Dear Reader, I know it has been a few years since my last dispatch. So much has changed since I last gave my report on Mao Zedong’s Land Reform movement. I have decided to make my way back into the countryside from Beijing to give you, the reader, a first-hand account of the rumblings of food shortages happening here. I had heard in a letter correspondence with the Jinan Municipal Investigation Team that a famine had occurred in Gaoguanzhai, in West Shandong Province. [Zhou Xun, 9] This was not the first time I had heard an inkling of such events occurring however it made me curious to head for the countryside.

I arrived in the countryside villages looking for people who might be able to offer me some sort of clue. I spoke to a man by the name of Dr. Li Zhisui, formerly Chairman Mao’s physician [China A Century of Revolution – The Mao Years 39:59] He agreed to speak with me after a little bit of pressure. He told me that Mao had gone to his hometown of Zhoushan to look at what had gone wrong. Zhisui said, “I think that when he was in Zhaoshan, he found that there really were problems in the Great Leap Forward” [China A Century of Revolution – The Mao Years 50:04] It was clear that Chairman Mao and his party were aware of the situation that was unfolding. 

I made my way back to Beijing following my short trip. Once in Beijing, I accessed some reports that had been published about 4 years ago. I located a document coming from the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Province by province, village by village, the reports became more and more shocking. One from Guangdong in the south stated, “According to information from fifty-five counties, the famine in the spring caused 963,231 people to go without food, and seven people have died of starvation. There are also sixty-nine people suffering from edema. In these areas, 547 families have lost their homes and been forced to move elsewhere. Twenty-seven people from among them ran away, ten families sold their children, and sixty-six people became beggars” [Zhou Xun, Document 2, Page 12]. It is becoming clearer to me that the famine is causing more than just death, but serious struggle in terms of quality of life.   

Though it is becoming ever clearer that the famine has caused immense deaths across the country, I want to bring to your attention the issues regarding women during these terrible times. It seems to be that the party is expecting women to fill two roles at once. They want them to work and care for their kids [Zhou Xun, Document 23, Page 53]. This double expectation is highly problematic during the famine. It was clear in a document I was able to read that women were not receiving any of the proper resources they needed to maintain this double expectation. Local cadres used their power to humiliate working women. Following many instances of women being pressured into working with their tops off as was to the enjoyment of local cadres, a few women shared their thoughts in the document. “Female workers such as Du Laojiu and Zhouchun from Number 3 regiment said, “Since the day we came out of mothers’ wombs, we had never felt so humiliated [What happened was more humiliating than being caught having an affair.] According to our investigations, more than thirty women became and vomited as a result of working topless” [Zhou Xun, Document 11, Page 42]. This kind of humiliation and abuse of power is symbolic of the ignorance that caused the Great Leap to be such a failure. 

I can only wonder who will claim responsibility for the devastating past few years. I worry that the Chairman will need to transform the party once again to bring China back to full-strength but I believe in his leadership capabilities. I hope that the Chairman can harness the power of the many people who still believe in him.

Dear Readers,

Chaos has erupted, blood has spilled, and China’s predicament is perilous. Since my last dispatch reporting on Land Reform, the Communist Party has successfully rooted out dissenters and intellectuals through the anti-rightest campaign. I am writing to you with a pen name with the hope of not being caught for the ‘rightest’ leanings. Chairman Mao jumpstarted the largest, most disastrous campaign yet, The Great Leap Forward, to fully realize the Party’s ambitions to industrialize and create a communist utopia within China. The Chairman’s efforts have failed miserably, resulting in one of the largest famines in history, and with more deaths than the combined total in the war against Japan and the Guomindang.

