WAR AND REVOLUTION IN NORTH CHINA: THE SHANDONG BASE AREA, 1937-1945

This dissertation is a study of the Communist base area built in the Northern Chinese province of Shandong during the Sino-Japanese War. It draws on wartime Communist publications originally meant for internal party reference only to develop an "inside" view of the Communist strategy.;During the war the Communist Party never abandoned its united front policy of cooperation with the Guomindang against the Japanese, but in four stages it developed limited conflict with the GMD and its landlord supporters. The Communists made their greatest gains during these phases of tension within the united front, and these activities contributed as much as anti-Japanese resistance to building peasant support. Use of internal party materials made it possible to document this social dimension of the Communist strategy.;The social interpretation has two main boundaries or limitations. First, in the earliest stage of the war when the CCP entered the united front with the GMD from a clear position of weakness, it was unable to develop much tension within the united front. The party was able to use social appeals to build a permanent base of peasant support only after it established an independent military and administrative foundation. Second, the wartime peasant movement should not be portrayed as an outgrowth of a preexisting infrastructure of peasant rebellion. The founding of new institutions by the CCP often preceded and helped the progress of the movement itself. The peasant "spontaneity" developed in the Communist base areas was a type of "guided spontaneity" different from earlier riots or uprisings not led by centralized political parties.;Some previous studies of the wartime Communist movement, such as Chalmers A. Johnson's Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power, tend to follow the interpretation of the wartime peasant movement found in CCP external materials. These emphasize that the Communist Party's effective leadership of resistance against the Japanese invaders was the most important factor in winning peasant support during the war. My study attempts a social interpretation of Communist success.