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lI ANNA LOUISE STRONG Selected !7orks on China's Revolution I CHINA'S MILLIONS Revolution in Central China, rgzT ANNA LOUISE STRONG CHINA'S MILLIONS In Canton tn ry21 and in Han- kow in 1921, Anna Louise Strong witnessed the rise, followed by bctrayal and temporary defeat, of the rcvolutionary movement of the oppressed workers, peasants and women -in the period of the llrst I(uornintang-Communist- united front and its break-up. Such vicissitudes occur in all revolu- NE\r \rORLD PRE.SS tions on their way to victory. The author records the events as she PEKING 1965 saw them, and ringingly asserts her belief in the ultimate triumph of thc resurgent people, so well borne out by the history of our own day. l S. SEIECTED A L. VORKS, First EditioD ry6, CONTENTS This book is the first of a six-volume editioo comprising the bulk of Anna Louise Strong's wrir- Aatboy's Prelace to SelectedWorks on Cbina's Reoolution ings on China over lorty years. It deals with the Chinese revolution of ry25-27 and was written at thet Canton Prelude I time. The author again visited and wrote about Cbapter I. Stopping in Shanghai II China on two occasions during the !flar of Resistance to Japan in 1938 and rg4o-41. To the War of Lrbera- II. Up the Yangtze 2t tion period belongs her book "The Chinese Conquer III. Red Forces in Hankow 1a China" which records experience in Yenan and other liberated areas in ry46-47. In this edition it in- IV. Into the War Zone 44 corporates her "Thought of Mao Tse-tung", first V. The Generals Meet in Chengchow tt published as a pamphlet. The S7orkers Meet Hankow Later volumes belong to the post-liberation period. VI. in 7o They include "The Rise of the Chinese People's VII. Leaders of Chinese Labour 83 Communes", first written in 1959 and brought up \ff/omen's VIII. Fighters for Rights s6 to date h 1964, and "When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet,', Iil/ornen initially published in 196o, when the author was the IX. Problerns of China's New ro8 first American woman ever to see Lhasa. This edi- . X. Students and Peasants of Hupeh n6 tion concludes with a selection from Anna Louise Reaction r40 Strong's periodical "Letter from China", more than Xi. "R-ed" Hunan in thirty issues of which have appeared since 1962. XII. The Revolution in Yungfong rt, Xm. Fragments of Revolution r68 Printed in tbe Peoptds Repabtic ol Cbina Authot's Pteface to Selected \X/otks on China's Revolution I have known in my lifetimc threc civilizations - the American, the Russian, the Chinese - the three that have shaped and are shaping our times. I have lived and worked in them all as social worker, exhibit expert, reportet, editor, lecturer and writer, first from my home in Seattle, then from a residence of nearly thirty years in Moscow, and now at the age of eighty from Peking. In Seattle we fought for more perfect forms of democracy in what we considered aheady "God's coufitry," the world's pioneer of democracy; we won many formal battles but saw our country change to the world's greatest, most destructive imperialism. Drawn trom afar by the October Revolution of ryry in Russia, which shook the world and inspired all progressives, I . werit to Moscow and for nearly three decades made it the center for all the middle years of my adult working life; the majority of my more than thirty books were written about the USSR. From Moscow I gradually became aware of a new revolution arising in the East, and began to visit China on my trips to America, beginning lust half my lifetime ago in r9z; when the Kuomintang-Communist coalition was rising in Canton. In six such visits my interest in China steadily grew. Even before the victory of China's Revolution in ry49 broke the long capitalist encirclement of thc USSR, changed the balance of world forces and began to stimulate anti-impcrialist rcvolutions around the world, I decided to come to China to stay. And now my Chinese friends are cclcbrating my eightieth birthday by publishing this edition of my Selected !7orks, tak- ing those that concero China's Revolution. These may well have CHINA'S MILLIONS AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SELECTED 'WORKS ,u the longest life expectancy of all that I have ever done. Not Our westward lands, still open to free settlers, were the "world's oniy because China, with nearly one-fourth of earth's population, last frontier." Of course we were often obiiged to fight "the is today full of eager, intelligent readers. But also, and especially, interests," i.e. the monopoly