Chairman Mao and the high leadership have directed the Party to get back on the horse. Aggressive policies have revolutionized the countryside by establishing work communes, and by devoting resources towards large industrial projects to grow China’s economy larger than Britain’s in less than fifteen years. Consequently, a rat race has ensued throughout the countryside attempting to accomplish everything all at once. Zhang Langlang said “Each commune promised a higher amount until the last school gave their highest figure. Then we dug a hole the size of a swimming pool and put all the fertilizer and seeds in it.” Since the Party squashed decent through the anti-rightest campaign no one has spoken out against these farcical farming practices that have robbed so many of their food. In a speech to high-level party members, the great Peng Duhai, one of the great generals of our revolution, was removed from power for suggesting the Party was moving too quickly. Now, farmers have stopped working their fields building backyard furnaces to forge homemade steel. Subsequently, rural people have given up essential and scarce consumer products that they needed to survive including their pots and pans, tools, and bedframes. Li Maoxiu told me in an interview that “their steel-making methods were primitive, and that people were unhappy and didn’t dare say anything against the party. The result was that everything made of iron and steel was taken from every family and was made useless.”  The party has continued to pressure communes for higher production numbers from the fields and from new industrial projects. Through unrealistic goals, they cultivated a culture of increased competition, and they stripped workers of the vital tools necessary to accomplish the collective task ahead. It was under this backdrop, where dissent was crushed, where unrealistic agriculture and industrial practices were implemented, and where a culture of violence in the countryside that festered finally exploded.

Irrational agriculture practices have led our great China into one of the worst manmade famines in history. Lacking the necessary tools and implementing close planting has completely ruined the harvest over the past few years. Rural folk now find themselves searching for food substitutes and wandering throughout the countryside, desperate to find sustenance for survival. One report from Jingian indicates that some have wandered ten miles away from their villages in search of food. Additionally, Party officials are suspicious that food is being concealed by the peasants during this despot time. One notable example is the report of Wu Xing who led a raid of peasant homes in his quest to find hidden grain and his establishment of extrajudicial prisons that tortured the suspected farmers. We should not blame Wu or others who have raided and pillaged, we should blame the high leadership for cultivating a culture where discussion is silenced. We must ask ourselves how can the peasants be hiding food when they are eating dirt?

Women and children have been brutally affected by the Great Leap. Malnourished women have stopped menstruating, producing breastmilk for their children, and have been exploited sexually to keep morale high. A report from Wugang County explains women were forced to take their tops off in the fields to boost male morale among agricultural workers. Du Laojiu and Zhao Laochun felt that “what happened was more humiliating than having an affair.” China’s future, our children, are now burdened with rickets, a developmental disorder of the bones. How can peasants expect future prosperity when children cannot walk straight, and women can no longer have babies? Additionally, they are suffering the fate of being broken up from their families as they have watched their parents die or they have been sold off into an uncertain future. Orphaned children can be found digging roots and eating dirt. Wang Jiarong was unable to feed the children in her orphanage, and after they left to “rummage for food,” she physically beat the children as a form of punishment. This Great Leap has certainly landed China in a pit of misery and death and what remains to be answered is how the Party will remain credible moving forward in the face of this misery.

It becomes clear as we delve more into this terrible time in China’s history that a number of things have come together to cause this great catastrophe. Why have some areas been plagued with so much bloodshed, death, and misery my editor asked me to respond to this, asking, why and what went wrong? 

The Great Leap Forward’s errors were caused by irrational ideology, bad policy decisions, and unavoidable catastrophes.

The philosophy of collectivization, in which peasants were grouped into communes and extensive farming was practiced, was at the heart of the Great Leap Forward. Theoretically, this would result in a surplus of goods and higher agricultural output. The reality of this utopian approach, however, quickly became a breakdown in the social structure of rural communities resulting from this, in addition to food shortages.

A leadership system that suppressed dissent and discouraged critical thinking made the problem worse. It was challenging to evaluate and fix the mistakes under Chairman Mao’s administration because officials who dared to voice their opposition to the programs were frequently branded as enemies of the state.

The issues were significantly made worse by the tense political climate of the day. Local officials overstated production numbers to their superiors in an effort to demonstrate their allegiance to the Communist Party. Making judgments based on facts was impossible due to the misleading information at all levels of government. Because of this, the central leadership frequently operated in the dark and was ignorant of the grim situation on the ground.

Adding to the calamity we­re natural disasters, such as droughts and floods. These­ events further straine­d China’s already fragile food production, exace­rbating the dire situation. The subse­quent Great Famine inflicte­d immense suffering on millions of pe­ople, particularly in the countryside whe­re its impact was most devastating.

The suffe­ring experience­d by many people was worsene­d due to certain policies, like­ the backyard steel furnace­ campaign. This initiative diverted labor away from agriculture­ and towards producing low-quality steel. Unfortunately, this misguide­d focus resulted in a deple­tion of the workforce nee­ded for farming, ultimately contributing to the crisis at hand.  

