The Bitter Sufferings of the Peasants in
Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and Their
Movements of Resistance

(November 25, 1926)

In China, the two provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are especially advanced in
industry and commerce, and for this reason it is easy for people to recognize the
importance of workers and merchants there. But few recognize the importance of
the peasants of these two provinces, and most people believe that since these two
provinces are peaceful and prosperous the peasants do not suffer much. In fact,
such a view is totally superficial and shows no understanding whatsoever of the
actual conditions in the peasant villages of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. We carried out
an investigation into the actual conditions in the peasant villages in Jiangsu and
Zhejiang and discovered that the real situation is completely the opposite of what
had been conjectured. The following description of the concrete facts in various
xian constitutes only a very small portion of the materials we have recently gathered,
but it is sufficient to prove that the peasantry of Jiangsu and Zhejiang is certainly not
as stable and prosperous and free from suffering as most people imagine.

Chongming

An island at the mouth of the Yangzi River, of which the entire territory belongs
to Chongming xian. It has been formed by the accumulated sedimentation of the
sand and silt carried by the Yangzi River. Every four years, flooding brings new
sand deposits, thus a great many of its fields are tidal lands, and a great many of
its peasants are tenants. Take one place, Shangsha, as an example. Here the
exploitation of the tenant farmers by the landlords is exceptionally severe. For
every 1,000 bu¹ of fields a guarantee deposit of 50 yuan must be paid. These
fields are entirely of newly deposited sand. The peasant takes care of the fields

This article was originally published in Xiangdao, No. 179, November 25, 1926. (The date on
the title page of this issue is October 25, 1926, but this is a typographical error.) Our translation
has been made from this source, as reproduced in Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 1, pp. 181-85.
1. A unit of area six chi or Chinese feet square. Since the Chinese foot corresponds to
14.1 English inches, or .3581 meters, this amounts to 2.15 x 2.15 meters, or an area of
approximately 4.6 square meters. A field of 1,000 bu would therefore contain 4,600 square
meters, or slightly under one-half a hectare.
for the landlord and gradually makes them mature for farming. After they become mature, the landlord owns the field and the peasant has the right to farm it.
The peasant has to provide all of the manpower, fertilizer, farm tools, and seed
for the planting each year. Each year after the autumn harvest, for each 1,000 bu
of fields the rent in grain is 500 jin or more. When the landlord visits a peasant's
home, the peasant must treat him to good food and wine otherwise his rent is
likely to go up. The scales for weighing the harvest rent are probably all set at
over 20 liang.² If the peasant objects in the slightest, he is immediately sent to
the xian magistrate. If the peasant has a debt of five yuan one year he must repay
it with ten or twenty yuan the next year, and he must pay it no matter what. Thus
every year there are peasants who go bankrupt. In 1922 there was a peasant
revolt in this area, although there was no Red or extremist party at all to incite
the peasants to action. They rose up themselves in great numbers, demolished the
police station, and cut off the ear of a landlord named Tao. They also staged a
demonstration at the xian magistrate's office demanding a reduction in rents. But
they failed in the end because they were not solidly united and the leader was
arrested. This year Jiangsu Province suffered widespread drought and the fields
yielded a reduced harvest. In the area of Shangsha, for each 1,000 bu of fields,
the peasants harvested only 300 or 400 jin of grain, but the landlords insisted on
demanding rents on the old basis of 500 jin. The landlords used a "resolution of
the Tenancy Maintenance Association" to cheat the peasants (the Tenancy Maintenance Association was organized by the landlords in 1922 to cheat the peasants), whereupon the peasants, in their increasing hatred for the landlords, again
rose up in revolt.

Jiangyin

If you take a steamship up the river from Wuxi,³ you arrive at a place called
Gushan market town, which lies between the xian Jiangyin, Changshu, and
Wuxi. In these three xian there are many big landlords who oppress the tenant
farmers very severely. In the autumn of last year, a native of Gushan who had
studied in Japan, Zhou Shuiping (a graduate of Wuxi Normal School), returned
to his native village. He could not bear the sight [of such oppression], and urged
the tenant farmers to form an organization called the "Tenant Families Cooperative Self-Help Society." Zhou went from village to village, speaking with tears in
his eyes of the sufferings of the peasants. The peasants of Gushan followed him
in great numbers, and in all the border areas adjoining Jiangyin, Changshu, and
Wuxi xian the peasants were aroused. They rose like clouds to oppose the rich
but heartless bad gentry and big landlords, demanding in unison a reduction in
rents. But before the peasants had united completely, the bad gentry and land-

2. I.e., at 20 liang (or ounces) per jin (or catty), instead of the standard proportion of 16.
3. Jiangyin is a village north of Wuxi.

