The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, Part 2
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
RESISTANCE TO RENTS AND TAXES 28l
up the excess areas at a relatively low price or else giving it to the state.
Indignant at having to buy up or else see confiscated these lands they
already considered their own, the peasants set fire to the surveyors' tents
and destroyed their tools; they then took to the streets of Yang-chou to
demonstrate
(19
October
1932).
The arrest of
fifty
or so of the demonstrators
(on
21
October) set off a riot. The following day several thousand peasants
came into the town, invaded the hsien government offices and then seized
fiscal and cadastral documents which they burned or carried off. They set
up traffic blocks across the roads and canals, just as wine-producers of
Languedoc do these days in France. Troops dispersed the angry peasants
and proceeded to make two hundred further arrests. In order to free the
demonstrators arrested in the course of the last two days, several tens of
thousands of armed peasants (some with rifles but most with sticks and
agricultural implements) returned to lay siege to the town on 23 October.
According to the official report of two investigators appointed by the
provincial government, they hit at least a dozen of the garrison's officers
and soldiers after seizing from them weapons less rudimentary than their
own. The same report states the troops only fired into the air to disperse
the peasants but that is belied by the losses among the rioters: eight dead
and at least as many wounded.
After the bloody incidents of
23
October, agitation continued for a few
more days: there were gatherings of armed peasants and looting; and
houses belonging to peasants who had refused to join the movement, or
to village and small-town heads, or to rich landlords
(ta-hu)
were set on
fire. The execution of six of the supposed leaders (at dawn, on 29 October)
put an end to the movement. In accordance with well-tried methods, the
pitiless punishment meted out to the leaders (or those charged as such)
was offset by the pardoning of the rank and file (the 250 demonstrators
who had been arrested were released on 24 October) and the granting
of concessions: to wit, the suspension of the survey programme and also
of the fiscal investigation.
23
Surveys or revision of cadastral surveys were
frequently the cause of riots, especially if the surveyors found a
discordance between cadastral registers and the farming plots involved.
24
23
On the Yang-chou riot, see 'Chiang-su Chiang-tu hsien nung-min fan-tui ch'ing-ch'a t'ien-fu
yun-tung' (The movement of opposition to fiscal inquiry by the peasants of Chiang-tu hsien,
Kiangsu), Second Historical Archives, Nanking, file no. 2/2/973. This file is composed of four
documents: the last (no. 16712) is by far the most detailed but is not very objective. Also USDS
893.00/12198 (Peck, consul general in Nanking), 2; October 1932; 893.00 PR Nanking/57
(5 November 1932) and /;8 (21 December 1932), monthly reports by the same. Lastly, NTCC
1,
534—
5 and
Cbungyangjib-pao,
23, 24, 25 October 1932.
" E.g., in the spring of 1935, the villagers of Ho-hsien, in eastern Anhwei, resisted the surveying
and registration of their land. Like the peasants of Yang-chou, they were afraid that the disparity
between units of measurement (their local
mou
was bigger
than
elsewhere) would cause an increase
in land tax.
(Cbung-kuojib-pao
(15 April 1935) 7).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
282 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
The Yang-chou peasants, rightly or wrongly, attributed the discordance
to the fact that the surveyors were using smaller units of measurement.
A riot in Yang-chung (a hsien several dozen kilometres south-east of
Yang-chou) was provoked by another frequent cause of unrest: an
increase in taxation and, in particular, in the surcharges on the land tax.
In this riot furthermore it is possible to have a less crude idea of the social
class of the
leaders.