This e­ra has been marred by violence and de­ath, which can be traced back to the ruthle­ss methods employed in e­nforcing the policies. Local officials, burdene­d with meeting unattainable production goals, re­sorted to seizing grains and eve­n food from households, plunging countless individuals into misery. Tragically, these actions sometimes sparke­d violent clashes betwe­en the state and de­sperate citizens.

 

As always, stay safe…

Zeng Yongzheng

From the countryside, where the majority of peasants live, I pen down this report with a heavy heart and a sense of responsibility. The People’s Republic of China, under the visionary leadership of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao, embarked on the ambitious journey of the Great Leap Forward in 1958. This initiative was conceived with the noblest of intentions – to propel our nation into an era of rapid industrialization and agricultural modernization. However, as 1962 dawns, it is evident that the path we charted has been fraught with challenges.

Central to the Great Leap Forward was the transformation of our agricultural sector. The establishment of the People’s Communes aimed to consolidate smaller farms into collective units, thereby harnessing the power of communal labor. Traditional farming practices, honed over centuries, were abruptly replaced with new methods. The push for deep plowing and close planting, though theoretically sound, did not yield the expected results on the ground. Local cadres, eager to demonstrate their commitment to the Party’s vision, often set and reported inflated grain production targets. This over-reporting, while showcasing short-term success, had long-term implications. The state, believing in these inflated figures, procured grain based on them. This left the actual grain production, which was much lower, insufficient to feed the local populace, leading to food shortages.

The Four Pests Campaign, an integral part of the Great Leap Forward, sought to improve hygiene and reduce disease by eliminating sparrows, rats, flies, and mosquitoes. However, the large-scale extermination of sparrows led to an unforeseen ecological imbalance. With their natural predator gone, locust populations surged, leading to widespread crop devastation.

The root of the violence and suffering can be traced back to a combination of overzealous policies, unrealistic targets, and a lack of understanding of agricultural practices. The commune system, which was introduced to consolidate land and labor, ended up disrupting traditional farming methods. Farmers were forced to implement deep plowing and close planting, techniques that were believed to increase yields but instead led to reduced production.

The pressure to meet grain quotas led local officials to over-report their yields. This over-reporting had catastrophic consequences. The central government, believing that grain production was high, collected more grain than was actually produced. This left little for the local population, leading to widespread famine.

The consequences of these policies have been devastating. Reports of malnutrition, starvation, and death are rampant. In some regions, the desperation has led to unthinkable acts of violence and even cannibalism. The exact number of deaths remains uncertain, but it is believed to be in the tens of millions.

The atmosphere in the countryside is tense. There are reports of violent clashes between desperate villagers and local officials. The mistrust and fear between the people and the local authorities have grown, with many believing that the officials are hoarding grain for themselves.

Dear Comrades,

I report to you, that Mao and the CCP have officially ditched their Great Leap Forward program. It is about time! Violence, death, destruction, famine etc. have all become the norm. Many of these catastrophes have clouded peoples memories to even why the program was initiated, and what it intended to do. For a refresher, It was Mao’s attempt to turn our country into an industrialized nation and away from an agrarian society. Further we had to owe the Soviet Union a large amount of grain, as a payback unit (debt), so we were tasked with producing an immense and unrealistic amount. So, what went wrong??

We thought we knew better than science. We were so desperate to increase grain production, and generally produce more, that we resorted to arrogantly thinking we can’t go wrong. Military leader, Peng Dehaui commented on this disaster in his paper: “Critique of the Great Leap Forward”. He wrote: “Because they were raised at every level, some quotas, which could only be met after…dozen years, became targets to be fulfilled in one year or even a few months. By so doing, we divorced ourselves from reality and lost the support of the masses.” These desperate measures, were specifically planting crops too close to each other, and digging 6 feet plus into the ground which essentially destroyed the crops; and was a foolish attempt by us ignoring what we have known about the basic laws of science and nature. Specifically, Mao thought this concept of planting crops very close to one another and digging deep in the soil, was the answer!  He instructed us that this concept, called (deep ploughing ) will kill off the insects, and help promote growth of crops faster. He said: Deep ploughing helps weeding. Digging up roots in turn helps elimane insects…once we can go down to the grass roots, we can increase production.” Instead, as we have seen play out, the crops needed room to grow, and digging too far down destroyed all the soil.

