Part Three

CHAPTER I

PROVINCIAL POLITICS

JAPAN had long regarded the province of Shantung as one of her particular spheres of influence. During the close of the nineteenth century, when China was being forced out of her self-imposed isolationist policy by the avid plunderings of the western powers and Japan, Germany, not to be outdone by Great Britain, Russia and France, secured a 99-year lease on the Chiaochow Bay area on the coast of Shantung. Here she built and fortified the port city of Tsingtao, extended railways into the interior and set about developing the trade of this rich and hitherto untapped province. Japan's decision to participate in the First World War on the side of the Allies was influenced by what she hoped to gain in China while the western powers were engaged in Europe. She attacked and captured Tsingtao and took over Germany's political and industrial interests throughout the province.

When in later years as a result of the Washington Conference Japan was forced to return this booty to China, she nevertheless continued to exert all possible influence through bribery, political intrigue and commercial enterprise, and succeeded in maintaining to no small degree her influence over this province. In line with her policy of obstructing the unification of China under the Central Government, Japan gave support to any move that would further the alienation of the Shantung Provincial Government from Nanking.

For some years prior to the "Lukouchiao Incident" in July 1937, which marked the beginning of China's open war against Japan, the Japanese had been seeking to gain influence over the Governor of this province, General Han Fu-ch'u, and had been given a receptive hearing.

At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Shantung under the government of General Han, officially was completely under the jurisdiction of the Central Government at Nanking, but in actuality Han remained, as he was originally, one of the old war-lord school, outwardly submitting to the will of the Central Government but in fact enjoying almost complete freedom of action within his province.

Shortly after the "Lukouchiao Incident" General Feng Yu-hsiang, then Vice-Minister of War, went north, hoping to regain control of, and co-operate with, his former sub-ordinates who were scattered in influential positions through-out the northern provinces; General Han was one of these. Although Feng's intentions were not without personal ambition, there is no doubt that had he been successful in uniting the Central Government forces in North China under his command, resistance to the Japanese onslaught would have been stiffened. As it was, he failed completely, and within a year the Japanese had dealt decisive blows to the divided North China command.

It was the beginning of '38 before the Japanese commenced their invasion of Shantung, and by this time public opinion had forced the Governor, General Han, to declare himself for the Central Government, and he announced his intention to defend the province against the invader. But in spite of this it was well known that Han had engaged in frequent personal interviews with the Japanese "China Experts", and it was generally believed that an understanding had been reached.

He sent a detachment of troops north to the provincial border to stem the Japanese advance, but this was considered more of a face-saving move than a real attempt to resist, and with but a token resistance in the suburbs of Tsinan, General Han evacuated the city and retreated south of the capital, where his provincial troops, stiffened by the arrival of Central Government reinforcements, were successful in holding up the Japanese southward advance. Advantage was taken of this respite by the Central Government to complete preparations for a counter-offensive in southern Shantung.

After the battle of Taierchuang on the southern border of Shantung, where the Chinese forces inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Japanese, the Central Government attempted to stabilise southern Shantung, but some three months later it became evident that the Japanese intended to make a concerted drive on this area from both the north and the south, to converge on the railway junction of Hsuchowfu. Defence preparations were made, but without success. The Japanese swept through southern Shantung and occupied Hsuchowfu, thus marking the virtual control of the whole of Shantung by the Japanese and the complete occupation of the strategic railway line from Tientsin to Nanking and Shanghai.

With the Central Army's defeat at Hsuchowfu they with-drew westward to Kaifeng and the Peking—Hankow railway junction town of Chengchow, and the Japanese, after consolidating their position, pressed their attack to the west, closely following on the heels of the retreating Chinese Army.

