At the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Discipline Inspection Commission that closed a few days ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the need to always maintain the soberness of "catching up with the examination", maintain vigilance against "corrosion" and "hunting", and adhere to the main tone of strictness for a long time.
Based on the historical moment when the focus of the Work of the Communist Party of China shifted from the countryside to the city in 1949, how did the Communist Party of China learn to accept, manage, and build cities with great efforts?
Text | Guan Shanyuan
Source Lookout Think Tank (zhczyj).
1 "Receive" becomes "Rob"
The lesson of "catching up with the examination" is far from Li Zicheng, a heroic division with hundred battles, but after the capture of Beijing, it quickly became corrupt and collapsed like a huge snowman under the hot sun.
Recently, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, both the Kuomintang government representing China at that time and Chiang Kai-shek himself reached its peak of prestige, but after only four years, after the defeat of Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek issued such a lament: "Our failure is our failure in acceptance!" ”
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the people in the original occupied areas waited with joy and excitement for the arrival of government receivers, but found that what was waiting for them was a nightmare...
Shi Zai: In the process of receiving, the receiving organs and officials at all levels of the Kuomintang government competed to loot and make a windfall, and the number of Japanese and pseudo-materials received in Peiping was less than one-fifth of the total, and most of the rest were appropriated by the receiving officials for themselves. Shanghai Mayor Qian Dajun stole and sold Japanese and counterfeit materials worth 4.2 billion yuan. People satirize this kind of reception as "Sanyang (Yang) Kaitai" (holding the West, loving the East, and wanting to present the Ocean), and the more classic saying is "Wuzi Dengke" - the receiving official frantically plundering tickets, seats, houses, cars, and women.
For example, in Shanghai, more than half of the enemy and puppet industries in the southeast region were concentrated, and for a time, the military dispatched personnel, latent agents, hooligans, and puppet troops who had been plotted against were overwhelmingly suppressed like a "locust plague," and everything had to be bitten and inserted. A large amount of cash, materials, cars, houses, and machinery have been looted by groups of unknown people; there is no clear jurisdiction over the receipt of real estate, warehouses, warehouses, and businesses, and there is often dozens of gangs who do not buy each other. Tang Enbo's Third Front and the Songhu Garrison Command engaged in a gun battle for a Japanese club, killing and wounding many people. Xuan Tiewu's Shanghai Municipal Police Department also clashed with Mao Sen's military command agents several times.
The Kuomintang magnates made a fortune, but the common people were very unlucky, calling such "reception" a "robbery."
Originally, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the people of the retaken areas had great hopes for the Kuomintang government, but the facts were as people said, "Thinking of the Central Committee and hoping for the Central Committee, the Central Committee has suffered even more when it comes." The "robbery" of the Kuomintang Government has quickly destroyed the people's hopes for it.
On October 24, 1945, the Ta Kung Pao published an editorial entitled "Appeal of the People of Jiangsu and Zhejiang", angrily denouncing: "Countless tens of thousands of people in this area have rejoiced in victory, but now they are like water, and the public cannot talk about their lives." They were in great pain, more painful than when they were not victorious. The editorial bluntly said that the acceptance of the Kuomintang government brought "a disaster of victory" to the broad masses of the people.
In the spring of 1946, the famous future writer Wang Dingjun, who was still a low-ranking officer in the Kuomintang army at the time, followed the army from Shaanxi to Nanjing, then to Shanghai, and then to Shenyang.
In Nanjing, they lived in a warehouse built by the Japanese, "the warehouse is clean, it can be said that there is no grass left... These people have a backstage and are bold enough to empty one warehouse after another, so the Beijing and Shanghai newspapers write "receiving" as 'robbery and searching'..."
When he arrived in Shanghai, Wang Dingjun knew a car squad leader of a heavy regiment, "the district squad leader actually rented a house to pack a woman", and this squad leader also told him: "If you can't get rich now, you are destined to be poor for a lifetime"...
What most irritated Wang Dingjun was the strange phenomenon he witnessed after he arrived in Shenyang, northeast China, where the local people called the national army ranks "five strongest", and he wrote ironically: "five strong", which was originally an honorary title, after the end of World War II, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union were called the top three, plus France and China, collectively known as the top five. At that time in China, the "top five" were often hung on the lips of dignitaries and embedded in the big headlines of newspapers. However, the word later changed its flavor and became a satire on the "five strong" style of the national army to buy, sell, borrow, live, and marry.