If things couldn’t get worse, we also interfered with nature. Mao banked on eliminating the four pests, which were rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitos. He wrote: “The less we have of these four pests, the better for us; because these four pests harm the people and directly affect the health of the people.” We now have figured out that killing all the sparrows, enabled all the locusts to directly eat our crops. We have confirmed that our attempt to disrupt nature, directly caused this great famine.

As a result, tens of millions of people became starved, overworked, and physically ill. Because of these policies, crops could not grow properly and the forced quotas called for desperate measures taken by the people; which in turn caused chaos. It was this mass famine that created mass suffering, which created mass desperation, which then created mass violence, which coupled with everything else, created mass death. Unrealistic forced quotas for grain and crop production, the failure of the deep ploughing method, and arrogantly disrupting the flow of nature, and negligently ignoring basic laws of economics and science, allowed this disaster to happen.

Hello Tongzhimen,

The past few years have been far from paradise for our beloved country. Our valiant effort to industrialize China and begin a future of prosperity has included many challenges, which will of course pay off through the wise guidance of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party, but I am worried about the lasting effects of the struggles we have all become so familiar with. It seems as though the general consensus among the Chinese people is that common problems like famine and flooding are only being experienced by one’s own village, but, in the continued spirit of spreading truth, I am here to tell you all that these issues are much more pervasive, and devastating, than one may think. 

One cannot deny that the mass mobilization of peasants in the countryside was a genius idea of Mao’s, for China would be able to feed all of its people while financing industrial growth and paying off our debts to the Soviet Union. However, the actual mobilization that was carried out has proven to be a little less than perfect. It makes sense that Mao is calling for an increase in China’s population as we simply do not have enough people to sustain both our industrialized and agricultural economies; even with women entering the workforce and going out into the fields, there is not enough people to effectively sustain both our backyard steel furnaces and our farms. Especially with the relocations of farmers to build dams and irrigation canals, there are even fewer hands cultivating the fields. If we had more loyal comrades willing to work hard to produce wheat and steel, maybe we would be better off. We would also be able to finish the many architectural projects that now lay abandoned or are nowhere near the quality they should be. Of course there are more obstacles though, like the natural disasters and shifty cadres who have been taking our hard-earned resources for themselves and lying to the Party about what we’ve produced, as if our best effort isn’t already enough.

Yes, that’s right, you heard me, the local cadres have been lying about our crop production to the Party, completely abusing the trust that has been put in them, which is why so much of our grain is being taken away from us. The famines are not isolated incidents only felt by individual villages, it is a widespread problem that is debilitating our country. I have traveled through multiple villages in the countryside, coming across true horrors in the hopes of discovering the truth about our country’s plight. The lack of food has forced people to turn to food substitutes like leaves, weeds, and even mud; those who are able to sustain themselves off of these end up with destroyed intestines anyway and are still malnourished. During my time in the Gaoguanzhai township, I passed by countless people dragging their swollen bodies to the fields to try and continue working as well as exhausted, extremely skinny peasants who collapsed in front of their homes, probably on the way to work to scrounge up more work points for food. It would be a disservice to not also mention the corpses just left on the sides of roads as well, right where their bodies finally gave out. Peasants do not even have the strength left to bury their own dead! Some bodies do disappear but no new graves are added, I have heard terrible rumors of people having to make use of these bodies for the nourishment of their crops and, sometimes, even themselves. 

Birth rates drop lower and lower as the number of deaths in the countryside rises. Women are barely able to get pregnant, let alone carry the pregnancy to term or take care of their child once it is born. The orphanages are absolutely bursting with small, malnourished children with bowed knees and sallow skin. The hospitals in Guangyuan are completely run down, with patients being left alone to suffer amongst each other while doctors steal food and medicine to keep their own families alive. I have no doubt that Chairman Mao and the Party will be able to save our country, but my heart aches for the people who will die before they can be helped as well as the children and families forever traumatized by the losses they have endured already. These damages may be irrevocable and I’m not sure if the Party understands the extent to which its people are suffering, due to the false reports by the cadres. Even the land seems permanently changed, what with our forests being cleared to fuel the steel furnaces and some soil being rendered infertile by the unlucky floods sweeping China.