At this crucial point nature intervened. Wending its tortuous way from the Tibetan uplands through the provinces of Kansu, Ninghsia, Shensi, Shansi and Honan, the Yellow River finds its outlet to the sea in the Pei Hai Gulf on the northern coast of Shantung. Throughout the history of China, this river has brought with it alternate disaster and prosperity to the toiling farmers inhabiting its valley. In the arid deserts of Ninghsia and Shensi it is the one and only source of irrigation, transforming the dry desert into fertile agricultural lands. As it flows from the highlands of Tibet and forces its way through the precipitous and narrow gorges of Kansu into the soft, loess soil of Shensi, it gathers a heavy silt deposit. Entering on the great plains of North China, the river-bed widens and the rate of flow decreases, and gradually this silt sinks to the bed of the river. To counter-act this continual rise of the river-bed, dykes are built along each side of the river to confine it to its bed. As the years go by, so the bed of the river is raised, necessitating the dykes being built higher to contain it within its course, with the result that the river is flowing at a height considerably above that of the surrounding country. Sometimes in the rainy season, when the pressure of water increases, a weak spot in the dyke gives way. The resulting terrific pressure of water and dissolves the dykes into so much mud and the surrounding country becomes inundated.

Such a flood occurred in '39. For hundreds of miles the country was turned into a huge lake dotted here and there with an occasional island. Thousands of troops, both Japanese and Chinese, were caught in this flood and drowned, together with peasants and their livestock; others, isolated on these small islands, starved to death or died from disease, thus bringing to an end the war in this area. The Chinese forces, safe behind this mass of water, withdrew to Chengchow, and the Japanese returned to their base at Hsuchowfu. The main theatre of war shifted to the area around Hankow on the Yangtze River, the temporary seat of the Chinese National Government.

As a result of this flood enormous areas were laid waste and in certain places the silt deposit was such that even today one can travel for miles through completely barren land. Occasionally one can see the remains of a village, perhaps the graceful curving roof of a temple or the top branches of a withered tree projecting a few feet above the silt. The peasants have gone. Of those who did not perish in the flood many succumbed to starvation and disease; famine and pestilence raged. Now, with the Japanese defeat, a few have returned to the location of their previous homes and are eking out a starvation existence encamped above the sites 0i their old villages, living literally on the roof-tops of their former homes. Although this disaster checked the Japanese advance to the west, it devastated a once rich and fertile land and accounted for a greater loss of life than did any military engagement during the war.

By 1939 all the Central Government troops had been withdrawn from Shantung and the Japanese had securely established themselves along the main communication lines, placing garrisons at all the railway stations and at prefecture cities in the interior. Thousands of Japanese citizens arrived at Tsingtao and were gradually dispersed west along the railway to Weihsien, Tsinan and intermediate stations. In Shantung the first stage of the Japanese plan for the domination of China was accomplished. It now only remained for the Japanese to consolidate their position in the interior by intensive "mopping-up" operations, and the rich agricultural and mineral products of the province would be theirs for the taking.

"Mopping-up" operations continued throughout the years '40 and '41 with but little success from the Japanese point of view. Japanese-sponsored newspapers gave glowing accounts of operations successfully carried out at various points in the interior against the "bandit forces", announcing the complete annihilation of the "bandits" and the pacification of the particular area. Almost invariably, within three or four months that point would again be in the news, the "bandits" re-annihilated and the area again pacified. By the end of '41 the Japanese were still as far from realising their objective as they were in '39.

Who were these people who so successfully prevented the invaders from consolidating their gains and reaping the spoils of aggression? In the Japanese papers they were dubbed as "bandits", "Communists" and sometimes as "Chungking irregulars". In the Central Government's newspapers they were seldom mentioned; only if some out-standing success against the Japanese was achieved were they claimed as "Central Government forces". To the Shantungese they were known as the "yu-chi-tui", which is the equivalent of "guerrillas". In reality they were local militia with a backbone of Chinese Army veterans who, rather than retreat with the Central Government forces, had preferred to remain and protect their homesteads and grain-lands from Japanese pillage. These people, by their continual pin-Pricks, made the Japanese domination of Shantung, both from the military and economic point of view, a source of continual worry and a headache for which there appeared to be no sedative.

Early in '39 the Central Government ordered the opening of a training school for guerrillas in the mountains of southern Shantung. During the half-year or so that it functioned, a small group of patriots was trained in the art of guerrilla warfare and it was they who, returning to their native districts, formed the backbone of the guerrilla movement which harassed the Japanese continuously during the remaining years of the war.