Wang Dingjun's "strong marriage" in Shenyang is as follows: "The commander of the regiment or the commander of the division has selected the object to become a relative, and his age may be older than his father-in-law. ”
It can be said that the Kuomintang's great "robbery" has sharply intensified the basic contradictions in Chinese society, and in particular has caused fatal consequences to the Kuomintang regime itself, causing it to seriously shake or even basically destroy the foundation of its rule in various aspects of politics, economy, military affairs, social morality, and official rule, and eventually led to the rapid demise of the mainland.
On July 30, 1949, two months before the founding of new China, Dean Acheson, then Secretary of State of the United States, wrote a letter of great frustration to President Truman, confessing his views on the situation in China, in which he wrote:
"The conduct of the civil and military officials of the Kuomintang in the areas recovered from Japan has caused the Kuomintang to rapidly lose the support of the people and their own prestige in these areas ... Of all the decisive battles of the Nationalist army, not once failed because of a lack of weapons or ammunition, the corruption found in Chongqing had fatally weakened the resistance of the Kuomintang, their leaders had proved incapable of coping, their troops had lost the support of the people, and history had repeatedly proved that a regime that had lost confidence in itself and an army that had lost its morale could not withstand the test of battle. ”
Chiang Kai-shek was heartbroken, and when he spoke at the plenary session of the Kuomintang Central Committee about the corruption and chaos received after the war, he beat his chest and scolded: "You are so chaotic, you don't think about the party-state, you don't think about your own future, you also have to think about your family!" ”
However, it didn't work much.
2 From the countryside to the city
In June 1947, Liu Deng's army forcibly crossed the Yellow River and leaped thousands of miles into the Dabie Mountains, opening the prelude to the strategic offensive of the People's Liberation Army. On October 10 of that year, the Declaration of the people's liberation army of the Chinese was released, which put forward an exciting slogan: "Down with Chiang Kai-shek and liberate all of China"! For a time, the People's Liberation Army swallowed up like a tiger, and one city after another returned to the hands of the people, and to this day, many cities have a "liberation road", remembering the historical glory of the army entering the city and the masses boiling.
But at the same time, severe tests have followed – can the Chinese Communist Party, which has long worked, lived and fought in rural areas, adapt its ideological concepts and behavioral habits to the transformation from rural to urban areas?
There is a plot in the TV series "Bright Sword":
Li Yunlong's troops captured a city and found a quartermaster warehouse, so they ordered the company commander Wang Yousheng to put a seal on the warehouse, but the leaders of other troops came up, directly tore the seal on the door, and removed the booty, Wang Yousheng hesitated to raise his gun to try to block, but failed, but was slapped. The dignified boy could only cry and scold this group of unreasonable people while crying: "If you want the booty to fight yourself, rob our booty, what is called a capable, arbitrary thing." Rob our things, don't face the things..." Just when Li Yunlong came over, he was furious after asking the reason, and he asked Wang Yousheng to go up and slap him in the face, and calmed down the person who snatched the things. The other party saw that Li Yunlong was not easy to annoy, so he had to put down his things and scold and grin and leave...
This is not an artistic fiction. When the Chinese Communist Party first took over the cities, it exposed many problems. The December 1948 Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Question of Urban Public Real Estate begins by pointing out that in the process of liberating the city, "many organs, groups, and troops occupy and compete in the city for the furniture of public houses, or a small organ occupies a very large number of houses, arbitrarily destroy them and do not bear any responsibility; many cadres set up private residences in the public houses of the city without authorization, take furniture, or give furniture to others, and move into the countryside." ”
The People's Liberation Army (PEOPLE's Liberation Army) stormed Jinzhou in the Liaoshen Campaign (file photo). Photo| Xinhua News Agency
On April 19, 1948, Bo Yibo, then the first secretary of the North China Central Bureau, submitted a special report to Mao Zedong on the problem of receiving cities in North China, which wrote: The receiving cities in North China have gone through some detours. In the recapture of industrial zones such as Jingxing and Yangquan, there was a phenomenon of grabbing materials and grabbing machinery indiscriminately, which caused great damage to industry. When Zhangjiakou was recovered, many cadres casually ran to the city, grabbed and bought things indiscriminately, and some even became corrupt and corrupt, and the leading organs also relaxed their rural work, causing dissatisfaction among the soldiers of the troops and the grass-roots cadres in the rural areas. In November 1947, Shijiazhuang was conquered, and although the takeover work was improved, many soldiers still took things, and they also encouraged the urban poor to take them. At first, it was to take public property, and then it was robbed of private property, so that martial law had to be imposed, and even several people were shot to stop the looting.
