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 “Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power” by Chalmers Johnson

The communists ruled 1/5 of China’s population from within guerrilla bases behind the Japanese lines during the Sino-Japanese war, 10 years before their formal declaration of supremacy in 1949. Communism wasn’t successful before the war because there wasn’t enough uniform discontent, but that changed after the war started because the peasants needed to defend their homes. The author cites three reasons for the sudden development of defensive organizations by peasants.

1. Much of China was plunged into a state of anarchy because of the retreat of the Central Government after the Japanese invasion, so peasants had to develop their own defense forces in order to protect themselves and welcomed anyone, including the communists, who would help them.  Thus, many of these self-made governments were sponsored by the communists, and even though they weren’t democratic, the peasants played a large role in many governmental activities. 

2. The communists bombarded the Chinese population with propaganda. They stopped circulating pro-communist ideological messages and mainly focused on anti-Japanese and nationalistic messages which found an eager audience in the peasants after the invasion.

3. The ruthlessness of the Japanese during the war left many villages utterly depopulated so peasants realized that their only chance of survival was to resist the Japanese forces, and the Communist party seemed to many to be the best suited for the job.

These three forces among other things created a sense of nationalism which had been present in the intellectuals and small middle class but had never existed before in the peasant population. Nationalism developed because of a sense of shared purpose and a shared fate in opposition to the foreign threat. The communists gained legitimacy through the nurturing and manipulation of this newly formed nationalism, and the demonstration of their ability to protect China when the national government couldn’t. 

Many scholars see the communist rise to power as a peasant revolution brought about by economic hardships. The author, however, argues that economics can’t be the determining factor because the communists did not pursue an economic revolution during the Sino-Japanese war, but only made minor changes such as the reduction of taxes to ensure everyone’s survival. Further, economic difficulties have always existed in China and never led to revolution, and a purely economic explanation does not tell us why the peasants joined the communists only after the invasion. 

In conclusion, the author argues that nationalism was created in the peasants due to the threat of foreign rule and the failure of the government to protect them, and that the nationalistic peasants adopted communism as their ideology, which allowed the communists take control and be accepted as the rightful rulers and not as usurpers.