I implore all of you to hang on as long as you can, the new China will need strong people to lead it into prosperity. Just as the Long March proved to us, suffering can turn into immense success and simply brings out our perseverance. Put your faith in Chairman Mao, whose guidance will bring us out of this slump. Surely the Cause we revolted for, that countless people have died for, is not the problem. We have built our new society on the foundation of Mao Zedong Thought, so it must be that the problems wracking China have been caused by what we built and not our socialist basis… right?

Dear Tongzhimen,

The Great Leap Forward had incredibly noble goals, and by all national Party accounts, it was able to deliver upon many of those. Land has been collectivized, grain procurement quotas have been on the rise in most rural areas, and our great nation has moved towards industrialization. The Chairman’s goal of surpassing Great Britain’s level of steel production, a concept which was only a distant dream a few short years ago, moved within our grasp. However, whispers of tragedies – ones that are almost too horrible to name – befalling the people of China have also swirled about. I received an assignment to travel to as many different provinces as possible in order to get a clearer picture of the realities that people are facing, in the city and in the countryside alike. Exports and the Party’s grain procurement quotas have risen steadily over the past three years, so I expected to find a countryside of abundance. As I traveled from village to village, collecting testimonies and reading documents, however, I was confronted with stark conditions I found that some areas of our great nation have been plagued by chronic crop failure, violence, corruption, disease, famine, death, and suffering, and my heart breaks for the areas affected by this turmoil [Zhou Xun, 3]. I believe that the Chairman and the Party will lead all members of our society back to prosperity in due time, yet after witnessing local conditions firsthand, I also have some worries that certain consequences of the manner in which the Great Leap was implemented will linger on for years to come.

Family life and the lives of children have been disrupted immensely in the past three years, and I believe that the disruption of the lives of China’s new generation will have a reverberating impact on our nation for many years to come. In January of 1959, a report about conditions in Gaoguanzhai township, Zhangqiu county stated that “many villagers had no choice but to abandon their homes and become beggars. Some had no other option but to sell their children” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 1, Page 4]. Families have been displaced from their homes, children have been displaced from their parents, and such a destruction of the familial unit will impact China’s demographic and social realities for decades to come.

Due to malnutrition, many women of childbearing age in Gaoguanzhai have stopped menstruating, babies have been born with serious birth defects, and babies have starved to death because their mothers quickly stopped producing milk to breastfeed them with [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 1, Page 6]. Furthermore, surviving babies and children are subjected to heartbreaking neglect. One of the core aims of the Great Leap Forward was to mobilize all members of the community, including women, to work outside of the home on localized agricultural or industrial projects. Mao has previously said that “the youth and women are happy about the new…system,” but the stories I heard from women and children about the disastrous impacts of mobilizing mothers to work without providing any systematic form of childcare paint a drastically different picture [Mao, Talks at Beidaihe, 164]. As a report on relief work in Sichuan Province from 1961 states, “since the Great Leap Forward, many women have been encouraged to go into full-time employment, leaving a number of children at home with no one to care for them…Some children were simply left to crawl on their own and to find food to eat from the floor” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 23, Page 53]. In 1962, children in Chongqing city developed myriad health problems, including parasitic diseases, as well as over 167,000 children cases of malnutrition or rickets, caused by a combination of poor diets and a lack of exposure to sunlight, since “mothers lock up their children indoors because they have to go to work” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 23, Page 54].

Orphaned children in particular face perilous and harrowing conditions. At the Gaoling district orphanage, employees “failed to feed the orphans regular meals, leaving the children starving” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Out of desperation, some orphans “regularly… [rummaged] around local market restaurants for leftovers. Some also went to look for wild grass, dead fish, shrimp, and toads to eat,” causing several deaths from food poisoning [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Stories from the Hongqi orphanage indicate widespread physical abuse of orphaned children [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Some families in Yinging offered orphans in need of a roof over their heads a place to stay, only to “[deprive] them of food, [beat] them, [scold] them, and [eat] up the orphan’s grain ration” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 18, Page 49]. All of these accounts of women and children being subjected to inhumane conditions during the past three years leave me worried that we have failed the up and coming generations.