The report also wrote: After entering the city, organs from other areas sent people to grab shopping funds, and peasants from the four townships were also ready to take advantage of the situation to pour in, and similar situations also occurred in several cities such as Handan, Jiaozuo, and Yuncheng. In the management of the city, consciously or unconsciously applying the experience of the countryside, confusing the boundaries between feudalism and capitalism, and undermining the development of industry and commerce...
Mao Zedong attached great importance to this report and made an important annotation: The destruction of industry and commerce in cities or towns is "a kind of agrarian socialist ideology, which is reactionary, backward, and retrogressive in nature, and must be resolutely opposed." In this spirit, the whole Party in North China and even the whole Party has conducted education among the broad masses of cadres, distinguishing between the ideas of scientific socialism and agricultural socialism, and straightening out policies.
Bo Yibo recalled in his book "Review of Several Major Decisions and Events" that Mao Zedong's basic Marxist viewpoint of protecting and developing the productive forces ran through the basic Marxist viewpoint of protecting and developing the productive forces, from putting forward the idea of opposing socialist agriculture to demanding that cities be taken over "as they are and unchanged" in their entirety. China's economy is backward and the level of social productive forces is low, but compared with the rural areas, the degree of urban development is much higher, and a small amount of modern industry is mainly concentrated there.
On March 5, 1949, the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Xibaipo, Pingshan County, Hebei Province, which was the only plenary session of the Central Committee held by the Cpc during the Liberation War, and also a meeting of far-reaching historical significance for the CPC to lay the foundation for the founding of a new China. An important topic of the meeting was "going to the city".
The plenum determined that the Party must make great efforts to learn to manage and build cities and to meet new struggles. Mao Zedong made a report, sonorous and powerful:
"If we don't pay attention to these problems, if we don't learn to fight these people and win the struggle, we won't be able to maintain power, we're going to be untenable, we're going to lose."
3 Receive Shenyang!
On October 29, 1948, a train departed Harbin and sped south to Shenyang. On the rumbling train, three tense meetings were held in a row, and the theme of the meeting was: Receiving Shenyang. Presiding over the meeting was Chen Yun, then deputy secretary of the Northeast Bureau, who at this time added a new identity: director of the Shenyang Special City Military Control Commission.
At 3 p.m. on November 2, Shenyang was liberated. At dusk, Chen Yun led the team to ride into Shenyang City in 17 large and small cars, the whole city lost power, and sporadic gunshots could be heard, groups of Kuomintang scattered soldiers wandering around, and there were bandits secretly snooping.
The next day, Chen Yun called a reception meeting, and he said: Shenyang is the first big city accepted by our party, and it must be accepted well, and we must not let the cities we have beaten down become dead cities. ”
Shenyang is the largest city and industrial and commercial center in northeast China, and Shenyang and its surrounding cities Anshan, Benxi and Fushun together constitute the largest heavy industrial zone in China. Taking over such a megacity as Shenyang is something that no Chinese Communist has ever met or experienced before. But the Chinese Communist Party has done wonders!
Four days after liberation, the reception work of the various systems was completed, the streets of Shenyang took on a new look, people saw trams shuttling through the city, heard the programs of Xinhua Radio, reopened the market, workers returned to work, newspaper vendors went to the streets to sell newspapers... By November 25, 96 passenger and freight trains were moving in and out of Shenyang every day, and most of the factories had resumed production.
On December 14, 1948, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China approved and forwarded chen Yun's "Briefing on Receiving Shenyang Experience". Shenyang's experience has solved two major difficulties in the reception work: one is how to achieve complete reception, and the other is how to quickly restore order.
The specific solution is to achieve rapid and complete reception by "each system, top-down, unchanged, first picked up and then divided", while at the same time, we should pay close attention to solving the key problems that contribute to the political and economic stability of the people, such as the rapid restoration of electricity supply, the solution of the financial price problem, the confiscation of police guns and unarmed services, the use of newspaper dissemination policies, and the proper handling of the wage problem...
