4 Documentary of China's Great Crackdown on Bandits - Eight Days and 34 County Seats

What is recorded here is the deep concern of several old people in front of the author for those years. They are telling about the first period of February 1950, when bandits rioted all over the country. Although they were in our vast territory at that time, what they talked about and felt to me was all a scene of smoke covering the sky as if they were in the same place. They were the witnesses of the first period of turmoil, and they themselves were the most powerful witnesses of that particular period.

Location: Room 2O7, Northwest Hotel, Dongxiaochang, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province.

Narrator: Xu Guozhen, former deputy commander of the Northwest Military Region.

At that time, most of the troops went south, and there were only three guard regiments in the city of Lanzhou. There was an "emperor" in Gaolan in the north, and a "queen mother" in Yuzhong in the southeast, each with thousands of bandits, all claiming to fight Lanzhou, and the situation was urgent, not to mention the complicated situation in Lanzhou City itself.

At that time, I was the first deputy commander of the Northwest Military Region and the commander of the Lanzhou Garrison Command. Commander Peng Dehuai went to Beijing for a meeting, and I was the only one at home at the head of the military region. The situation is very critical, what should I do? After receiving the report, I drew a battalion from each of the three guard regiments and took it with me at night and went to Gaolan first. The "emperor" was called the head of the big knife club named Li Xiuyuan, with thousands of men under his command, wearing big crotch pants, shirtless, and a big knife in each hand. At that time, there was no time to delay, and the city was also tight! There was no way, so we had to fight, but as a result, I killed 100 of them, and the "generalissimo" of the "emperor", the "marshal of the East Road", and the "marshal of the West Road" were all killed, and the "Marshal of the North Road" were all the sons of Li Xiuyuan, and he refused to be crowned such an official by others. Now, seeing that the front has fallen so much, and the people behind are afraid, the "emperor" Li Xiuyuan is also empty at this time. Thousands of people let out a "whoop", and all of them let go of the sheep and fled for their lives.

The troops returned to Lanzhou in the middle of the night. As soon as I returned to the military region, the person on duty here reported that several thousand "Queen Mother" people in Yuzhong had already arrived at Jingjiayan and were about to arrive in Lanzhou City, and it was said that there were still "Queen Mother" people in the city to answer them. This female bandit, we have heard of it for a long time, she turned out to be a fortune teller, killed her husband and children, and killed people very poisonously. I didn't care about resting, so I simply explained the defense of the city to the person on duty, and immediately led people to Jingjiayan. The thousands of people in the "Queen Mother" are a different look, all of them have twine shoes, blue pants, and white shirts, basically all of them are women, and there are very few men, and there are white cloth flags in the team······

Later, the "Queen Mother" was captured by us and taken to Lanzhou City to be executed.

Location: The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy compound near Gongzhufen in Beijing.

Narrator: Pan Yan, former deputy commander of the Guizhou Military Region.

It was late February, and the group that was rampant in the vicinity of Guiyang, and it was also the most violent one, was Zeng Shaohua's so-called "Guizhou People's Anti-Communist Self-Defense and National Salvation Army," which numbered nearly 10,000 people. Zeng Shaohua proclaimed himself commander-in-chief, and they not only entangled the bandits in various townships and towns, recruited stragglers, made officials knights, recruited troops, intercepted our traffic and highway vehicles, killed our cadres, and attacked the people's government, but also frequently harassed around Guiyang, threatening to occupy Guizhou University and the entire Huaxi first, so as to serve as Zeng Shaohua's headquarters. It was very tense at the beginning.

