A Tentative Study Into The Famine Of Jin-Sui Border Area In 1948

With great strategic significance, Jin-Sui border area is the main base of Communist Party of China (CPC) in the North China which is an important traffic position for Central China, North China, and South China and Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region. It is also the indispensable part of international line between Moscow and Yan'an, the solid barrier for defending the central committee of CPC and the Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region. After eight years of Anti-Japanese War, the Jin-Sui border region had already suffered from complete devastation. Furthermore, with the growing scale of the civil war and the strategic change from defense to offensive in 1948, Jin-Sui border area had plagued with the growing burden such as agriculture tax paid in grain and military logistics, which aggravated more poor condition.When people of Jin-Sui made every effort to support Liberation War, they were encountering serious famine. The solution of famine became an urgent task early in 1948. This paper is divided into three sections.The first chapter describes natural environment, administrative boundaries, socio-economic environment of Jin-Sui border area during Liberation War and the impact of Anti-Japanese War on Jin-Sui border region. It introduces the social and natural background of the famine in 1948, also overviews the famine.The second chapter analyzes the causes of famine thoroughly which conclude two aspects of social and natural causes leading to the famine. The natural one is direct cause and the social one aggravated it. Social reasons are mainly in the following areas: the growing financial expenditure, the land reform and leftist in Party rectification and the frequently military logistics.Chapter three introduces that Jin-Sui region government attached great importance to the famine and later took a series of effective measures. Although there were some shortcomings and the disaster carrying capability of government was low in the relief process, under the leadership people defeated the famine in Jin-Sui border area in the end.