Post-War Government and Politics of Communist China

Abstract

In discussing post-war political developments in China, it is necessary to begin with some account of conditions at the end of the War, as these conditions are still not widely known. It is only recently that the mythical Communist Northwest has disappeared from the American press and it still lingers in England. There has also been widespread misapprehension of the role of Yenan. Only a few days before its fall the New York Times published an editorial arguing that Yenan was the one place that it was essential for the Communists to defend. In fact, the center of population of China was, by 1945, somewhere in southern Hopei or southwestern Shantung and there was no formal political organization above the Liberated Area which roughly corresponded to a province. Yenan was only the capital of Shensi-KansuNinghsia which was the oldest, but one of the smallest, of the areas. The area was important during the War because it was the only one not subject to periodic Japanese penetration. For this reason Yenan was the location of the Party Central Committee and, after 1941, of Army Headquarters. It was also a big educational center. But there was comparatively little physical equipment that tied these organizations to Yenan. No doubt the Japanese could have captured Yenan but an offensive across the Yellow River and the mountains on either side would have been extremely expensive for the Japanese and only an inconvenience for the Communists. Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia also had some political imporb ance because it was the one area that the Kuomintang consistently recognized as having some legal right to existence, though its boundaries were a matter of dispute.1 Otherwise the area was not important. The popu-