The movement of resistance to taxation in Yang-chung
was initially organized by two notables
{ti-fangshih-shen,
'local gentlemen'),
who were delegates for two of the five districts
{ch'u)
that made up the
hsien. Having already campaigned in vain for the unification of the little
hsien of Yang-chung with a neighbouring hsien, in hope of reducing
administrative expenses from the fusion and so reducing taxation, these
two notables during the summer of 1932 opposed a further increase in
the surcharges decided upon by the hsien magistrate. A hsien government
official, who had been sent to visit the two recalcitrant districts in order
to calm down the delegates and also the members of the local gentry, took
fright at the sight of the crowd awaiting him and fled, disguised as an
old woman. Seeing the failure of their petitions for fusion of the two hsien,
but the success of the gathering which intimidated the hsien representative
(and at the same time prompted the magistrate to retire), the local
taxpayers decided to resist. The two notables assumed the leadership of
this movement up to the point where it became radicalized under the
influence of leaders who emerged from the peasantry. The latter led ten
thousand or more peasants in an attack against the hsien yamen (on 4
October 1932) but did not succeed in setting fire to it; on the contrary,
the principal leader was arrested and one peasant was killed. However,
they had already destroyed the houses of the director of the tax-collection
office, the local representative of the KMT, the captain of the militia, the
largest landowner in the hsien, and so on. The fact that the victims
included this rich landowner who had no official responsibilities gives this
riot a social colouring. Written up a quarter of a century after the event,
when the Communists had taken power, the account of it may have been
somewhat embroidered.
25
The replacement of the gentry leaders by
authentic peasants who display much more resolution is an edifying
feature but not a common one. Ordinarily, the peasants constitute the rank
and file troops in movements of resistance to taxation, and these
movements are often led by the local elite.
Such is the case, in particular, where the resistance is led by the Red
Spears
(Hung-cb'iang-hui),
a secret society active in the provinces of
M
Tai Wen,
Cbiang-cbou buo
an (The case of the Chiang-chou fire).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
RESISTANCE TO RENTS AND TAXES 283
Shantung and Honan during the 1920s.
26
In their revolts against the
tax-collection, the notables who control the Red Spears or, a fortiori, legal
organizations such as the 'Village Federations'
(lien-chuang-hui)
in no way
aim to overthrow or even to challenge the state. For one thing, the
adversary they are fighting is much closer at hand: the hsien administration
or a quasi-autonomous warlord or even local collectors who are rapacious
and corrupt. Above all, their first preoccupation is defence of their own
possessions and persons. They have become over the years accustomed
to protecting one another against aggressions on the part of bandits or
soldiery, since the public authorities, split into more or less legitimate
groups of rival powers,
27
have seldom been capable of ensuring order.
So they quite naturally extend this protection, on behalf of the community
of which they are influential and prosperous members, to the preservation
of patrimonies threatened by taxation.
Thus,
these anti-fiscal riots, which are so much more numerous than
other categories of rural rioting, do not express the claims of the most
underprivileged layers in the rural population. They are not inspired by
a deliberately offensive desire to redistribute wealth within the village.
Their favourite targets are not the rich villagers as such but rather the
civil servants and especially the local government's subordinate agents,
the tax-collectors or their henchmen responsible for speeding up the
collection of
taxes.
The anti-fiscal riots are not directed towards bringing
the established order, or even traditional forms of taxation, into question.
Rather, they seek to preserve them by defending the established rights
or even privileges of individuals or local communities. These could vary
from the 'right' recognized by custom not to pay a slaughtering tax on
pigs killed for the New Year festival
28
to tax exemption for ' black land'
{hei
fieri)
on which no tax has been paid for generations.
Sometimes the wrongs against which the taxpayers rise up are purely
26
Elizabeth J. Perry, Rebels and
revolutionaries
in North China, 1S4J-194J, 163, 166, 205 and passim.
Roman Slawinski, La
Sociite"
des Piques Rouges et la
mouvement
paysan en Chine en 1926-1927, 92-3,
99.
'4».
27
Guy
S.
Alitto, 'Rural elites
in
transition: China's cultural crisis and the problem
of
legitimacy',
Select papers from the Center for
Far
Eastern Studies,
3
(1978-9) 218-75.
28
NYTL 3.1020-1. On a quite different scale in seventeenth-century Europe, the revolt in Catalonia
(1640) was aimed at preserving fiscal and military privileges that were under threat from Castilian
centralism.