controls that pressed on us from because as the great anti-imperialist revolution of our century, New York. They tried to control even my exhibitions, but I China's Revolution, both in its defeats and its victories, best felt that I was independent still. gives the lessons that other anti-imperialist revolutions now wodd- It was in Kansas City in my third exhibition, the first in which wide witrl wish to learn. I was top administrator, that thc cxhibition's end made it I rnust therefore glance back at the road that I have travelled, necessary to fire the pcoplc who had workcd in it and for whom in America, in the USSR and in those visits to China which drew there were few chanccs of lobs. It worricd mc. After a slcepless me to Peking as my home and prodr-lced the six books now being night spent in thought I dccided that thcre was no way to correct republished. this under our capitalist system and that therefore the systern Born in the United States of America in r88;, my personal itself was "a11 wrong." The only proper system would put all career began well before the First World \)Var. After taking the iobs, and therefore all work and enterprises under public owner- degree Doctor of of Philosophy from the University of Chicago ship. This, I knew, was called socialism, so I must be a socialist. in r9o8, I went home to Seattle where my father had moved after It was years later before I saw how "class struggle" fitted in. my mother's death. I invented, with my father, a "Know Your \7hen the First \World !flar broke in Europe ir ryr4, it found City Institute," a combination of lectures, discussions and visits me in Dublin, Ireland, running a Child !fl'elfare Exhibition for by which Seattle citizens many of them newcomers from the - the V/omen's National Health Association, of which Lady Aber- eastern states became acquainted with the city's life. I was - deen, the viceroy's wife, was ptesident; I lived in the vice-regal invited to organize similar institutes in other western cities; their lodge as her guest. I came back to America in a 'fast ship popularity led to rny taking part in a gteat Child l7elfare Exhibi- through a blackout against German submarines to the post that tion in New York, after which I continued to organize Child alteady wsited for me as "exhibit expert" in the newly created !7elfare Exhibits from city to city for several years, becoming the Children's Bureau r'X,/ashington. under thirty years leading organizer in this field. Their aim was to arouse the city's U.S. in Just job consciousness to the conditions and needs of all the city's childreo, old, I seemed fixed in a federal civil service for life. in schools, health, playgrounds and wetrfare activities, and thus I quickly found that lTashington was a deadly btrearcracy to create new laws and institutions through popular demand. in which I was hardly able to breathe. So after orgarizing the As I felt the growth and explosion in each place of a city con- Children's Bureau Exhibition for the San Fran'cisco world's fair sciousness which rvas stimulated by correct organization of com- in r9r5, and another exhibition on "Children's Interests" in Port- mittees and exhibition techniques and which then created new land, Oregon, and writing a manual on how to organize Child institutions and local laws, I felt that I was improving our Welfare Exhibits rvhich was published by the federal government, American democracy. This was part of a positive faith that America I resigned. I went home to Seattle where the energetic life of was the pioneer in democracy for the world. Long ago we had the coast me; I was quickly elected to the Seattle City ^ttracted stated our stand in or.rr Declaration of Independence; then rnen School Board as the "progressive candidate," the first woman on of all races and nations had come to our shores seeking freedom. the board for years. CHINA,S MTLLToNS iO it/oRKs o Seattle was a "progressive city": in any hard-fought election, "Our America" was lost, and forever! The militarists had raped the people always beat "the interests" i.e. the monopolies that her to their bidding. I could not delude myself, as many did, pressed on us from New York. Seattle owned its light and power that this vras a "war to make the world safe for democracy." system, and a municipal wharf, and finally we bought out the I had seen democracy violated in the very declaration of war. private street-car lines for city ownership. We saw this as a !(here and how to begin again I had no notion. widening of democratic control afld even as the beginnings of socialism.