Twentieth Century Chronicle

Page 194

Of course, although the Shaanxi-Gansu region was thus incorporated into the Beiyang government's territory, the Beiyang government only nominally owned this land. Local affairs were basically controlled by military leaders and gentry, making it even more chaotic than in North China. Even in North China, the gentry selectively accepted orders from Beijing, ignoring those they didn't like as if they had never been received.

Therefore, Yuan Shikai soon realized that he could not implement the anti-opium policy in Wuhan, because there were no local forces in Wuhan that dared to openly oppose the government. These local forces had been scattered or eliminated during the land reform, while the Beiyang government relied on these local forces to maintain its rule. As a result, the anti-opium movement in Beijing came to nothing.

Looking around China, apart from Yuan Shikai's Beiyang clique, no one else was even qualified to be a rival to the Workers' Party. With the Beiyang clique's rule so weak, the Workers' Party's confidence naturally grew stronger. How could Tian Junyi possibly feel any sense of apprehension? However, Lin Xinyi's words did indeed instill fear in him—fear that the Workers' Party's very foundation might be shaken.

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Tian Junyi was no longer the young student he was six or seven years ago, who couldn't see the true nature of the world and only felt that China was about to perish at the hands of the great powers. Back then, he only saw the powerful national strength of the great powers and the corruption and incompetence of the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, he felt that China's situation was no different from that of the Ming Dynasty before the Qing Dynasty entered the pass. Faced with the powerful ships and cannons of the great powers, the Chinese had no chance of victory.

This idea was prevalent among young intellectuals who supported the reforms. This is why Tan Sitong had the idea of ​​abandoning the frontier regions and only preserving the eighteen provinces in Han territory. People generally believed that these places were impossible to defend and that it would be better to preserve strength to develop the eighteen provinces in Han territory and wait for the new policies in the eighteen provinces to achieve results before trying to take them back.

The conservatives who opposed the new policies accused Tan Sitong and others of treason. On the one hand, these frontier regions were almost the core of the Manchu people's base, and abandoning the frontier regions was tantamount to destroying the foundation of Manchu rule. On the other hand, some people did not agree with the new policies such as dismissing officials, abolishing Confucianism, and abolishing the eight-legged essay system for the civil service examination. However, these policies were precisely the ills of the Qing Dynasty that people at the time recognized. Therefore, they adopted the strategy of "besieging Wei to rescue Zhao" and attacked Tan Sitong for treason in order to oppose the reform.

However, these conservatives who opposed abandoning the frontier would never themselves migrate to the border to defend it. They called this exile. Even the Manchus themselves refused to return to their ancestral home in the Northeast. When Emperor Qianlong moved the Manchus from the capital back to the Northeast, it was met with great resistance from the Manchus in Beijing. At that time, no one mentioned that the Manchus did not love the Qing Dynasty.

Through the people's revolutionary theory transmitted by Lin Xinyi and the specific practices of the Workers' Party, Tian Junyi finally broke free from his former scholar-official worldview. He now clearly realized why the reform led by Tan Sitong and others failed, and why it was bound to fail. This was because Tan Sitong and others wanted to save China as seen by the scholar-officials, a China that had nothing to do with ordinary Chinese people. Therefore, only a group of gentry who had opened their eyes to the world supported the reform. The ordinary working masses not only did not benefit from the reform, but also had to provide a large amount of funds for the implementation of the new policies.

In order to promote education and industry, the Meiji Restoration government first abolished the independent finances of the various domains, drastically reduced the interests of the samurai class, and levied a fixed monetary tax on farmers. As a result, the Restoration government was opposed by the old samurai and farmers, and peasant rebellions continued in various places, eventually leading to a large-scale rebellion by the old samurai - the Satsuma Rebellion.

The Meiji government was able to survive the resistance of peasants and old samurai by relying on the new landowners who received land in the new policies and the new industrial and commercial class who benefited greatly from them. It can be said that in promoting the new policies, the Meiji government was not saving the Japan that the old samurai class wanted, but rather building a new Japan. This was the key to the Meiji government's survival in the chaos of constant peasant uprisings and large-scale samurai rebellions.

Tan Sitong's Hundred Days' Reform did not seek to unite with the classes that benefited from the new policies. To put it bluntly, his teacher did not believe in the power of the people and still maintained Confucian values, believing that governing the country was the business of the scholar-officials and had nothing to do with the common people. This meant that the China he wanted to save was actually the China owned by the vested interests who opposed the new policies.

As a result, the Hundred Days' Reform became a power struggle within the ruling class, and naturally failed to stir up any public sentiment. When Empress Dowager Cixi returned to Beijing from the Summer Palace, she simply issued a few orders to arrest Tan Sitong and others, without encountering any resistance whatsoever, thus demonstrating the failure of the reformers.

The Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee was able to seize control of the three towns of Wuhan even with Tie Liang personally in charge of Wuchang because the Workers' Party had the full support of the Wuhan working class. It was the self-arming of the Wuhan working class at the critical moment that protected the Workers' Party, and the Wuhan New Army fully sided with the revolution.

Although the Labour Party had previously conducted some propaganda work among the new recruits, most of the soldiers who supported the Labour Party were new recruits, and the veterans were accustomed to obeying the orders of officers. The revolutionaries and conservatives among the officers were actually a minority; the vast majority were centrists who were used to changing their stance according to the prevailing winds and lacked any firm convictions.

Because the armed forces of the Wuhan proletariat created a local advantage for the Workers' Party in the Wuhan area, these neutral officers chose to wait and see in the early stages of the revolution, thus giving the revolutionaries time to eliminate the Manchu conservatives. After the revolution, it was under the intimidation of the working class's armed forces that the neutral officers had no choice but to accept the Workers' Party's orders to reform the army, thus allowing the Workers' Party to completely control the Wuhan New Army.

Tan Sitong, who had the emperor's support, couldn't even guarantee his own personal safety, while the Workers' Party, which relied on the support of the working class in Wuhan, defeated the Qing Dynasty's punitive army. This shows that once the power of the people is properly organized, it can crush seemingly powerful reactionary forces.

It was through this comparison that Tian Junyi came to fully believe that the power of the people was sufficient to protect the people's regime, and that the role of intellectuals was to raise the people's awareness and encourage them to fight for their own interests. His worldview was finally transformed from that of the old intellectuals to a people's historical perspective, believing that the best way to resist the invasion of foreign powers was to let the people know who the true masters of China were.

It was during this process of worldview transformation that Tian Junyi matured rapidly, because all his decisions were based on the people's historical perspective. That's why the Beiyang clique led by Yuan Shikai and the gentry elites found Tian Junyi incomprehensible, yet he was able to accomplish what they wanted to do but couldn't.

The entire Workers' Party was essentially a group like He Tianjunyi, transformed by the people's historical perspective. In this process of transformation, the Workers' Party naturally possessed common values ​​and opposed using personal interests as a bargaining chip with the party, which was unimaginable within the Qing Dynasty court and the Beiyang clique.

Both the Qing Dynasty court and the Beiyang clique were established based on a system of personal loyalty. This system was founded on the principle that subordinates pledged loyalty to their superiors, who in turn granted them power and wealth. If a subordinate did not receive reasonable compensation, they could renege on their loyalty. This is why Yuan Shikai has such a bad reputation; people judged him not from the perspective of national and public interests, but from the perspective of upholding this system of loyalty.

This is why the Manchu Qing dynasty was able to enter China with a mere few hundred thousand people and successfully rule China for more than two hundred years. The core of Confucian ethics and principles is feudalism. Although its manifestations are very different from the feudal system in Europe, the core value of loyalty from subordinates to rewards from superiors is consistent.

Simply put, it is not easy for a monarch to cultivate a loyal subject. Therefore, in order to gain the loyalty of this subject, the monarch will not punish him easily, even if he is corrupt, oppresses the good, or even betrays the interests of the country. As long as his loyalty to the monarch has not changed, all his actions can be forgiven by the monarch.

The Beiyang Army, which was full of vigor when it trained troops at Xiaozhan, had become stagnant by the time the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing. This was because the Beiyang Army initially recruited self-cultivating farmers from North China. These simple and honest farmers initially thought that they were serving as soldiers to protect the country, but later they realized that they were actually serving the commander-in-chief. Only by obeying the commander-in-chief could they be promoted and made rich, and thus military discipline gradually deteriorated.

When Yuan Shikai became Chairman of the State Council, he theoretically became the highest leader of the country, with a status equivalent to the president of France and the United States without an emperor. At this time, Yuan Shikai's control over the Beiyang clique was actually worse, because these subordinates believed that Yuan Shikai's position as chairman was due to their loyalty, so they demanded that Yuan Shikai reward them and mostly ignored Yuan Shikai's orders to restrain them.

The officers in the Beiyang Army used to be nothing more than small landowners and self-cultivating farmers, but now they have acquired vast amounts of land in their hometowns, becoming some of the most powerful landowners. Some Beiyang generals have even taken more than half of the land in their counties for themselves, to the point that their families feel that such land grabbing is going too far.