As in the
Lustucru war
in the
Boulonnais
in
1662, many peasant revolts
in
France
(notwithstanding
the
important social aspects that they exhibited more
and
more frequently
between 1660 and 1675) were directed against
the
violation
of
fiscal immunities and privileges
by Louis XIV and Colbert. See Pierre Vilar, La Catalogue dans I'Espagne moderne:
recbercbes
sur
Us fondements
iconomiques
des structures nationales, 1.627, 629-32; P. Heliot, 'La guerre dite de
Lustucru et les privileges du Boulonnais',
Revue
duNord(Lille), 21 (1955) 265-318; Leon Bernard,
'French society and popular uprisings under Louis XIV,
French Historical
Studies,
3.4 (1964)
4)7-9-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
284 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
imaginary. They suspect any project of fiscal reform
a
priori,
even when
its intentions are of the very best. In the rare cases where revisions of
the cadastral survey (or the unpopular registration of properties, tu-fi
ch'en-pao)
are carried through, they may considerably diminish the fiscal
burden of most taxpayers while at the same time bringing more money
into government coffers; the only losers are the owners of large expanses
of 'black land' hitherto exempted from taxation.
29
So we find the
administration cursing
the'
stupid' peasants (jti-min), who allow themselves
to be incited into a revolt, which is harmful to their own interests, by
a handful of large landowners practising tax-evasion on a large scale.
The continual worsening of the tax burden, right up to the end of
1933,
is the essential feature of this period.
30
But it was the individual
innovations (the details, in short, of this general tendency) that provoked
the taxpayers' indignation. They did not revolt against the tendency as
a whole but against the imposition of a new surtax in particular, or a
refusal to grant the customary tax reduction after a poor harvest, or the
umpteenth new tax exacted in the course of a single year, an illegal
extortion, a particularly glaring fraud or abuse, etc. In short, they reacted
against new measures deemed to be intolerable without, however, calling
into question the principle of taxation
itself.
Such sporadic reactions were easily crushed, although not inevitably
doomed to complete failure. For every rebellion that managed to last for
several months there occurred plenty of riots put down the same day or
within a week. There was very seldom any coordination between one and
another. Nearly all were badly
—
if at all
—
prepared, badly organized and
badly conducted: even if the primitive weapons of the rioters and their
lack of training and discipline were not enough to doom their enterprises,
defeat might be caused by the improvised nature of their initiatives.
31
The
rapid crushing of a riot was in most cases followed up by equally swift
29
See three conclusive examples carried out in Tang-tu hsien (Anhwei), Hsiao hsien and Chiang-tu
hsien (Kiangsu): Ts'ai-cheng-pu cheng-li ti-fang chuan-shui wei-yuan-hui (Committee for the
reorganisation of local taxes of the Ministry of Finance),
T'u-ti
cb'en-pao
tiao-cb'a pao-kao cbib i:
An-bui
sbeng
Tattg-tu btien t'u-ti
cb'en-pao
kai-liub (First report on the inquiry into land registration:
summary of the registration of land in Tang-t'uhsien, Anhwei);
Chiang-susbeng
Hsiao-bsient'u-ti
cb'en-pao kai-lueb (Second Report: summary of the registration of land in Hsiao hsien, Kiangsu);
Cbiang-su
sbeng
Cbiang-tu bsien t'u-ti
cb'en-pao
kai-lueb (Third Report: summary of the registration
of land in Chiang-tu hsien, Kiangsu). Chiang-tu county was the seat of the Yangchow riot referred
to above. Land registration provoked a quickly suppressed riot in Hsiao county.
30
This worsening was to resume and gather momentum during the 1940s: see Lloyd E. Eastman,
'Peasants, taxes, and Nationalist rule, 1937-1945', 6-16.
31
In October 1932 in Yang-chung demonstrators attacked the hsien yamen only after they had spent
ten hours setting fire to private houses (seven in all) situated well apart from one another; the
authorities had had ample rime to take precautions (Tai Wen, 22). In Yang-chou, similarly, the
insurgents gave the authorities ample time to bring in reinforcements and close the town gates
before the decisive confrontation of 2) October.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
RESISTANCE TO RENTS AND TAXES 285
repression. As at Yang-chou, it would usually be pitiless but selective;
the leaders (or, if these could not be identified, those declared to be leaders)
would be executed, all the rest released. Quite often the county magistrate
{hsien-chang)
would be transferred and the measure that caused the flare-up
would be abrogated. In such cases, defeat did not mean failure.
