Johnson Chalmers A. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945

Stanford University Press, 1992. — 272 p.Mr. Johnson's research on the Chinese Communists' wartime expansion, according to the documentation recorded by Japanese intelligence and his comparison of it with that of the Yugoslav Communists, is a pathbreaking work in comparative history. Since the Communist Party took power in 1949 several "theories" have been advanced in an attempt to understand what factors contributed to their success. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937-1945 by Chalmers A. Johnson advances a plausible and scholarly scenario. Johnson contends that a direct line can be drawn between the commencement of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Communist Party's ascension in 1949. According to Johnson the Communist Party failed to win popular support through Marxist ideology and economic reforms, and was in decline at the time of the Japanese invasion. The invasion caused a "mass awakening", and Chinese peasants suddenly saw themselves as a nation in the face of a foreign invader. Johnson calls this newfound sense of nationalism "Social Mobilization", and he claims that the Communist Party was the beneficiary of these new nationalistic tendencies. Johnson gives several reasons why it was the Communist Party that benefited from social mobilization. He contends that the Japanese overextend their forces- taking large swaths of land that they could not occupy effectively. This initial drive pushed out Nationalist troops and civilian authorities- leaving behind a power vacuum. Because the Communist guerilla forces were more mobile they were able to enter these chaotic regions and provide organization and guidance for the peasantry. Additionally, Johnson argues that the Japanese identified the Communists as the primary enemy while the Kuomintang was courted as potential friends. This strengthened Communist claims that the Kuomintang were "collaborators", and increased Communist Party legitimacy in the eyes of many peasants. Finally, Johnson sites the brutality of Japanese soldiers toward Chinese peasants as a crucial factor in social mobilization. The Japanese repeatedly launched "mopping up" campaigns intended to find and kill Communists, but because they had no means to definitively identify Communists they arbitrarily murdered countless peasants. Naturally, the Chinese peasants utilized the Communist Party for aid and organization, further legitimizing their claims to authority and power.