During the early stages of the Japanese invasion of Shantung there had been a tacit understanding of co-operation between the Communists and the Nationalist forces, but, as the Central Government forces became weaker, the Communists recruited and expanded under the banner of patriot-ism. As the Nationalists were gradually forced to withdraw from the south by Japanese pressure and by Communist attacks on their lines of communication, the areas which they vacated were occupied largely by Communists and, to a lesser extent, by guerrillas.

The guerrilla units settled into more or less specified areas and built up strong local militia forces which were, for the most part, composed of peasants recruited from that particular district in which the unit had originated. They were fighting primarily for the right to till and reap their own soil and to protect their homes and families from Japanese vandalism. Patriotism as such, particularly with the farmer-peasant recruits, was something not yet very clearly understood. They were concerned more with the material things of life. They knew that if their district was under Japanese control, their crops would be taken away from them, their pigs and cattle driven off to the Japanese garrisons and slaughtered, their mules and horses requisitioned for military use, their young men taken for enforced labour. Even their womenfolk would not be safe. What remnant of their crops they were allowed to keep would have to be sold at fixed prices; they would be told what to plant, and when. They were fighting to maintain their accustomed way of life.

The Communists, on the other hand, were essentially an alien body which had injected itself into the area and had gradually absorbed local support in certain districts as the only alternative available to the people, after the retreat of the Central Government forces, other than Japanese subjugation. Here also the peasants thought they were fighting to preserve their original mode of life, but in this case they soon learned otherwise. They found that they were involved in something very new, a way of life entirely contrary to that which they had lived since time immemorial. Caught in the web they had no alternative. With uncertainty and fear in their hearts, the older generation watched the training of their sons and daughters under this new scheme of things. There was op-position but this was removed by the extinction of life; against such fundamental means of eradicating opposition, the people had no recourse, and as the older generation became broken and whipped in spirit, so their sons and daughters, under their intense indoctrination, gained a new strength and under-standing. They soon believed that they were crusading for a new cause, a new way of life, and for this they were fighting the Japanese invaders.

The Japanese, failing to obtain conclusive results with their mopping-up operations, changed their policy from one of independent military aggression to that of conciliatory co-operation with Chinese who were willing to subjugate them-selves to Japanese control. Working out from the railway zone and from their established garrisons in the interior, they set up puppet governments and reorganised puppet troops, supplying them with arms and ammunition. In this manner they divided the province into many districts, thus hoping to control the Chinese through the Chinese.

Co-operating with these newly established units, they moved their troops from one district to another in an effort to Promote their new "Peace Pacification Movement" and to wipe out guerrilla and Communist activities. Fostering war by war, they endeavoured to gain control of large areas of Shantung, and thereby strengthen their economic structure so enabling them to pursue the Asiatic war to its final conclusion.

Vastly superior in armaments, they gradually established control over large areas through the support of Chinese puppet troops. It was not long before these puppet troops, feeling secure under the protection of the Japanese, began to make independent excursions into nearby guerrilla areas, ravaging and pillaging as the Japanese had seldom done.

Encouraged by the success of their policy, the Japanese interlaced intrigue with aggression, and many guerrilla areas, under pressure of constant threat, negotiated non-aggression pacts with the Japanese. Through their puppet forces and these allied guerrillas the Japanese fostered intrigue and misunderstanding, thus forestalling any possibility of concerted action and creating an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion.

At the time of the outbreak of the Pacific war in December '41, the situation in Shantung had settled down to a three-cornered struggle. The Japanese and their puppet troops, pressed by the guerrillas and the Communists, were kept continually on the move. The Communists attacked both the Japanese and the guerrillas; the guerrillas fought both the Japanese and the Communists. Nationalistic ideals were submerged in this basic struggle for existence. One fought to protect one's home and family, for the right to till one's land — far stronger reasons to the Chinese peasants than those of National Salvation. It was something they understood, something they were accustomed to, and on this point the guerrilla leaders showed their sagacity, uniting the struggle against the Japanese with the instinctive desire of the peasant to protect his livelihood.

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