I am also immensely worried about the long term consequences of a collapse of a trusting peasant and cadre relationship, an issue which has befallen many villages due to blatant cadre abuses. I learned from an old friend located in Wanxian county that local cadres “unlawfully set up private courts, jails, and labor camps,” and employed cruel methods of torture which are essentially beyond one’s worst imagination [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 3, Page 21]. Reports from other villages have painted a similar picture. According to a 1959 report from Guangdong province, for instance, “‘private prisons’ run by the commune are widespread in many regions. In most cases these private prisons are used to deal with ‘the people’ rather than ‘the enemy’” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 7, Page 28]. I am immensely worried about the idea that cadres are shattering their relationships with the common people by ruthlessly abusing them, because this could lead to a general lack of trust in the Party and its policies in the future and a complete deterioration of the mass line.

The distribution of valuable labor and resources during the Great Leap Forward is also something which alarms me, as it has the potential to negatively impact our nation’s economic health and growth in the years to come. After seeing the barren fields in many parts of the Chinese countryside with my own eyes, I have come to the grim conclusion that local cadres have repeatedly inflated their harvests in their reports, painting a false picture of prosperity for the leaders at the top of the Party [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 43, Page 87]. Despite the need for China to devote significant time, resources, and labor to the agricultural sector if it wants to produce an abundance of food for its people, agricultural production has generally fallen by the wayside in terms of Party priorities – “agricultural land became wasteland, and unattended livestock died” [Zhou Xun, Page 73]. In recent years, the Party very enthusiastically mobilized people to work in heavy industry production, sometimes to the detriment of other invaluable industries, especially agriculture and consumer goods [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 40, Page 83].

Even though significant resources have been devoted to industrial production, I heard many accounts that these resources have not been allocated as efficiently as they should have been. In July of 1959, Peng Dehuai lamented this lack of carefully coordinated planning, writing, “an excessive number of capitalist construction projects were hastily started in 1958. With part of the funds being dispersed, completion of some essential projects had to be postponed” [Peng Dehuai, 436]. China’s overall steel production has increased significantly over the past few years, but there are a few vital questions we need to ask ourselves: where are the raw materials used to produce this steel coming from, and what are we gaining from this increased production? An investigative report from 1961 in Yongxing, Qi County found that useful household items were melted down and used in industrial production: “peasants were told to ‘contribute’ their private property, including pots and pans, jars, and coffins during the iron- and steel-work campaign” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 31, Page 75]. The steel that was produced had little to no practical usage, yet people from across the entire nation were still instructed to create backyard steel furnaces of their own. Peng Dehuai reflected that “in the nationwide campaign for the production of iron and steel, too many small blast furnaces were built with a waste of material, money, and manpower” [Peng Dehuai, 437].

Hastily conceived and poorly planned construction projects, the emphasis on rapid industrialization, and the neglect of the agricultural sector have all combined to have a particularly virulent effect on China’s environment. Mao has long advocated for close planting and deep plowing techniques, which will have immensely detrimental repercussions on crop yields for years to come [Mao, Talks at Beidaihe, Page 162]. An illuminating report on the destruction of forestland in the northwest of China indicated that as of October 1962, one-fifth of closed forestland had been dilapidated, and as much as one-third of open forests had been chopped down [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 44, Page 88]. The report highlighted the deleterious effects of this deforestation as well, stating that “the destruction of the forest has caused soil erosion and sandstorms and reduced the amount of water resources” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 44, Page 88]. Due to poorly constructed irrigation systems and canals, some farm fields have become waterlogged and alkalized. In Hunan province, I spoke with a peasant who recited a local saying to me: “the drought happens for just one season, but alkalization will last a lifetime” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 45, Page 89]. Some local implementations of the Great Leap have frankly wreaked havoc upon the landscape and the environment, and farmers will surely feel the effects of this for the foreseeable future.

While I have faith that Chairman Mao and the rest of the Party will get our nation back on track, I am saddened that so many people throughout China have experienced such destruction, disease, and death, and I worry about the impacts that this period will have on agricultural production and our youth. I hope all of my loyal readers have stayed safe and healthy during this treacherous time, weathering the storm that has afflicted our nation as of late. I look forward to writing again soon.