Resistance to the opium tax
The land tax and above all the surcharges to the land tax were at the root
of most anti-fiscal riots but not of all of them: levies on alcohol, on the
slaughtering of animals, on salt and on opium, etc. also provoked resist-
ance.
Let us limit ourselves to a discussion of the last mentioned tax.
The extremely high rate of the opium tax was not the only cause
of disturbances involved. The fact that poppy cultivation was made
compulsory at times and prohibited at other times provoked numerous
clashes with the police or the army.
Poppy cultivation was not only exposed to reversals of government
policy and the threat of repression. It was also affected by meteorological
risks,
32
which made it a much more delicate crop than cereals, as well as
by market risks of over-production and falling prices. However, the
cultivation of poppies could prove extremely profitable: four to six times
as profitable as a field of wheat in Kweichow at the beginning of the
Sino-Japanese War; while in Yunnan a few years earlier a harvest of
poppies would bring in one quarter of the value of the field in which they
grew.
33
Taxation was proportionate. Officially, the exorbitant rates aimed to
discourage the cultivation of
poppies,
or even to impose sanctions against
it, as can be seen from the most common name of the tax:
mou-fa,
'
the
per
mou
fine'. Sometimes the continual increases in a tax that was severe
in the first place did deter peasants from planting poppies, as happened
in many places during the season of 1925-6. The authorities concerned
(military, as it happened) then hurriedly reduced the opium land taxes in
order to stimulate production.
34
For the rest of the time, though, the
' prohibitive' taxation of opium certainly achieved its true end (the reverse
of those officially proclaimed), namely, the extension of poppy cultivation.
No other crop brought in enough to make such high taxation viable and
in many regions the tax was collected whether peasants grew poppies or
32
'Rain
or
moisture
in
the air
at
the time
of
harvest could easily ruin the crop',
J.
C.
S.
Hall,
Tbe
Yunnan provincial faction, 1927-1937, 109.
33
Ibid.
105; Institute
of
Pacific Relations, comp. Agrarian China, 119.
* H. G.
W. Woodhead, ed. Tbe China jear book, hereafter
CYB,
192S, 514.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
286 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
not.
3S
Szechwan was particularly suited, thanks
to
its fertile, well-irrigated
land
and its
abundant rivers,
to the
production
and
transport
of
opium,
and
a
' lazy tax' was imposed upon those cultivators who refused
to
plant
poppies. Although
it
was
supposed
to
equal
the
sum
that poppy
cultivators were supposed
to
pay,
it
was
in
fact sometimes
as
much
as
double.
36
Before they were incited
if
not forced
by the
exigencies
of
taxation
to
cultivate increasing quantities
of
poppies
to the
detriment
of
grain
harvests (which caused
a
number
of
local famines), many peasants
had
been obliged
to
plant poppies
in
the first place by militarists, also
for
fiscal
reasons.
37
These same peasants were then forced
to
pull
up
their poppy
plants when
the
Nationalist government, faithful
to
the
wishes
of
Sun
Yat-sen
and
anxious financially
to
weaken
and
control
the
semi-
independent regimes
of
the
south-west
(the
principal opium-producing
region),
at
last managed, after several unsuccessful campaigns,
to
impose
a prohibition.
The
production
and
consumption
of
opium
did not
disappear overnight,
but
there was
a
slight fall
in
both from 1934 onward,
despite
the
efforts
of
provincial
or
local authorities
to
avoid giving
up
the revenue. Opium enabled rival militarists
of
Szechwan
to
finance their
armies
and was the
highest source
of
income
in the
provincial budgets
of Yunnan
and
Kweichow. Even Kwangsi, which
was
almost devoid
of
poppies, taxed opium from Yunnan as
it
passed through the region bound
for
the
Yangtze. Similarly Shansi province under
Yen
Hsi-shan forbade
poppy cultivation
but
profited from illicit taxation
of
opium smuggled
in from Shensi across
the
Yellow River.
The prohibition
of
opium
had the
immediate effect
of
impoverishing,
sometimes ruining,
the
poppy producers,
the
value
of
whose land fell
overnight.