Chen Yun also specifically proposed that a special receiving team should be set up: "To accept a large city, in addition to the methods of the opposite, it is necessary to have cadres who are fully prepared and competent in all aspects. Judging from the current situation, the central authorities and the field armies of the strategic areas need to prepare special teams for receiving large cities, and when the work is completed, they can be handed over to the fixed municipal party committees and other organs. Such a receiving team can accumulate experience, and the backbone of which can be temporarily turned into a full-time team and receive major cities in turn. ”
The Chinese Communist Party has never been afraid of problems, but has taken a "problem-oriented" approach to solving problems by example. First summed up the "Jinan experience" and "Shenyang experience", and then properly accepted Beiping, Tianjin, Nanjing, Shanghai... New problems are constantly encountered, and solutions to problems are constantly summarized.
In addition, how to resettle the old personnel of the Kuomintang government is a complex and sensitive issue.
After the peaceful liberation of Peiping, each of the 18,000 officers of Fu Zuoyi's old department was paid a three-month salary and sent back to Suiyuan, but they were not satisfied, and some people went back to become a resistance to the peaceful liberation of Suiyuan.
After the liberation of Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, 27,000 people were laid off, causing fluctuations, and finally the people's government was responsible for resettlement.
Mao Zedong criticized both of these things, stressing the need to "wrap them up and manage the meals to eat," and he also said humorously: "We have broken the big stove of the Kuomintang government in Nanjing, and if we do not give people food to eat, they will start another stove." ”
On the one hand, it is necessary to change the inefficient style of the Kuomintang bureaucracy, and the personnel must be streamlined, but the personnel who have been streamlined must not be kicked away, training classes should be held, living expenses should be paid, and the livelihood of them and their families should be guaranteed. On the other hand, the old personnel "wrapped up", "first, not the original salary of the original post, the second is not intact, with these retained personnel to explain the difficulties of the people and the government, appropriately reduce the treatment, three people eat evenly with five people, the house is crowded." ”
Before and after the founding of New China, the financial difficulties were very difficult, but there was no large-scale unemployment, which played a very good role in rapidly stabilizing social order and restoring and developing production. ”
4 The lifeblood of the Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party's greatest confidence in successfully taking over cities is because of its high degree of discipline.
Chen Yun wrote in the "Briefing on the Experience of Receiving Shenyang": "To ensure a good reception, the most important thing is to have a good discipline education for the troops entering the city. All responsible persons of the Military Control Commission should adhere to the principle of taking over, handle them impartially, and make every effort to stop disputes over houses, cars, and factories. The reason why these problems have not occurred this time is because the CMC itself adheres to principles, is impartial, and acts in an exemplary manner. ”
In 1949, the land of China was both devastated and full of vitality, the people's liberation army liberated all of China was unstoppable, and the Chinese Communist Party won a military victory at the same time as a political victory. Those who have been working in the countryside for a long time and have "lost the slag of the soil" have entered the colorful cities, not to become officials, let alone to get rich, but to do things.
To this day, the magnificent history of entering the city, many details, are still moving. For example, the famous "Three Disciplines and Eight Notes" was revised to guide the behavior of peasant soldiers who had never entered the city when entering the city, including "no shooting without permission", "not occupying houses and shops, not disturbing entertainment venues such as theaters", and "not eating on the street, not walking hand in hand on the street, not squeezing into the crowd" and "not scribbling on the wall".
The American scholar Hu Sushan wrote in his masterpiece "China's Civil War": "In Shanghai, even anti-communist foreigners have been moved. There, as elsewhere, soldiers refused to accept food and other items as gifts. Logisticians carried equipment into the city without requisitioning civilian vehicles.
The conservative American newspaper Damei Evening News said the behavior of the People's Liberation Army in the city was "exemplary." The editor, Lendl Goode, noted their efforts to return the vehicles requisitioned and discarded by the retreating Nationalists to their owners. The efforts, he wrote, reminded him of four years ago: returning Nationalist officials vying for Japanese cars for their own use. ”
Is it for the selfish interests of the city or for the benefit of the people? This is the fundamental difference between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang.
Also in Shanghai, there is a stark contrast:
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wu Shaoshu, director of the Shanghai Municipal Party Department of the Kuomintang, used his power to embezzle more than 1,000 Japanese and pseudo-real estate buildings, more than 800 cars, and more than 10,000 pieces of gold.