On the 24th, the whole city of Guiyang was under martial law, and Qian Jiyuan, a spy of the United States and Chiang, was captured, and from his confession, he learned that some of the university guards in Guizhou had been bought off by bandits, and they agreed to rebel before dawn on the 26th, first kill the representatives of our army stationed in Guizhou University, and occupy Guizhou University. Upon receiving this news, we immediately ordered the Guiyang Garrison District to send troops to Huaxi. On the morning of the 25th, when the troops arrived at Huaxi, thousands of bandits had already tightly surrounded Guizhou University. However, because we had already received the news in advance and controlled some of the bandits hidden inside Guizhou University, the bandits' plan to cooperate with the outside did not succeed, so the bandits attacked for a day and a night, and saw that there was no reaction inside, so they had to withdraw for the time being. At this time, we immediately organized the teachers, students and staff of Guizhou University to transport bricks and materials, build fortifications around the school, and build a bunker on the hill behind the school. The northwest side of this bunker can monitor the stone bridge sentry bandits, and the south side can monitor the open area in front of the school headquarters, and students can also organize patrols around the student dormitory and the adjacent engineering college.

In the early morning of 5 March, bandits secretly bribed two families behind Guizhou University and killed four college students who I was patrolling at night. At dawn, the entire school was surrounded by bandits. The hill near Huaxi has been occupied by bandits, and from the back of Guizhou University to the hill on the right side of Shizhai, bandits shuttle back and forth, densely packed, and shouting; some bandits have begun to attack the school headquarters; and the bandits of Qingyan have occupied Yangjialing. At noon, the scouts rushed back to report that the bandits on the Qingyan side had attacked the Agricultural College, killed and wounded the staff and students Li Yinghong and Yang Shouding, and abducted 65 male and female students and one worker. On the side of the College of Engineering, on Huaxi Street, there was a lot of noise, and a large number of bandits were rushing in, all of them carrying large bags and small bags, all of which were the daily necessities of faculty and staff, students and residents on the nearby streets. However, due to the favorable conditions of the fortifications built in advance and the familiarity of the terrain, the bandits were never able to attack. So, the bandits' encirclement was routed by me for the second time.

After the bandits abducted a large number of students and workers of the Agricultural College, they sent threatening letters to the school and our troops stationed in Huaxi, asking us to take the initiative to give up the campus and the entire Huaxi in order to save the lives of the residents and the teachers and students of Guizhou University. Otherwise, we will take the group of students who were abducted from the Agricultural College and then wash Guizhou University and Huaxi with blood······

A few days later, I remember that it seemed to be at dawn on the twelfth, Zeng Shaohua gathered all the bandits, more than 10,000 people, and sure enough, he surrounded Huaxi again······

Location: Chengqifu West Village, Zhongwei Township, Xinghua City, Jiangsu Province.

Narrator: Wei Caizhi, former head of Zhongwei Township.

Some of our work in northern Jiangsu was carried out relatively early, the landlords and rich peasants were divided, the land reform had already begun, and in some places the fields had already been divided, and everything seemed to be going relatively smoothly, and the masses were preparing for the Spring Festival at that time, which was the first Spring Festival after liberation.

On the tenth day of February, anyway, the day before the Spring Festival, on the night of the Chinese New Year's Eve, there were few people left in the township except for those on duty, and I also returned home. On that day, the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was eaten a little late, the sky was dark, and everyone outside had set off firecrackers, so my family put the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner on the table. It was about eight o'clock, and as soon as I had picked up my rice bowl, the township messenger and three or four other people ran to my door out of breath, saying that there were more than a dozen big boats coming up from the polder, and that there were hundreds of people coming down from the boats, all with guns in their hands, and went straight to the village, looking like bandits.

However, who had seen such a large number of bandits before! But if it weren't for the bandits, the clothes they wore did not look like those of the People's Liberation Army, and besides, why did the PLA ship not go directly to the village, but instead stop outside the polder? And why did it wait until it was dark on the night of the 30th day of the Chinese New Year's Eve before entering the village? As soon as I heard their report, I knew that it was not good, and I could not care about anything, so I went out with the messenger and took a few peasants to the township office. However, it was so long, so fast, and when we arrived at the village, the gunfire on the side of the township office had already begun.