If
they tried
to
continue
to
produce this crop secretly,
and
it
was
a
difficult
one
to
conceal, they
at
the
very least risked incurring
a
heavy fine
and
sometimes much more.
In the
extreme north
of
Kiangsu
at
the end of
1932,
the
official inspections
of
poppy fields were
accompanied
by
threats
of
death
to
those who
did not
uproot their plants
within
two
weeks.
38
So the
reversal
of
policies
did
nothing
to
alter
an
35
Examples
in
Kansu
(CYB, 192j,
579),
Yunnan
{CYB,
1926, 642),
Kweichow
{ibid. 637) and
Fukien
(ibid.
627).
36
CYB,
1926,
620 and 192/, 586.
37
There
are
examples
of
direct constraint
in
seven different provinces
(Shensi,
Kansu,
Szechwan,
Yunnan,
Honan,
Hupei,
Fukien)
in CYB,
1921-1922,
791;
192;, 575, 578,
583; 1926, 626,
641-2;
192S,
531;
19)1, 591,
599-600.
38
USDS 893.00
PR
Nanking/59 (14 January 1933) 21.
In
regions under direct Nationalist control,
the anti-opium campaign
had
been effective
as
early
as
1932. Though poppy cultivation
had
gradually spread over most provinces of China,
it
remained most intensive in the western opium
belt which included, as well as the south-west already mentioned, the north-west (Shensi, Kansu,
Ninghsia, Suiyuan).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
RESISTANCE TO RENTS AND TAXES 287
essential continuity, that peasants were threatened with death, first if they
did not, and then
if
they did, plant poppy.
39
Faced with policies that varied
in
time and space (poppy cultivation
might be obligatory in the western provinces and Fukien just when it was
prohibited
in
the other coastal provinces), the peasants reacted
in
their
usual fashion: usually without violence
but
with sudden explosions
of
anger or despair when they could no longer endure the intolerable abuses.
In 1925 in Wan-hsien, Szechwan, where poppies had not been cultivated
since 1909, the headman of every
chia
refused to comply when the military
ordered them to return to planting poppies.
40
That same year at Fu-ling,
a little further up the Yangtze, the whole population, led by the gentry
and merchants, gathered to lend more solemnity to its protest against an
increase
of
600,000 yuan
in
opium taxes.
41
And
there were
the
other
customary non-violent reactions, including petitions requesting the hsien
government
to
authorize restrictions
on
the production
of
opium,
the
flight of those owing taxes when the tax-collectors were due to arrive, and
the definitive desertion
of
land too highly taxed.
42
In Fukien, a province which produced very little opium, the army and
navy organized
the
smuggling
on a
large scale. Exploitation
of the
producers was entrusted
to
individuals
or
companies that could count
upon military protection so as to conclude their tax-collection successfully.
This occasioned repeated clashes
and
conflicts between soldiers
and
Fukien peasants.
43
In
Fukien and elsewhere, the conflicts were as
a
rule
as ephemeral as they were chronic. One exception was the long, and
in
one instance victorious, resistance
to the
army
and the
authorities
collecting opium taxes put up in February and during the summer
of
1932
by the peasants
in
the four northern hsien
of
Anhwei and
in
one hsien
of northern Kiangsu.
44
M
Cf. CYB,
if26,
620 and 192/, 534. But
during this first
period,
before
the
prohibition decreed
by
the
Kuomintang,
it
sometimes also happened that peasants were executed
for
having planted
opium
(CYB,
192), 575);
it
all
depended
on
the
local
authorities.
40
CYB,
1926,
641.
There were similar refusals
in
four hsien
in the
south-west
of the
province
(CYB,
19)1,
600) and
other places outside Szechwan
(CYB,
1926, 626; 1928, J24 and 531).
41
CYB,
1926,
641.
42
CYB, 1926, 626 and
628; Agrarian China, 129—30.
« For example
in
1925 (CYB, 192;, 571
and
574), 1928 (USDS 893.00
PR
Foochow/4,
4
April
1928,
6-7), 1931
(ibid.
PR
Foochow/37, Feb. 1931) and 1932
(ibid.