At the beginning of the liberation of Shanghai, there was a shocking "Ou Earthquake Incident". On June 8, 1949, when he was ordered by the Ministry of Public Security to investigate and deal with the case of Bi Xiaohui, director of the 21st Radio Station of the Kuomintang Air Force Command, who had taken over the work after the liberation of Shanghai, he fell in love with Bi Xiaohui's aunt, Zhu Shi, when he was ordered to participate in the investigation and handling of the case of Bi Xiaohui, director of the 21st Radio Station of the Kuomintang Air Force Command.
At that time, Bi Xiaohui had already fled south with the Kuomintang army, and there was only one wife and one concubine left in the family, and they were very panicked. Taking advantage of the other party's fear, Ou Zhen returned to the Bi family that night, threatening and seducing, forcing the young and beautiful Zhu Shi to live with him. Ou Zhen also found a house outside and began to "hide the golden house". Later, because he was playing with a silver dollar in the office, Ou Zhen revealed a flaw, after all, the life of the police was hard at that time. He tried to hide it from the organization, but was quickly found out.
When Ou Zhen committed the crime, it was less than half a month before the liberation of Shanghai! Li Shiying, then minister of public security in East China and a member of the party group of the Shanghai Municipal Government, was furious, and Ou Zhen had followed him from Shandong to Shanghai, and he gave instructions on the report of Ou Zhen's case: Ou Zhen extorted and blackmailed women, seduced women, and was lawless, and should be shot to maintain discipline. The report and judgment were submitted to Mayor Chen Yi for verification, and Chen Yi wrote down four big words: Agree to shoot.
On August 15, 1949, the Liberation Daily published Ou Zhen's crimes in a prominent page and published a short commentary entitled "Revolutionary Discipline Cannot Be Undermined."
Discipline is the lifeblood of the Chinese Communist Party!
Today, revisiting Mao Zedong's speech at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, I can still feel the rational thinking under the surging passion:
"We're going to win all over the country soon... Because of victory, the pride in the party, the mood of self-esteem as a hero, the mood of pausing and not seeking progress, the mood of coveting pleasure and not wanting to live a hard life anymore, may grow. ”
"Winning a national victory is only the first step in the long march. If this step is also worthy of pride, it is relatively small, and more proud is still to come. The triumph of the Chinese democratic revolution in a few more decades will make it feel as if it is only a short prologue to a long drama. The play must begin with the prologue, but the prologue is not yet the climax. The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution is longer, and the work is greater and more arduous. This must now be made clear to the Party, and it is imperative that comrades continue to maintain a modest, cautious, non-arrogant, and non-impetuous style of work, and that comrades continue to maintain a style of arduous struggle. We have criticism and self-criticism, the weapon of Marxism-Leninism. We can get rid of bad style and maintain good style. We can learn things we didn't understand before. Not only are we good at destroying an old world, we will also be good at building a new one! ”
What is a "classic"? Classics, lies in vitality! On the eve of entering the city, in the humble venue of Xibaipo, this is a classic declaration. Many years later, it is still outdated, still deafening, still thought-provoking.
Resources:
1. "History of the Communist Party of China" | The Research Office of Party History of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Central Party History Publishing House, September 2002
2. "The Annals of Mao Zedong" | The Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Central Literature Publishing House, August 1993
3. "Review of Several Major Decisions and Events", | Bo Yibo, Central Party School Press, May 1991
4. "Guan Shan And Take the Road", | Wang Dingjun, Sanlian Bookstore, January 2013
5. "The Older Generation of Revolutionaries in Xiangshan" | the Party History Research Office of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Office of the Beijing Municipal Local History Compilation Committee, Beijing People's Publishing House, September 2019
6. "A Century of Party History in Literature" | Li Ying, Xuelin Publishing House, November 2020
7. "Leader's Painting Series - Chen Yun" | The Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chen Yun Research Group, Liaoning People's Publishing House, May 2018
8. "The Biography of Chen Yun", | Jin Chong and Chen Qun, Central Literature Publishing House, June 2015
9. "China's Civil War" | Hu Sushan, Contemporary China Publishing House, July 2014
10. "The First Case of Anti-Corruption after Shanghai Liberation", | Qian Lijun, Shanghai Party History Research, No. 02, 1994
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Wu Text Editor: Song Yanlin Caption Source: Visual China Photo Editor: Zhu Xuan
Source: Author: Lookout Think Tank