The Great Leap Forward was the product of a uniquely Maoist declaration of “war communism,” but the disaster it spawned in some rural Chinese villages had roots in a less visible episode of warfare. In the memory of Da Fo's inhabitants, the antecedents of Mao's war communism lay in the ascent of the Communist Party militia leaders during the years of anti-Japanese resistance and, after the Japanese were expelled in 1945, in the civil war between Nationalists and Communists that followed. The inhabitants of Da Fo experienced protracted violence at the hands of authoritarian leaders during this period, in which the village was first occupied by Yang Faxian's Puppet Army and later subject to waves of repression by the battling Nationalist and Communist forces. These conflicts dissipated the influence of Da Fo's educated, elite Communist leaders of the first pole at the same time that they brought the second pole to the fore and gave many of Da Fo's farmers a number of reasons to put their faith in the party-state established in 1949. Unfortunately, the same men who brought tax relief and land redistribution to Da Fo also developed, over more than a decade of fighting and political instability, a violent and authoritarian style of work and leadership that would ultimately prove harmful to villagers.

Occupation by Yang Faxian's Puppet Regime

The winter of 1939 witnessed a sudden reversal of the Communist Party's political fortunes in Dongle County and Da Fo village.