Northern Expedition,” Or the War for Northeast Asia?

“NorthernIntroduction Expedition,” or the War for Northeast Asia? 1 Introduction: “Northern Expedition,” or the War for Northeast Asia?

When conducting research for this book, the author came across a group of hand-written manuscripts for the Literary and Historical Materials (wenshi ziliao).1 This group of documents include: He Zhuguo, “Dongbeijun duikang beifa de bufen shifang (Some Facts about the Northeastern Army’s War against the Northern Expedition),” (1955); Zhang Yousan, “Yijiu erba nian Zhang Zuolin Beijing huairentang ying yishang guanyuan xunhua (Zhang Zuolin’s Speech to Officers of the Battalion Level or above in 1928),” (1964); Zhang Youluan, “Zhang Zuolin xiang Nanjing zhengfu qiuhe shibaiji (Zhang Zuolin’s Failure to Sue Peace with the Nanjing Government),” (1963); Pan Yuming, “Dongbei hangkong jianshi ziliao (Notes on the Short History of the Northeastern Air Force),” (1960s); Tian Yunqing and Pan Zhenying, “Sun Chuanfang toukao Zhang Zuolin qianhou (Sun Chuanfang’s Turn to Zhang Zuolin)” (1962). Most of these manuscripts were eventually published, but some of the contents were censored. The original manuscripts were discarded and then eventually reached the author through a second-hand bookseller. The censor deleted sentences and paragraphs from the original manuscripts, probably with the understanding that the originals would never be seen by others, so censored lines were simply crossed out by a thin red line instead of being completely darkened. For example, in Tian Yunqing and Pan Zhenying’s manuscript, they described a scene when his brigade was helped by locals near Pukou while fighting against the KMT forces in 1927:

1 The wenshi ziliao was the product of a country-wide effort proposed by Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China and launched by the PRC government through the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference from national and provincial to county levels. Tens of thousands of articles were collected from prominent pre-1949 political and military figures to ordinary people who could write (or dictate) their recollections. For an overview of the wenshi ziliao, see Annie K. Chang, “The Wenshi Ziliao Collection of the Center for Chinese Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley,” Twenty-Century China, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2000), 103-8. For a critical reappraisal of the writing and collection of the wenshi ziliao and its rela- tionship with the political and economic shifts of the PRC, see Martin Fromm, Producing History through ‘Wenshi Ziliao’: Personal Memory, Post-Mao Ideology, and Migration to Manchuria (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University, 2010).

[During the engagement near Pukou in March 1927] When the villagers saw [our] soldiers with “lotus-leaf hats”2 coming, they were exalted. They gathered and offered us food, which we politely declined…

[During the Battle of Longtan in August 1927] Backed by two regiments of reinforcements, we advanced for more than fifty li (25km). It was very difficult to advance in a reed field with numerous ditches, but the villagers voluntarily came to our aid with large planks of wood dismantled from doors and windows. It was such a touching scene…3

The authors of these manuscripts were field officers of the northern warlord forces, some of which have faded into obscurity and little could be found about their lives.4 Others, such as He Zhuguo, had a distinguished military career during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Some of these officers’ legacies of involvement were purged before and after 1949 for one reason or another.5 Although one should not jump to the conclusion that the deleted parts are the more reliable version of the past or are more important compared to other sources, the reminiscences of this group of forgotten officers offer some

2 The soldiers of Sun Chuanfang’s army wore a peculiar type of hat that resembled the shape of a lotus leaf. 3 Tian Yunqing, Pan Zhenying, “Sun Chuanfang toukao Zhang Zuolin qianhou,” (1962) unpublished manuscript, 6, 24. 4 The term warlord is very difficult to define, as it is always politically charged, but Diana Lary’s definition is useful. Lary defines warlordism as “the possession of autonomous military force, the control of a base region, the use of force as the final arbiter, the reliance on personal rather than impersonal patterns of rule, and a ruthless and extractive attitude towards society and the economy.” In this sense, to a certain extent the NRA can be seen as a warlord faction. The warlords were so diverse in ideology and origin that one can hardly define them as a group, and tension existed between peculiarity and generalization in the studies on warlordism in early-Republican China. When looking at the republican warlords, one should not assume there was a certain “warlord behaviour” that is applicable to all Republican warlords and easily dismiss the role of nationalism and ideology in the warlords’ decision-making. For studies on the origin of warlordism in Republican China, see Diana Lary, “Warlord Studies,” in Modern China, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), 441; Ch’i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China: 1916-1928 (Stanford, 1976); Hans van de Ven, “Public Finance and the Rise of Warlordism,” in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), 829-68. 5 For example, He Zhuguo was categorized and purged as a rightist during the Anti-Right Movement in 1957 because of his proposals, as a member of the Political Consultative Conference, about democraticizing elections and improving the livelihood of the peasants. His name was not rehabilitated until 1978. See Zhang Hong, “He Zhugo,” in Liaoning shengwei dangshi yanjiushi, Liaoning dangshi renwuzhuan (Shenyang, 2006), 186.