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The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Columbia University The Weatherhead East Asian Institute is Columbia Univer- sity’s center for research, publication, and teaching on mod- ern and contemporary Asia Pacific regions. The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new re- search on modern and contemporary East Asia. A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute THE COMMUNIST TAKEOVER OF HANGZHOU The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954 JAMES Z. GAO University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu ( 2004 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gao, James Zheng. The Communist takeover of Hangzhou : the transformation of city and cadre, 1949–1954 / James Z. Gao. p. cm.—(A study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2701-5 1. Zhongguo gong chan dang—History. 2. Hangzhou (China)— History. I. Title. II. Series. JQ1519.A5 G38 2004 9510.242—dc22 2003019693 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press Production Staff Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group For Laura Liu Contents Acknowledgments / ix Abbreviations / xi Maps / xii Introduction / 1 1 On the Eve of the Takeover / 11 2 Training the Cadres / 42 3 The First Efforts / 69 4 One Step Back, Two Steps Forward / 98 5 The Korean War and the City / 125 6 The Trial of Strength / 154 7 Women Cadres / 185 8 The ‘‘Geneva of the East’’ / 216 9 Conclusion / 245 Notes / 263 Glossary / 311 Selected Bibliography / 315 Index / 327 Acknowledgments My idea of writing a book on the Communist takeover of Hang- zhou came up in a conversation with a colleague at the University of Maryland, Shuguang Zhang, in the winter of 1997. As we dis- cussed the current academic concern with a reconceptualization of the 1949 Chinese revolution, I came to believe that an empirical study of the experience of rural Communist cadres in Hangzhou in the ‘‘takeover period’’ would throw a new light on the nature and characteristics of the revolution. In the four years of my research and writing, Shuguang read several chapters of the manuscript and offered insightful criticism and suggestions. I deeply appreci- ate his help. I have many individuals to thank for their support, encourage- ment, and advice at various stages of this project. My gratitude first goes to Jon Sumida, Arthur Eckstein, Jeannie Rutenburg, Chen Jian, Philip West, John Lampe, William Rowe, and Liang Kan. Some chapters of my manuscript were presented at the American Historical Association annual meetings and other conferences, from which I received invaluable feedback. I learned much from the comments of the panelists and other scholars: John Fitzgerald, Guido Samarani, Yelong Han, Quasheng Zhao, Stephen Averill, Weili Ye, Jin Qiu, Christina K. Gilmartin, Susan Mann, Xiaoqun Xu, Jin Jiang, Joseph Esherick, Ruth Rogaski, Xueping Zhong, and Rui Yang. My special thanks are due the two readers for the University of Hawai‘i Press, Steven Levine and Stephen Uhalley, who gave the whole manuscript a close reading and provided generous comments and suggestions that guided my revisions and improved this work. In my fieldwork, I am indebted to numerous friends in China. Some introduced me to the interviewees, who opened my eyes to the human drama experienced by individuals and families. The archivists and local historians in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Shandong offered support in a number of ways, calling important sources to my attention. Patricia Crosby of the University of Hawai‘i Press is an x Acknowledgments encouraging and engaged editor. I am grateful for her editorial acumen and guidance in steering the publication process. I am also grateful to Madge Huntington of Columbia University, who worked with readers to review my manuscript and included it in Columbia University’s Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. I would also like to thank the University of Maryland for its institutional support. The Graduate School granted me a Summer Research Award, and the Department of History offered me one semester of teaching release, both of which allowed me to pursue the ideas that I present here and made it possible for me to com- plete this book. Finally, I thank my wife, Laura, who shared the labor and pleasure from beginning to end. I dedicate this book to her. Abbreviations cca Cangshan County Archives ccp Chinese Communist Party ecb East China Bureau ecfa East China Field Army gmd Guomindang (Kuomintang) hma Hangzhou Municipal Archives lma Linyi Municipal Archives pla People’s Liberation Army prc People’s Republic of China sma Shanghai Municipal Archives spa Shandong Provincial Archives zma Zaozhuang Municipal Archives zpa Zhejiang Provincial Archives zpwfa Zhejiang Provincial Women’s Federation Archives zua Zhejiang University Archives China. Inset shows