PR
Foochow/51,
4
April,
1932,14). These clashes caused deaths chiefly among the peasants, but occasionally the latter would
kill
a
soldier,
a
tax-collector
or
even
a
hsien magistrate, as they did
at
Hui-an
in
the spring
of
1934
(ibid.
893.00 PR Amoy/80, 8 May, 1934, 8-9).
44
Perry, Rtbch, 181;
Cbung-kuo cbing-cbi
1.1 (April 1933) 16-17, "ted
in
NYTL 3.1016.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
288 PEASANT MOVEMENTS
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION: TYPOLOGY AND
CHARACTERISTICS
Our first, apparently paradoxical, conclusion thus emerges: land rent,
however onerous, and usury, however dramatic its consequences, provoke
less impassioned resistance and agitation and do so less frequently than
land tax, which is relatively light, albeit increasing. We have also noticed
that agitation against land tax is accompanied by agitation against other
taxes (like that on opium), accentuating still further the predominance of
anti-fiscal agitation.
Disturbances not related to rent and tax, and
typology
We shall now briefly consider other kinds of disturbances and sketch a
general typology covering both these disturbances and those dealt with
at more length in the preceding section.
What the disturbances we shall consider first have in common is the fact
that they are aimed against the local representatives of public authority
(civil or military) and, with few exceptions, not against the rich as such.
They are thus closer to the traditional forms of anti-fiscal agitation than
to the social struggle (against landlords and moneylenders) that was
postulated and encouraged by the Communists but was on the whole not
very widespread - until, that is, they themselves took things in hand.
Resistance to administration,
compulsory labour
and
the
army - Some of the riots
aimed against the administration were provoked by various abuses
(arbitrariness, brutality or corruption on the part of the local officials),
others by initiatives which were well-intentioned but misunderstood (and
frequently badly explained). At Tungpei in northern Kwangtung, in 1930,
a measure aimed at getting the solar calendar adopted in local market
transactions provoked a riot which claimed five dead. The rioters thought
that the yang character which appeared in the expression 'solar calendar'
was the yang meaning ' foreigner \
4S
Three years later, in Yunnan, the
peasants became restive, laying the blame for the persistent drought on
the propaganda against superstitions which, they believed, had offended
the rain-dispensing dragon.
46
Sometimes the reform that aroused the anger
of the peasants was one intended to improve their lot. Ten thousand (or
twenty thousand, according to a different source) silk-worm cultivators
in Yii-hang hsien in northern Chekiang, in April 1933 took part in a revolt
45
USDS 893.00/10916, Jenkins despatch (Canton, 14 May 1930).
46
Ibid.
893.00
PR
Yunnan/54 (monthly report
of
the vice-consul, Charles
S.
Reed),
3
April 1933.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPONTANEOUS PEASANT AGITATION 289
because the provincial office of rural reconstruction wanted to make them
buy a particular type of silk-worm so as to fight Japanese competition.
One official from the provincial office was bitten, another killed and the
equipment and tents of
the
agents for rural reconstruction were set alight;
cocooneries were destroyed as were a number of administrative buildings.
It should be added that the order to buy these cocoons favoured by the
administration (which were more expensive than the others) was accom-
panied by no explanation whatsoever. When the provincial office at last
decided to send a section head to the district to parley with the peasants,
they fell on their knees before him after the fashion of the Tsar's subjects
in St Petersburg during the January 1905 Bloody Sunday. The alarmed
section head is then said to have driven his vehicle straight at them,
injuring
a
number of kneeling peasants, and that apparently set the situation
alight.
47
The example of Yu-hang underlines how very alien to the peasants'
mental world were the distinctions made above between peasant actions
intended as revenge for notorious abuses on the part of the administration
and misguided responses to attempted efforts at modernization. The
clumsiness and in some instances arrogance of the officials imposing a
particular reform may well have exceeded the patience of peasants already
bothered by the said reform which would anyway in the long run be
unlikely to serve the interests of more than a tiny fraction of their number
(those with the means to invest in the cocoons or, in other instances, in
seed or more expensive equipment). Such flare-ups of anger against
innovation and progress may be described as reactionary but that does
not necessarily mean they were irrational. Faced with the eruption of the
agents of modernization who sought to impose their innovations from
above, the peasants had
a
priori
no reason to react in any way differently
than they reacted to the all too familiar corruption (also on the part of
those set above them).
