Table Of ContentTHE BROKEN WAVE
HARVARD EAST ASIAN SERIES 90
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The
Broken
Wave
THE CHINESE COMMUNIST
PEASANT MOVEMENT, 1922-1928
ROY HOFHEINZ, JR.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
AND LONDON, ENGLAND 1977
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Copyright © 1977 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Preparation of this volume has been aided by a grant
from the Ford Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hofheinz, Roy, 1935-
The broken wave.
(Harvard East Asian series; 90)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. China—Politics and government —1912-1937.
2. Communism —China. 3. Peasant uprisings—China.
I. Title. II. Series
DS777.47.H65 1977 951.04Ί 76-56097
ISBN 0-674-08391-1
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PREFACE
This book is about a peasant revolution that failed. It is also
about men with an idea of revolution that ultimately succeeded.
These two concerns, rather than fascination with a voluminously
documented historical tragedy, have led me to retell the story of the
Chinese Revolution of the 1920s. Contemporary events compel us to
consider the conditions that produce revolutions —especially rural
ones —as well as the quality of the men who continue to rule the
world's most populous nation.
Two theses emerge from this retelling. The first is historical: that
the practice of rural revolution later propounded by Mao Tse-tung
and others had its origins before the Red Army, the rural soviets, or
the anti-Japanese liberated areas were even conceived of. A corol-
lary of this thesis is that the characteristic attitudes of Peking's pres-
ent-day leaders bear the stamp of this early failure as much as of
later success. The second thesis is analytical: that the Chinese Com-
munists failed to win their rural revolution in the 1920s because they
had not laid the proper political foundation for it. By showing that
revolutionary politics, like any other kind, requires a proper mixture
of persuasion, compromise, and coercion, this thesis challenges those
who would define revolutionary potential in other than political
terms. The conditions for revolution, as well as for successful coun-
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terrevolution, are essentially artifacts of human effort rather than
immutable givens of social structure, economics, or demography.
These theses point to no conclusions about the desirability of
revolution or the moral worth of men who seek it. I remain per-
suaded that human warfare of whatever kind is inane. The real
tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, to use Harold Isaacs's famous
title, was not so much that one side failed to win as that the goals of
national unity and broader political participation for the mass of
villagers could not be achieved without great bloodshed. It is rele-
vant to our concerns in the 1970s to learn why this was so.
This work could not have been done without help. I owe a great
debt to many people who shared with me their knowledge of China.
Etö Shinkichi, Ichiko Chüzö, Ishikawa Tadaö, and Eugene Wu
pointed me to new materials and guided me through the maze of
Chinese and Japanese documentation. Edward C. M. Chan, Frances
Hsieh, June Mei, and Marcia Reed Yee helped me interpret the raw
materials at our command. Donald W. Klein, Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,
Michel Oksenberg, Harold Zvi Schiffrin, and Ezra F. Vogel offered
valuable observations on earlier drafts. Suzanne Berger and John D.
Powell shared insights into other kinds of peasant politics than I
treat here. My intellectual debt to my predecessors in the study of
China in the twenties — Conrad Brandt, Robert North, Harold
Isaacs, Jean Chesneaux, and C. Martin Wilbur—will be obvious to
those who know of their seminal work. To John K. Fairbank, Ben-
jamin I. Schwartz, and John M. H. Lindbeck, teachers and col-
leagues, I owe a special personal debt. Without their support and
that of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard, where we worked
together, this book would not have been written. Finally, Harriet
Parker Hofheinz has contributed the hope and good cheer without
which sustained scholarly effort is impossible.
The title of The Broken Wave carries a double meaning. Explicitly
it promises to explore the wave of peasant revolution in south China
that crested and crashed between 1922 and 1928, a task undertaken
in Parts One and Two. Less evidently, it points to the father of Chi-
nese rural communism, P'eng P'ai, whose chosen name mimicked
the booming sound of breaking waves. Until he receives the recogni-
tion he deserves in China, Part Three will have to serve as a partial
tribute to his seminal role in modern Chinese politics.
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CONTENTS
PART ONE
STRATEGY
1 The Birth of the Rural Strategy 3
2 Mao Tse-tung as a Rural Strategist 29
PART TWO
ORGANIZATION
3 Staffing the Revolution:
The Kuomintang Peasant Bureaucracy 67
4 Education for Revolution:
The Peasant Movement Institute 78
5 Organizing the Masses:
The Peasant Associations 93
6 The Social Background:
Explanations of Success and Failure 110
PART THREE
PRACTICE
7 Origins of a Revolution:
P'eng P'ai in Haifeng, 1922-1924 139
8 The Politics of Dependency:
Kwangning, 1924-1925 179
9 The Face of the Enemy: Hua County, 1926 214
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10 Birth of a People's War: Haifeng, 1927 234
11 Deathofa Revolution: Haifeng, 1928 263
12 The Legacy of China's Peasant Movement 284
Appendix A 309
Appendix Β 310
Notes 313
Bibliography 340
Index 349
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TABLES
1 Communist and non-Communist KMT regional and provincial
officers, 1924 70
2 Political affiliation of section chiefs and secretaries in the KMT
regional executive offices, 1924 71
3 Political affiliation of section chiefs and secretaries in KMT central
departments 72
4 Classes, principals, dates of operation, and graduates of the Peasant
Movement Institute 79
5 Provincial origins of Peasant Movement Institute and Whampoa
students and active Communist peasant movement workers 82
6 Structure of Kwangtung Provincial Peasant Association, 1926 101
7 Peasant association membership claimed by organizers from 1924 to
1927 in four provinces and all of China 104
8 Peasant association membership statistics for three provinces, 1926-
1927 112
9 Correlations of some explanatory variables with peasant association
success 113
10 Peasant association success correlations with political measures 116
11 Regional origins of Kwangtung students at the Whampoa Academy
and Peasant Movement Institute 127
12 Characteristics of Communist base counties in three periods, 1924-
1945: average value on five variables potentially affecting
success 135
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