Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T01:41:54.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The “Agrarian Reformer” Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Kenneth E. Shewmaker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Much nonsense has been written about the “agrarian reformer” myth. A retired American diplomat maintains that the agrarian reformer slogan was a clever artifice devised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to mask its intentions and affiliations. Allen Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has gone a step further. He contends that One of the most successful long-range political deceptions of the Communists convinced gullible people in the West before and during World War II that the Chinese people's movement was not Communistic, but a social and “agrarian” reform movement. This fiction was planted through Communist-influenced journalists in the Far East and penetrated organisations in the West.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 34 , June 1968 , pp. 66 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Thayer, Charles W., Guerrilla (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 42, 97Google Scholar;

2 Dulles, Allen, The Craft of Intelligence (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 149–150Google Scholar;

3 Flynn, John T., While you Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It (New York: Devin-Adair, 1951), p. 22Google Scholar;

4 Ibid., pp. 59–70. See also:Kubek, Anthony, How the Far Bast Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941–1949 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963), pp. 363–384;Google ScholarUtley, Freda, The China Story (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1951), pp. 139–163Google Scholar; The specific chapters in these volumes which deal with the Western literature on the Chinese Communist movement are suggestively titled: “The Pool of Poison”, “Subversion Along the Linotype Front: Reviewers at Work”, and “How the Communists Captured the Public”.

5 Bisson, T. A., “China's Part in a Coalition War”, Far Eastern Survey, XII (14 07 1943), p. 139Google Scholar; The emphasis is Bisson's.

6 Utley, , The China Story, p. 108Google Scholar; See alsoMissUtley's, statement of 1 May 1950 in: U.S. Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 81st Cong., 2nd Sess., State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation, Hearings (Part I, Washington, D.C., 1950), pp. 737–797Google Scholar;

7 Snow, Edgar, The Battle For Asia (New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 289–290Google Scholar; See also Snow's vindictive remarks in:Journey to the Beginning (New York: Random House, 1958), pp. 227–228Google Scholar; Snow's comments in Journey to the Beginning are coloured by his hostility toward Miss Utley for her role in the McCarthy era, but those in The Battle For Asia seem to have been written before Miss Utley's anti-communism had been publicly directed at the Chinese Reds.

8 Utley, , China at War (New York: John Day, 1939), pp. 73–74Google Scholar; The China Story, p. 108;Snow, , The Battle For Asia, pp. 289–290Google Scholar;

9 Utley, , China at War, pp. 251–254Google Scholar;

10 Carlson, Evans Fordyce, Twin Stars of China: A Behind-the-Scenes Story of China's Valiant Struggle For Existence by a U.S. Marine Who Lived and Moved With the People (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1940), pp. 176, 299Google Scholar;

11 Ibid. p. 210.

12 Smedley, Agnes, China Fights Back: An American Woman With the Eighth Route Army (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), p. 253Google Scholar;

13 Claire, and Band, William, Dragon Fangs: Two Years With Chinese Guerrillas (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1947), pp. 62, 244, 332, 335Google Scholar;

14 Forman, Harrison, Report From Red China (New York: Henry Holt, 1945), p. 177Google Scholar;

15 Atkinson, Brooks, “Chinese Still Try to Unify Factions”, The New York Times 26 11 1944, p. 43Google Scholar;

16 Lautenschlager, Stanton, Far West in China (New York: Friendship Press, 1941), p. 19Google Scholar;

17 Homer, Joy, Dawn Watch in China (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941), p. 228Google Scholar;

18 Lindsay, Michael, “The North China Front: Part II”, Amerasia, VIII (14 04 1944), pp. 124–125Google Scholar;

19 Senate, U.S., Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., Morgenthau Diary: China, II (Washington, D.C., 1965), p. 1333Google Scholar;

20 Stein, Gunther, The Challenge of Red China (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1945), pp. 143–147, 179, 230Google Scholar;

21 Tsou, Tang, America's Failure in China, 1941–50 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 233–234Google Scholar;

22 White, Theodore H., “Inside Red China”, Life, XVII (18 12 1944), pp. 44, 46Google Scholar;

23 White, and Jacoby, Annalee, Thunder Out of China (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1946), p. 234Google Scholar;

24 Ibid. pp. 234–237.

25 Senate, U.S., State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation (Part 1), p. 82Google Scholar;

26 Ibid. pp. 342–343, 364.

27 Hanson, Haldore, “The People Behind the Chinese Guerrillas”, Pacific Affairs, XI (09 1938), p. 290Google Scholar;

28 Hanson, , “Humane Endeavour“: The Story of the China War (New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), p. 312Google Scholar;