48
Nothing better illustrates the clash between the world of the peasants
and modernization conducted in an authoritarian (although not always
efficient) fashion than the institution of compulsory labour. A directive
from Chiang Kai-shek to the provincial governments published on 3
(.
47
On the Yu-hang incident,
cf.
three sources which are sometimes at variance:' Che-chiang erh-wan
nung-min pao-tung' (The uprising
of
twenty thousand peasants
in
Chekiang); USDS 893.00
PR
Shanghai/)7 (monthly report, April 1933)
and
893.00/12371 (Cunningham despatch,
20
May
1933);
Noel
R.
Miner, 'Chekiang: the Nationalists' effort
in
agrarian reform and construction,
1927-1937' (Stanford University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1973, 221—8).
48
In the
same year
of
1933
the
agitation
of
small landowners
in
K'un-yang (Yunnan) followed
a
plan to build
a
road across their fields. The initial route had not affected their land but the other
landowners whose fields were supposed to be cut through by the road bribed responsible officials.
Chow Yung-teh, Social mobility in China,
1
j 1.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
29° PEASANT MOVEMENTS
December 1934 authorized them
to use
compulsory labour
to
complete
works
in
the public interest: digging irrigation canals, consolidating river
dikes,
land clearance, afforestation, road-construction,
and so on, all of
which
the
directive claimed
to be
operations from which
the
labourers
(recruited from amongst
the
local villagers) would directly benefit.
But
that
did not
prevent compulsory labour from being extremely unpopular
among those upon whom
it was
imposed. They
did not, in
general,
coincide with the principal beneficiaries: namely, the rich landowners, who
would make greater
use of the
modern road
and
have more fields
to
irrigate and preserve from flooding and who slipped bribes
to
the officials
so as not
to
have
to
serve in the labour gangs, where
—
that is
—
they were
not automatically exempted
in the
first place. Only
the
poorest peasants
took part
in the
construction
of
a road linking south-east Szechwan
and
north-western Hunan (the work lasted from November 1935
to
January
1937,
but
the labourers drafted into the gangs only worked
on
the section
of
the
road nearest
to
their homes). Poorly treated, poorly
fed and
poorly
- if at
all
-
paid,
the
labourers eventually revolted
(at
least
a
minority
of
them did,
in
two
of
the seven hsien through which
the
road
passed: Ch'ien-chiang and Fu-ling).
49
Sometimes
the
mere process
of
drawing lots
to
select
the
peasants
to
be drafted was enough
to
provoke
a
riot:
at
Pi-yang, Honan,
in
1935,
a
thousand
old
women destroyed
the
pao-chia
registers containing
the
names
of
all able-bodied adults (their husbands
and
sons)
and
wounded
an officer.
50
More often, however,
as at
Ch'ien-chiang
and
Fu-ling,
the
agitation
was
caused
by the
poor treatment meted
out to the
labourers
or
by a
deterioration
in
their living
and
working conditions
(as a
result
of regulations
not
being properly observed)
or by the
corruption
of
the
officials
set
over them.
It
was quite exceptional
for the
labourers
to be
neither paid
nor
fed; many received
a
basic
or
minimum wage and almost
all were
fed,
albeit usually inadequately.
But, for
example,
it
sometimes
happened that they were refused upkeep
on
days when
it
rained (since
they were
not
working), despite
the
fact that
it
was impossible
for
them
to return
to
their homes;
or a
corrupt
pao-chia
chief would extort
a few
coppers from each man
-
to cover
'
the cost
of
calling
the
roll';
or
else
overseers would speed
up the
work
or
would beat
and
injure
(or
even
kill)
the
labourers, quite without justification.
As a
general rule
it was
abuses
of
this
kind that provoked' resistance
to
compulsory labour'
(k'ang
//'-/).
The
resistance might
be
non-violent
(a
strike)
or, on the
contrary,
bloody,
as
when
ten or
twenty thousand labourers
set
upon
the
escort
« CKNT 3.7 (July
i
937
)
72-4-
»» NYTL 3.1025.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008