the southward movement of cadres from Luzhongnan to Hangzhou. Shandong Province. CCP administrative districts in September 1948. Old Hangzhou. The city in the Republican period (SMA). Hangzhou. Major streets and buildings in Hangzhou after 1949 (HMA). The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou Introduction The Communist takeover of China in 1949 brought the promise of fundamental political, social, and cultural transformation. This was to be accomplished through national unification under a govern- ment with an idealistic vision of the future mated to discipline and confidence borne of victory after twenty-eight years of bloody struggle. The West, for its part, was skeptical of the capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) to govern the newly created Peo- ple’s Republic of China (prc) effectively, let alone implement an ambitious program of national integration and modernization. The new regime had to help the legions of starving and homeless, win over the cynical hearts of urban dwellers, and create a solid institutional base for its revolutionary program. There was good reason to doubt whether revolutionaries from mostly rural back- grounds had the knowledge and skill required to consolidate po- litical control and establish economic stability. Nevertheless, in the early 1950s, the Chinese Communists accomplished these goals. In the initial period of the new republic, Mao Zedong and his Politburo colleagues agreed that in the first few years in power they would postpone radical revolutionary programs and work with the established urban elites through compromise. It is be- lieved that such an approach suffers from the drawback that the possession of power corrupts the revolution; it is a common 2 The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou pattern of post-revolutionary society that ‘‘revolutions die when revolutionaries become rulers.’’1 To explain this pattern of post-revolutionary society, Maurice Meisner writes that when ‘‘the new rulers compromise with the traditions and survivals of the past, they . , consciously or not, come to preside over historical processes that betray their own ideals and hopes for a radically new society.’’2 The modern revolu- tions in France, Russia, and other countries all offered similar sto- ries. Surprisingly, the Chinese Communists succeeded in keeping their revolutionary ideals alive, although they made more conces- sions to the former upper classes than had the Russians. Why did China present a radical departure from the common pattern of post-revolutionary society? What explains this unique experience of the Chinese revolutionaries? Both Western and Chinese scholarship has yet to provide satis- factory answers to these questions. The Chinese literature is in large part an exercise in partisan history that stresses military vic- tory, idealizes the ccp’s organizational and economic achieve- ments, and ignores the social tensions and crises of the 1950s. Writings that criticize Mao’s radical revolution in his later years present the early 1950s as a perfect ‘‘golden age’’ that brought the Chinese people hope for a modern state.3 Similarly, Western litera- ture fails to explain why there is a gap between the ccp’s cautious realism of the early 1950s and its utopian fanaticism in the later years and why the promising beginning of the People’s Republic was followed by economic stagnation, political disillusion, and leadership corruption. What is necessary is a thorough reevalua- tion of the Communists’ early governing methods, seeing them as a long-lasting dynamic rather than a temporary expedient, with ultimately large effects on what was to come. The purpose of this book is to carry out the required comprehensive and systematic investigation of these methods and then assess their consequences. More specifically, this study will try to expand our understanding of the cultural dimension of the 1949 revolution. Why should the study of the Communist takeover be placed in a cultural context? The simple fact is that many of the ccp’s efforts in the post-1949 years were focused on the cultural front—the ‘‘struggle against the enemies without guns,’’ as Mao Zedong put it.4 Without a close examination of the ccp’s effort to change the Introduction 3 basic worldviews of the population, we cannot understand how it successfully made the majority of Chinese people identify with the new regime and its revolutionary goals. To study the cultural di- mension of the Communist takeover, this book will examine how the Communists used state power to transform the urban culture and how they employed cultural weapons to consolidate the new regime. As early as 1948, Mao Zedong realized that the forthcoming military victory of the People’s Liberation Army (pla) would not by itself establish the national legitimacy of Communist authority.
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