After the bandits entered the village, the first target was to go to the township office, and the village was already surrounded by bandits and blockaded. At that time, I had a twenty rings on my body, which was very fire-controlled, and the messenger was carrying a three-eight big cover, and while the whole village had already sounded into a whole gunfire and chaotic human voices, we ran desperately to the door of the township office while fighting. But as he ran, the communicator also ran away, and I don't know if he was wounded or killed by the bandits. When I arrived at the gate of the township office, I realized that although there were more than a dozen township cadres inside who were desperately resisting, how could they resist the onslaught of hundreds of bandits, and more than a dozen of them were all killed by the bandits. Cheng Zhengfu's family, a key member, lived in the township office, and none of the four wives and children were left, and all of them were killed by bandits. His wife was raped and killed by bandits. I saw that everything was over, and found the other two key team members Cheng Zhengming and Da Liuzi, who were also going home for Chinese New Year's Eve at the time, and took advantage of the chaos to find out Zhuang and hurriedly went to the district to report······ Hey, that Chinese New Year's Eve, the whole township had a miserable life.

Later, we learned that Anfeng, the location of the district, was also surrounded by bandits that day. That night, a total of more than a dozen townships in Xinghua were ransacked by bandits, and I heard that there were thousands of bandits. As for those bandits, some said that they came up from the sea, and some said that the bandits first rioted in Dafeng County, and then came to our Xinghua realm the next day. To this day, no one can explain those bandits clearly.

At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek, who had retreated to Taiwan, also suddenly sent an air force to invade the airspace over the mainland and openly carried out large-scale retaliatory bombing of Shanghai, Fuzhou, and other places, and actively cooperated with the armed riots set off by bandits in various parts of the mainland.

The Xinhua News Agency sent a message from Shanghai on 7 February, which read: "The Kuomintang bandits exterminated humanity and frantically bombed Shanghai on 6 February, killing and injuring more than 1,000 residents." As the title, it said: Between 12 a.m. and 2 p.m. yesterday, the US-made Kuomintang gang planes (12 P-24 bombers, two P-51 bombers, two B-25 bombers, and one B-38 bomber, a total of 17 planes) invaded the airspace over Shanghai in four batches and dropped more than 70 bombs, causing heavy losses to the lives and property of the citizens. According to preliminary statistics, more than 1,000 houses were destroyed and more than 1,000 residents were killed or injured, including more than 200 residents of Luwan District, more than 400 injured, and some entire families were killed. The U.S. Electric Power Company was also damaged by the bombing, which temporarily halted the city's electricity and water supply······

Chiang Kai-shek's air force bombed Shanghai, Fuzhou, and other places in succession, greatly fueling the arrogance of bandits in various parts of the country. It was even rumored that Chiang Kai-shek's army had basically occupied Shanghai, that the United States had sent 20 atomic bombs to Taiwan, and that World War III had already begun

This is the scene that unfolded before us at the beginning of the large-scale Wushen riot set off by bandits throughout the country in February 1950.

From 6 February to 13 February, according to incomplete statistics, in just eight days, more than 20 prefectures and cities, including provincial capitals, were surrounded and attacked by bandits throughout the country, among which Nanchong City, where the organs of the North Sichuan Military Region were located, and Huaxi City, Guizhou, where the Guiyang Military Sub-district was located, were looted by bandits, and the bandits took away more than 90 students from Guiyang Agricultural College and Guizhou University at that time. Most of the houses in Nanchong City, including the office building of the Northern Sichuan District Administration Office, which had just been established at that time and had Comrade Hu Yaobang as the first secretary, were also burned down by the bandits.

In the vast rural areas of the country, more than 10,000 local cadres, staff members, members of grain requisition work teams, and PLA cadres and fighters at all levels were killed by bandits. There were a total of 34 county towns throughout the country, including Chongqing, Pixian, Jianyang, Jintang, and Qionglai, which were subordinate to the Southwest Military Region at that time, Pingliang, Datong, Menyuan, Linxia, and Kang counties under the Northwest Military Region, Guanyang, Xingxian, and Nanxian under the Central and Southern Military Region, and Pingnan, Yong'an, Sanyuan, Gutian, and Jinzhai under the East China Military Region.

Excerpt from Luo Guoming's "Documentary of China's Great Suppression of Bandits"