Sincerely, Lei Ju

Hello Intellectuals,

 

Mi Man Tian here again to give some updates on the nation of China. Since our last communication a lot has taken place. The People’s Republic of China is here, and the nationalist party has been destroyed. One of the first big transitions that Mao and the Republic have promised to bring forth is already in effect. The policy of tudi gaige has been in place for about a year now and I was interested in finding out how people were feeling about the policy, whether or not they were in favor or if that had any positive or negative things to say about the policy. I took to the streets and read a couple of Mao’s speeches as I usually do to do my reporting and I have found honestly quite an unexpected mixed bag or response. I personally think that the CCP has chosen to implement land reform on a mass scale because of two reasons: mobilization and participation and social cohesion. Mobilization and participation because the mass approach allowed the CCP to involve the population. By having the population participate in the land reform process the CCP mobilizes the population with the party principles. The party can both educate the masses on communism and let the masses have a sense of ownership in the process, a feeling that they (the masses) have made this change, instead of it just happening, forced upon by the government. In a speech that chairman Mao gave in 1943 he said “If any work or mission lacks a general, universal slogan, the broad masses cannot be moved to action, but if there is nothing more than a general slogan and the leaders do not make a concrete, direct, and thorough application of it with those from a particular unit who have been rallied around the slogan… there is then the danger that the general slogan will have no effect” (Cheek 118). This has been shown to work as many groups of the mobilized masses have attacked landlords and rich peasants to take back their land. Social cohesion was a reason the CCP implemented land reform on a mass scale because the trust between the local peasants and the party leaders was needed to push the broader communist agenda. By involving the masses in the implementation, the masses got to feel a sense of togetherness, that they were reforming land ownership together and thusly become more aligned with the party and their beliefs. Another quote from Mao says, “Two methods must be adopted in accomplishing any task; the first is to combine the general and the particular, and the second is to unite leadership with the masses” (Cheeks 118).

 

Some of the dangers that this mass campaign of land reform has had on the nation in general are the economic disruptions and the amount of violence that the masses were able to perform in large fashion. The economic disruptions came about in the fact that factory owners now do not want to hire workers in some cases of getting accused of exploitation. This in turn lead to slowed production because the lack of workers. These factory owners are also being villainized by the party, “The campaign also included propaganda against landlords, exploiters, and other bad” (Dietrich 153). My father is struggling with this currently as after he retired from teaching, he started a steel factory and is utterly terrified of being labeled as a bad element after seeing what the masses have done to the landlords. The violence that the masses are capable of is not to be understated. Peasants and local party officials alike would often turn physical when trying to weed out the bad elements. The attacks on these class enemies, as they are often referred to as, ranged from the public struggle sessions and anti-rightist campaigns that take place as murders and exiles masked as thought reform and getting rid of the people that want to hurt the blossoming utopia of the people’s republic. It is evident that this violence was not only allowed but encouraged to an extent with the only caveat being the cadres weren’t to get involved, one women from a rural village I interviewed said Mao himself wanted the cadres, if they saw violence against bad elements, to not interfere with the violence inflicted upon them. A man I interviewed said that the result of land reform and the cadres moving into the villages was widespread, violent attacks on the wealthy farmers and local elite, even though this type of treatment was supposed to be reserved for only “extremely wicked traitors and public enemies.” This in conjuncture with Mao’s want for the cadres to not get involved, shows that Mao knows about the mass violence and is doing nothing to stop it.

Hello readers, it has been a while since I last wrote but so much has happened since then. The Chinese Communist Party has not only survived but it has established itself as the core leadership group leading the newly founded People’s Republic of China. They have risen to this power by defeating the invading Japanese forces, expelled the Nationalists to Taiwan, and now lead the fight against the invading Americans in Korea. However, I will focus on reporting about the major domestic event taking place which is the mass land reform campaign. I have joined a work team and we traveled to a local village in the countryside to carry out the smooth implementation of the land reform campaign. I do believe that the work I am doing is spreading the message of the great chairman and we have redistributed land, but I have also seen sights and heard stories that I fear will not be shared that I feel must be reported.

I signed up to be a part of a work team because I wanted to travel to the countryside and help carry out the land reform campaign. I knew that my background of growing up in the countryside could help in understanding the dynamics of the countryside as I knew that it was much different than the big cities. I believe this reform is being carried out as a mass campaign because the peasants need to know who in their village to take land from for redistribution. I read an article that was specifically for teaching the peasants how to differentiate the classes in the rural areas and I think it was very helpful, although I could think of a few people and families from my own village that may not fit exactly into one of the classes. Also, carrying out the reform in a mass campaign makes it easier for the peasants to understand the objectives of the reform easier as slogans can be used that help simplify the goals of the campaign. These slogans can be used to unite the peasants so that they feel as though they are all striving for the same goals and to ignite the peasants to overthrow the enemy classes that are exploiting them. I have seen the benefits of this class division but I have also seen some negative aspects in dividing the peasants in such a manner.