29 Ibid. pp. 308–310.

30 Hanson, , “Firebrands and Chinese Politics”, Amerasia, III (04 1939), p. 82Google Scholar;

31 Strong, Anna Louise, One-Fifth of Mankind (New York: Modern Age Books, 1938), pp. 188–200Google Scholar;

32 Utley, , “Correspondence: China”, The New Statesman and Nation, XVII (28 01 1939), p. 131Google Scholar;

33 Bertram, James, “Correspondence: The Chinese Revolution”, The New Statesman and Nation, XVII (11 02 1939), pp. 208–209Google Scholar;

34 Smedley, , Battle Hymn of China (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p. 169Google Scholar;

35 Cited inSchram, Stuart, Mao Tse-tung (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), p. 184Google Scholar;

36 Shanahan, Cormac, “The Challenge of Gunther Stein”, The China Monthly, VII (02 1946), p. 66Google Scholar; See also:Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1944. China. (Washington, D.C., 1967), pp. 482–483Google Scholar;

37 Senate, U.S., State Department Employee Loyalty Investigation (Part 1), pp. 785, 787Google Scholar;

38 Utley, , “Will Russia Betray China?” Asia, XLI (04 1941), pp. 170–173Google Scholar;

39 Snow, , “The Chinese Communists and Wars on Two Continents: Interviews With Mao Tse-tung”, The China Weekly Review, XCI (20 01 1940), pp. 277–280Google Scholar; Miss Utley refers to this interview and Snow's The Battle For Asia as sources for her new appraisal of Chinese communism.

40 Utley, , “Will Russia Betray China?” pp. 170–173Google Scholar;

41 Wales, Nym [Helen Foster Snow], Inside Red China (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1939), pp. 51–52, 62Google Scholar; The underscoring is Mrs. Snow's. In Mao's interviews with Mrs. Snow, he referred to the possibility of avoiding the capitalist stage of the Chinese Revolution and of transforming it into a “Socialist” revolution. Mao also equated the CCP with the proletariat and enunciated the doctrine of proletarian hegemony. Moreover, Mao emphasised that his opinions were in harmony with the resolutions of the Comintern. See pp. 223–226.

42 Ibid. pp. 320–322.

43 Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press edition, 1961), p. 188Google Scholar;

44 Isaacs, Harold R., Images of Asia: American Views of China and India (New York: Capricorn Books, 1962), p. 163Google Scholar;

45 Snow, , Red Star Over China, pp. 232–233Google Scholar;

46 Ibid. p. 455. The italics are Snow's.

47 Ibid. pp. 409, 479–480.

48 Snow, , “The Chinese Communists and Wars on Two Continents: Interviews With Mao Tse-tung”, The China Weekly Review, XCI (13 01 1940), p. 246Google Scholar;

49 Snow, , The Battle For Asia, pp. 290–292Google Scholar;

50 For an interpretation of Snow's writings different from that which follows by the author see:Tsou, Tang, America's Failure in China, pp. 231–233Google Scholar; Professor Tang Tsou draws a sharp distinction between Snow's reporting before and after 1944. He identifies the former as realistic but feels that after1944 Snow altered his characterisation of China's Communists to the extent that he succumbed to the agrarian reformer illusion. This interpretation fails to take into account Snow's particular mode of analysis and rests on evidence that is inconclusive.

51 For illustrations of this shift in analysis see:Snow, , People on Our Side (New York: Random House, 1944)Google Scholar;“Sixty Million Lost Allies”, The Saturday Evening Post, CCXV1 (10 06 1944), pp. 12–13, 44, 46Google Scholar; “Must China Go Red?” ibid. CCXVII (12 May 1945), pp. 9–10, 67–68, 70.

52 Snow, , “Sixty Million Lost Allies”, p. 44Google Scholar;

53 Snow, , “Chin a to Lin Yutang”, The Nation, CLX (17 02 1945), p. 180Google Scholar;

54 Yutang, Lin, “China and Its Critics”, The Nation, CLX (24 03 1945), p. 326Google Scholar;

55 Snow, , “China to Lin Yutang—II”, The Nation, CLX (31 03 1945), p. 359Google Scholar;

56 Snow, , “Must China Go Red?” p. 67Google Scholar;

57 Ibid..

58 Schram, , Mao Tse-tung, especially pp. 72, 175 et seqGoogle Scholar;

59 Leaf, Earl H., “Soviet Russia Has Given Chinese Reds No Aid, Declares Commander-In-Chief ChuTeh of Chinese Communist Forces”, North China Star, 9 07 1937, pp. 1, 24Google Scholar;

60 With the advantage of 20 years of perspective and scholarship, historians are still debating the nature of Chinese communism in terms of how far the CCP deviated in theory and practice from the Sovietmodel. For example, see the spirited discussion bySchram, Stuart, Cohen, Arthur A., Schwartz, Benjamin, Rejai, Mostafa, Levenson, Joseph R. and Schapiro, Leonard of “What is Maoism?: A Symposium” in Problems of Communism, XV (09–10 1966), pp. 1–30Google Scholar; Even those who assume an intimate relationship between Soviet and Chinese communism, such as Cohen, find important instances where the Chinese departed from the Russian model.