lords had long since united, and the gentry and landlords of the three xian of
Jiangyin, Changshu, and Wuxi acted simultaneously. Letters and telegrams
rained down on Sun Chuanfang, and since he has never been known not to heed
the voices of the bad gentry and the landlords, Sun dissolved the Tenant Families
Cooperative Self-Help Society in November of last year, had Zhou Shuiping
arrested, and had Zhou executed in January of this year. Thus the movement to
reduce rents was put down for a time. But when Zhou Shuiping's casket was
returned to Gushan and laid out in his house, the peasants came every day in
great flocks to kowtow before his coffin, saying: "Mr. Zhou died for us. We will
avenge him!" This year there was a big drought and the harvest was poor; the
peasants once again thought of rising up to demand rent reduction. This shows
that they do not in the least fear death, and that they know the only way to reduce
the exploitation of the greedy and cruel landlords is through collective struggle.
Again, in the eastern part of Jiangyin county there is a place called Shazhou
where there was also an incident of peasant opposition to the landlords. Here it is
the cruel practice of the landlords to collect the rent in advance; the people of
Jiangsu call this "paying before planting," and it is a great financial hardship for
the peasants. The peasants there are in the midst of a struggle to have rents paid
only after the harvest.

Danyang

Here we'll tell the story of two incidents that took place in Lüchengzhen of Danyang xian (this Lüchengzhen is in eastern Danyang, near the Shanghai-Nanjing
railroad). The first action was against a pawnshop that cheated the peasants. It
took place this year in the summer. One day a pawnshop in Lüchengzhen was
robbed by bandits, the remnants of a contingent of Ma Yüren's troops who came
down from Mao Mountain in the western part of the xian. They didn't take
much. The pawnshop owner made a big fuss in reporting the loss, saying that all
of the pawned clothing had been stolen. In fact, secretly by night, he had hidden
the clothing somewhere else. The owners of this pawned clothing were peasants
from various villages near the town. Hearing what was happening, they intercepted him en route and got back a portion of their goods, but were unable to
recover what had already been moved into hiding. The peasants who had pawned
their things rose up and organized an "Association of Pawnshop Customers,"
which presented a bill to the pawnshop in Lüchengzhen. Consequently, the
pawnshop had to make restitution for that part of the value lost, i.e., each person
was compensated for the pawn value of his goods, a total compensation of 900
yuan. This incident proves that when the peasants unite they can achieve victory.
If at this time they had not united they would have let this weasel of a pawnshop
merchant cheat them out of everything they had pawned. The other action was
against the bad gentry and rich peasants forcing the peasants to pay for pumped
irrigation water. This incident took place in the summer and autumn of this year

and has not been resolved to this day. On the rivers of all the rural xian of
Jiangsu, a kind of mechanical water scoop called a "water scooping machine" is
in widespread use today. It replaces the old method of pumping water using a
hand or foot operated water mill. The peasants from several of the villages in the
vicinity of Lüchengzhen thought that they would like to use a machine to pump
the water. The bad gentry and rich peasants in the area, to take advantage of this
for their own profit, stepped in and acted first by organizing a "Mechanized
Water Scooping Company" in which they put together 1,400 yuan to buy one of
the machines and set it up in the river. In the company's name they posted a
notice requiring from the peasants an annual fee according to acreage. Those
who did not pay would not be allowed any pumped water. The peasants calculated that the money paid in one year on the fields of these villages would be
enough to buy one of these machines. Pooling their money and buying a machine
themselves, they could put out the money once and continue to use it year after
year, whereas if they used the company machine they would have to put out the
same amount of money every year. Thus there was strong opposition to the
company of the bad gentry and rich peasants. There were in the area several
elementary school teachers who came to the aid of the peasants and helped them
organize what they called a "Peasant Advancement Society." Within this organization they formed a "Mechanical Water Scooping Cooperative," which also
used the method of collecting money according to acreage. They raised the 1,400
yuan themselves and bought a water scooping machine. At this point there were
two water scooping machines in the river, one the company's and the other the
cooperative's. The company's machine just sat there and nobody paid any attention to it. The bad gentry were very angry. Making up all kinds of lies, they
reported to Sun Chuanfang. As a result, troops were sent to the villages and they
carried out a big search for the extremist party. Four people were arrested, a
warrant was put out for three more, and it was announced that anyone who did
not use the company machine would be severely punished. When the troops
arrived, all the adult males of the village were hiding in the fields, leaving only
the elderly and infirm, the women and children, to face the soldiers.
These peasants, guilty of a serious crime, made a present of more than 1,000
yuan to the commander of the troops, just to escape being arrested, and this does
not include the other things that were plundered. This case remains unresolved to
this day. Fortunately, things are not going so well for Sun Chuanfang at present,
and perhaps the bad gentry of Lüchengzhen are feeling just a little that they can't
have everything their way, but we'll have to wait and see.