One of the benefits for dividing the peasants into the different classes is it clearly identifies which people are in the landlord class so that work party members like myself can confiscate their excess land that they were using to exploit the poor and middle peasant classes for redistribution. The village my work party was sent to is an example of this benefit. When we arrived, we held a mass meeting in the makeshift town square asking the peasants to speak bitterness and identify who the landlords in the area were. No one stepped forward to speak but when we traveled to individual family homes, they were eager to speak bitterness and help us identify the landlord who was exploiting all the villagers. We quickly apprehended the landlord, staged a public trial where he was punished for his past crimes and his excess land was redistributed among the peasants. This event makes me proud to recollect and I imagine if I had been sent to my village and I could personally give my father his own land.

One negative aspect of the mass land reform campaign is the fact that in some scenarios, some people do not fit into a particular class or they do not fit the description of that class. In these cases, I have seen people that may not be in the landlord class still tried and struggled against. In the village my work team is in, after we got rid of the exploitative landlord, there was still not enough land for everyone so we needed to find more to distribute. However, even after the personal meeting in family homes, no one could identify a landlord or wealthy peasant. Unfortunately, a middle peasant that quite a few villagers disliked was dragged out and struggled against. Speaking individually with some villagers, they were very concerned to see the middle peasant struggled against as he was always helpful and lenient to the poor peasants and workers. I can remember a middle peasant like this in my own village. He had some extra land that he would rent out but he was a hard working man and was always lenient when rent could not be paid. I wonder what happened to him, I hope he is alright, he has helped and continues to help my family so much.

Dear readers,

We are in the midst of a changing country with a new government. However, there are still ongoing issues as we continue the revolution here in China. Over the past few years, land reform has been a major emphasis among the masses as Mao and the CPP have been working towards equality in all aspects. By using mass campaigns, it has made the issue spread into the country-side where poor peasants live. The government has made sure to resolve all kinds of issues using the Central Organization Department to develop mass organization. The government was organized in a way that people are able to contribute to the bigger scheme since these leaders not only pass down directions to the peasants, but they also report back up on how the campaigns are going. This kind of political equality for everyone in the country was attractive to most people in the country.

 

By making land reform a mass campaign, peasants came together to fight the inequality they were facing from ‘evil tyrant landlords.’ Using terms like this, as well as finding struggle stories among the peasants, led them to rally behind the struggle. Speaking bitterness created anger within the peasant community and was spread through meetings that these villages would have. These kinds of meetings would be meaningful in what kinds of campaigns the CPP would take action in since the revolution came from the masses and goes to the masses. The leadership role that Mao took was very important since his goal was to combine the general and particular issues that people talked about and would unite leadership within the masses. With the Marriage law and other laws making women equal to men, women started to have a bigger role in the revolution. They made significant impacts economically, politically, and socially which contributed to the revolution. However, this change in culture wasn’t embraced by everyone. Mother-in-laws and husbands began to worry about how much power they were given and that they didn’t have control over what they did. 

 

Something that did not go so well in this campaign was the amount of violence it created within the country. Villages had driven the landlords out of the area by extensively threatening, abusing and even killing them. Mao had wanted a fight against the landlord land, and not the landlords themselves. This movement also created some issues within the community in identifying who the rich peasants and the landlords were as many of them tried to come off as a poor peasant, making them unreliable. Even though my father was a good person with good intentions, this kind of revolt worried me. Coming from a wealthier background in the silk industry, my father was considered one of the enemies of struggle. However, he did give up his land and was also a community man, even promoting equality within his village. I feared that an extremist in the CPP would come to my fathers house and hurt him. As for my mother, she was against the revolution and what it stood for. She got sent to my father as she sent away her four daughters for marriage. Even though the party strived for an ‘abundant and flourishing family,’ it was going against the tradition that she was accustomed to. I believe that the violence will settle down and there will be more equality than there was ever before in China, but I do think the extremists will not change their way of thought. The campaign did in fact mobilize around the whole country so it’s not to say that it isn’t possible for everyone to be on the same page.