ROBBER

S
& REBEL
S
Abyan, Jody, Angelo
Violence

■ Desperate farmers assaulted granaries, raided trains and attacked fellow communes.

■ Peasants would organise raids against neighbouring villages and ransacked adjacent communes.

■ The peasants violence was often focused on state granary

■ Raids on trains were also common.

■ Party cadres were commonly assaulted or killed with the use of cleavers and guards were killed

■ 五百 train robberies were reported by the police in Jan 1961.

■ Total loss was estimated at 五百 tonnes of grain and 二千三百 tonnes of coal.

■ Granaries were attacked livestock were stolen, weapons seized and account books burned.

■ 800 cases of grain theft in the winter of 1960.

■ Arson was also committed- 7000 fires caused 100 million yuan worth of losses in 1958

■ At the end of 1959 there were 3 times more fires in Nanjing than there had been in the previous year

■ 1961- Pyromania (unable to resist the urge to start fires) infected the countryside- e.g. In the Wengyuan county the villagers scribbled a message on a wall near the granary they had just
torched, proclaiming that the grain that was no longer theirs might as well be burnt.

■ Rebellion groups did start to form but most were unsuccessful e.g. between 1960-61 In Hunan 150 people armed themselves for rebellion but they were immediately swept up by local
security forces
Religion, rebellions and
secret societies
■ The rebellion groups that were motivated by religion did however tend to be more challenging for the
government.

■ March 1959- An armed uprising started in Tibet with heavy artillery which ended up with the Dalai Lama
to exile.

■ 1958- In Qinghai there was a constant back and forth open rebellion which lasted for months on end- some of
the rebels were inspired by Lhasa (place of the Gods) and others were fueled by Islam

■ 1960- in Yunan there were a series of rebels in several communes and this movement was backed by local
cadres including party secretaries that were in high- ranking positions of authority- the army were able to
intervene and capture and eliminate all but one leader, Xie Fuzhi, who was responsible for at least 3000
counter revolutionary groups and Yunan alone had 100.

■ Secret societies were made up by a high proportion of peasants, workers and discharged soldiers and they
were a means of self- protection which no other social institution would provide them

■ But after 1949 the government tried to crush them, for example in Hebei province about 40 groups were
unmasked within the first few months of 1959

■ In Ningjin county alone 4% of the local population was thought to belong to one sect or another

■ Some would even travel to pray at the grave of a leader of a village sect that was part of a secret society
Hope.... and a little luck from Mao

■ After all the violence, arsons, rebels, groups, secret societies- regime did not completely crumble during the Great Famine.
Compared to other famines such as the Bengal famine in 1943, the Ireland Famine (1845-1852), the Ukraine famine (1932-33),
it became clear that starvation could not be avoided and people were too weak to even walk, let alone find weapons and form
groups and rebel.
■ In the famines listed above, even the smallest form of opposition was brutally repressed and severely dealt with, executions
were common and if you weren't executed you were indefinetely sent to labor camps.
■ What makes China different to those countries is that even though tens of millions of people died from the famine, and
the people hated the government for this, they couldn't really do anything about it. Whether or not there were secret societies or
poorly organized parties, none except the regime could control the country with such vast array of land and people and the
potential for a coup was swiftly averted by purges carried out by Lin Biao after the Lushan plenum (meeting in 1959 which had
shown that people within the party wasn't fond of Mao such as Peng Dehuai who was the defence minister at the time.)
■ However, the most common technique of self-help in times of mass starvation was simply hope, and that Mao had the best
interests of his people at heart. A common conviction in bad times was that the emperor was benevolent but his servants could
be corrupt which was boosted by the media.
■ A belief was created that cadres who were abusive failed to carry out the orders of a beneficent chairnman was widespread- the
government were the bad side and Mao who was seen as a 'semi-god' was on the side of good.