study was made possible by funds granted by the Ford Foundation. That Foundation is not, however, to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the statements made by the author. Grateful acknowledgment is due Lieutenant-General Chiang Ching-kuo, then head of the Political Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Nationalist Government of China, for his full cooperation and complete acceptance of the author's terms for making this study.

2 New China News Agency, in Jen Min Jih Pau, July 1, 1950.Google Scholar This same dispatch gave Party membership as 40,000 “at the beginning of the war” and approximately 1,200,000 “when die war with Japan was ended”; translated and quoted in Shu, Fang, Campaign of Party-expansion of the Chinese Communist Party in 1952, Hong Kong, Union Research Institute, 1953, p. 7.Google Scholar

3 Every twentieth name was selected from rosters, compiled indiscriminately, containing the names of four thousand ex-PW's who voluntarily admitted membership in die Party or Corps. The initial starting-point on each roster varied and names were selected immediately prior to interrogation. A schedule of fifty-two questions was prepared with the assistance of persons familiar with the target-group through interrogation work in Korea. Rephrasing was permitted when necessary to facilitate comprehension by die respondents. Four Chinese civilian assistants with a knowledge of various dialects as well as of English were hired by the author to administer the schedule verbally.

4 It is difficult to ascertain the precise number of non-repatriates who were former Communists. Official Nationalist figures place the group as high as 4,628. However, the aumor met at least a dozen persons identified on Nationalist rosters as “ex-Communists” who denied in private having any connection with the Party or Corps. Accusations in the Korean compounds, often accompanied by physical pressure, forced PW's to “admit” Communist membership. Thus a conservative estimate of four thousand former Chinese Communist non-repatriates provides a reliable basis for statistical analysis.

6 Mr. Joseph Brooks kindly provided the author with valuable background material gained during two years of close contact wim Chinese PW's in Korea as an intelligence officer.

6 In August 1952, an official Communist report dwelt at length upon the weak Party organization in Central and South China: “Our Party members in some of the [govern ment] units only constitute 10.9% of their personnel. In some business units, it is even impossible to set up strong Party-branches owing to the scarcity of Party members in them. … In some institutions of higher learning, there are few or no Party members on the teaching staff. … There are over 20,000 hsiang in the Southwest Area, of which 93% still have no Party-branches” (Chang Chiang Jih Pao, August 7, 1952, in Fang Shu, op.cit., pp. 3–4). The continuing difficulty which Nationalist intelligence sources experienced in reporting on North China compared wim southern and coastal provinces suggests the validity of this geographical analysis as late as November 1954.

7 One mu approximately equals one-sixth of an acre; fifteen mu approximately equals one hectare.

8 The curve suggests that a larger sample might have included persons with higher education. It is possible that better-educated Party members were exempt from service in the front lines, thus causing some distortion in this sample.

9 Article I of the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance Between the USSR and the People's Republic of China, February 14, 1950, as quoted in Beloff, Max, Soviet Policy in the Far East, 1944–1951, Oxford, 1953, p. 261.Google Scholar