Wuxi

In the town of Xuxiang, 15 li from Wuxi, there was also a small disturbance not
long ago. A big merchant-landlord from this area by the name of Rong Desheng
wanted to built a road through the village. He wanted to tear down houses and

buy up at a cheap price the fields through which the road would pass. This would
have meant a direct financial loss for the peasants, so they organized a peasants'
club to oppose Rong Desheng, with the result that Rong Desheng gave in and
agreed to pay 200 yuan per mu, 10 cents per tree of newly planted mulberry
groves, and not to tear down any of the houses.

Qingpu

Last month there was an incident in Qingpu xian, which runs along the road from
Shanghai to Hangzhou, in which the peasants opposed paying high prices for
wasteland. In this xian the peasants have always paid a fixed price of three yuan
per mu for wasteland. Then, the evil gentry, in collusion with the xian magistrate,
Li Zhenyi, organized a company that obtained wasteland for three yuan per mu
and sold it to the peasants at twelve yuan per mu. To oppose this, the peasants
organized a Reclamation Association, which really frightened the bad gentry and
officials. This struggle is still going on.

Taixing

In a place in eastern Wangjiazhuang, because of a poor harvest resulting from
the drought, the peasants requested rent reductions and rose up in an intense
struggle against the landlords. Not only were the landlords unwilling to reduce
the rents, they have even put pressure on the peasants. One of the peasants who
was extremely angry planned to kill one of the evilest of the landlords. The
landlord reported it to the xian offices, and thirty peasants were arrested.

Tai xian

This past summer in Sensenzhuang of Tai xian, the peasants asked for rent
reductions because of the drought and started a movement. The landlords suppressed it and arrested several of the leaders.

Xuzhou

Among the peasants of Jiangsu, those in the area of Xuhai, north of the Yangzi
River, can be said to suffer the greatest hardship. There are Red Spear Societies
and United Village Societies everywhere, and all kinds of struggles going on in

4. The Red Spears [hongqianghui] were a peasant self-defense force which combined
some of the religious beliefs of the secret societies with a strongly developed military
organization. They had emerged in the early 1920s, and became prominent in North China
in 1925. The United Village Societies [lianzhuanghui] were an older and looser type of
association which coexisted with the Red Spears at this time.

the villages, more than in other places, too many to be described. In northern and
eastern Tongshan xian the topography is low-lying and last year the crops were
completely destroyed by flooding. Fortunately, the second crop had already been
planted and the peasants still hoped to "turn a bad year into a good one." Then
this autumn, uninterrupted heavy rains finally drowned the young sprouts, which
rotted from wilt-rust. For their half year of backbreaking labor, the peasants were
left empty-handed. At this time the land is still covered with sheets of water. It is
too late to replant the second crop, and the sounds of grumbling and resentment
are everywhere, all expressing a condition of tragic misery. In addition to natural
disasters, there are also the exorbitant taxes of the warlords and greedy officials,
plus the heavy rents and high interest charged by the landlords—layer upon layer of
crushing exploitation. For this reason, many peasants are running away and becoming bandits. This is why the Xuzhou area has become notorious as a bandit district.

Cixi

Cixi is in Zhejiang, west of Ningbo. In recent months, in the area north of the
mountains of this xian, a big uprising has broken out. The peasants of this area
north of the mountains have always been extremely intrepid and frequently
engage in armed combat. On top of this, the bureaucrats and police have been
unreasonably oppressive in recent years, and the bad gentry and landlords have
redoubled their oppression, so the pent-up anger of the peasants was already
profound. As luck would have it, the weather this year was abnormal, and neither
the rice nor the cotton crops were good, but the landlords refused to make any
reduction whatever in their cast-iron rents. The peasant insurrection against famine thereupon exploded. As soon as the peasant revolt broke out, the lumpenproletarians as a whole bravely joined in. On the morning of September 13, more
than 2,000 people gathered in front of the police station to report the famine and
clashed with the police. They burned down the police station and seized the
weapons of the police. They then turned toward the homes of the local gentry
and landlords to "eat up big families." After eating, in their anger at the viciousness of the local gentry and landlords, they totally demolished all their screens,
paintings, and sculptured ancient doors and windows. They did this every day;
they paid little heed to others' exhortations, but just went on venting their anger
in this way.

The day after, the local gentry fled to the city to report the uprising. One
group of soldiers and police after another came down to the countryside to put
down the peasants in a big way. Most of the peasant leaders had already fled and
scattered.. There was already widespread propaganda about "lawlessness" and
"crimes," which started to frighten the peasants, and the uprising was quelled.
The reason that this uprising failed was that the popular masses were totally
unorganized and had no leadership. Thus it became a primitive revolt and ended
in failure.