Local Bullies and Armed Force Entrepreneurs: Militia Leadership in Republican Hunan

Abstract

Local Bullies and Armed Force Entrepreneurs:Militia Leadership in Republican Hunan Edward A. McCord (bio) A proliferation of militia and other local self-defense forces indicated the serious political and social instability of China's Republican period. The first decade of this period saw a steady, if uneven, growth of militia activity as local communities responded both to political dislocations caused by recurring civil wars and warlord conflicts and to the increased banditry that flourished in this environment. In the mid 1920s this local militarization reached a new peak, not seen since the suppression of widespread rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century, in response to the social conflict that both contributed to and was fostered by the political struggle between the Nationalist and Communist parties.1 The growth of militia forces led to the increasing power and influence of militia leaders in local society. In his 1927 report on the Hunan peasant movement, Mao Zedong described "local bullies and evil gentry (土豪劣紳 tuhao lieshen)" with independent jurisdiction over local defense corps as virtual "kings of the countryside (鄉裡王 xiangli wang)."2 This characterization was not simply Communist propaganda; Nationalist Party sources also describe militia leaders as local "lords (諸侯 zhuhou)" because of their extensive local powers.3 Although the power of local militia leaders in Republican China is widely recognized, how much do we actually know about these men? What were their backgrounds? How did they rise to positions of power in their local communities? Such questions, focusing on the actual lives and activities of militia leaders, have so far received little attention.4 Most generalizations about militia leaders in the Republican [End Page 5] period have not, in fact, been directly or deductively built on the personal histories of actual Republican-era local force commanders. Instead, commonly accepted social categorizations have often been used tautologically to provide a social explanation for the power held by these men. The tendency to ascribe militia leaders to specific social or class backgrounds is embedded in both Western and Chinese analytical frameworks. In Western historiography, the social identification of militia leaders has strong ties to the classic view of the dual identity of the Chinese gentry as both candidates for government office and as informal community leaders. The organization of militia to provide for local self-defense is seen as one of the managerial functions assumed by the scholar-gentry in their home communities in times of local upheaval, which in turn also contributed to the enhancement of local gentry power.5 Scholars have, of course, long abandoned the notion that degree-holding gentry alone defined the Chinese local elite, let alone militia leadership.6 Nonetheless, even with a broadened concept of local elite, the assumption largely remains that militia leadership and the power derived from it was the monopoly of the local elite.7 Communist historiography is, of course, wedded to a class analysis of militia leadership. It is an imprecise class analysis, however, that often assumes more than it explains. Communist sources invariably follow Mao Zedong's lead in characterizing militia leaders as "local bullies and evil gentry." Standing alone, the category of "local bullies and evil gentry" does not fit the definition of an economic class required for orthodox Marxist analysis. This problem is partially resolved by using this term interchangeably with "feudal landlords (封建地主 fengjian dizhu)." The end result, however, is a composite class category of limited utility. Militia leaders are in most cases tautologically identified as local bullies, and as such simply defined as social representatives of evil gentry and feudal landlord interests. In this value-laden formulation, whether militia leaders can be identified as having either gentry or landlord backgrounds becomes unimportant. [End Page 6] The social identification of militia leaders as local bullies/evil gentry becomes even more strained because in practice this label was more a political description than a social category. Communist activists automatically denounced all local power-holders who opposed the Party's social movements with this label, but not those who supported their program. Interestingly, the Nationalist Party also was committed to eradicating the power of "local bullies and evil gentry" and like the Communist Party used this label politically to differentiate between its enemies and...