Yuan Shikai was indeed capable. He clearly understood that the foundation of the nation lay with the self-cultivating farmers, which was why he recruited and trained soldiers from among them. However, he did not expect his subordinates to become corrupt so quickly. The fact that these officers could spend so much money to buy land meant that they must have embezzled military funds and even exploited the soldiers. This was an act that was absolutely forbidden during the Xiaozhan training. Yuan Shikai had only focused his energy on politics for the past two years and had neglected military affairs. As a result, the army had already reverted to the traditions of the Qing army.

However, Yuan Shikai dared not punish the officers on the grounds of corruption, because it wasn't just one or two who were corrupt, but rather the middle and upper ranks of the Beiyang Army. These officers believed that since they had abandoned their loyalty to the Qing Dynasty for Yuan Shikai, he should reward them; otherwise, they might as well continue to serve the Qing. Essentially, this meant that Yuan Shikai's rise to power lacked legitimacy.

It was precisely because the National Assembly, led by Yuan Shikai, was watching them closely that the Beiyang clique knew that without Yuan Shikai's leadership, they would be a disorganized mess. Therefore, they dared not openly bargain with Yuan Shikai, at least outwardly obeying his orders. Yuan Shikai knew that the Beiyang clique was no longer capable of confronting the Wuhan army. Factions within the Beiyang clique had already formed, and he was now merely the nominal leader. He could issue orders that didn't harm their interests, and they might listen. But if they were asked to risk everything to fight Wuhan, they would likely scatter and disband.

In other words, the land reform policy implemented in Wuhan was truly non-negotiable. Even the Yi Army generals, as the first Huai Army forces to surrender to Wuhan, still did not receive any additional protection for their land in their hometowns. This is why the Beiyang government united to oppose Wuhan. This opposition was not about wanting to destroy the Wuhan regime, but rather an attempt to maintain the status quo, with everyone minding their own business.

Yuan Shikai dismissed the short-sightedness of his subordinates, knowing that once Wuhan fully consolidated its control over the territory, it would inevitably continue to expand outwards, ultimately unifying all of China. He understood that he would have done the same in Tian Junyi's position, because politics is like rowing against the current; those who remain stagnant will be abandoned. Therefore, Yuan Shikai planned to form a new officer corps to reorganize the Beiyang Army, and unsurprisingly, his idea was met with opposition from the Beiyang generals.

While the Beiyang clique and other forces devoted considerable energy to internal power struggles, the Labor Party, with less internal consumption, was leading its people toward industrialization. Although the Labor Party suffered less internal strife, the intensity of its struggles was not low. However, the democratic centralism system and the party's policy direction established by Lin Hsin-yi greatly ensured that internal struggles did not escalate into personnel conflicts, thus maintaining a state of infighting without outright collapse.

After winning the battles against the imperialist powers' treaty revisions, the victory in defending Tibet, and the victory in defending the Northeast territory, doubts outside the party about the ruling position of the Workers' Party have basically disappeared. Even those landlords who harbored great malice towards the Workers' Party because of the land reform policy now have to admit that the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee is a legitimate government.

However, the landlords' acceptance of the legitimacy of the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee's rule was forced upon them after their armed resistance failed. It did not mean that they truly supported the rule of the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee and the Workers' Party. For example, landlords outside the areas controlled by the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee now advocate autonomy and democracy, while landlords within the areas controlled by the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee advocate for a moderate land reform system and oppose the complete eradication of the landlord class.

After the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee was no longer in danger of collapse, even after winning victories in Zhangjiakou and Jinzhou, it was still hostile to the great powers and the domestic landlord class. Everyone believed that even if Wuhan could drive the Russians out of Northeast China, its own strength would be almost exhausted. So what would Wuhan rely on to resist the strangulation by the combined forces of the country and the outside world?

This viewpoint is not limited to external public opinion; there are also skeptics within the party and the military. As a result, there are quite a few party members who oppose allocating large amounts of resources to the war against Russia. Some even go so far as to abandon the noble cause of defending the country and instead focus on establishing the proletariat's rule nationwide, which means abandoning the war against Russia and prioritizing the war of domestic unification.

However, as Wuhan, together with the Jiangnan Restoration Society and other revolutionary forces, overthrew the Qing forces in Nanjing and other places, and crossed Outer Mongolia into the Lake Baikal region to cut off the Trans-Siberian Railway, forcing the Russians to completely abandon their plans for the Eastern Yellow Russia, and even ceding Outer Manchuria and Primorsky Krai, Wuhan's military power almost overnight reached the level of the great powers.

Britain and France quickly changed their stance. Their previous plans, such as armed intervention, were no longer feasible in the face of the military victory in Wuhan. According to their estimates, to defeat a Chinese regime that, with German support, could mobilize millions of young people, Britain and France could simply abandon all interests outside of China. The Germans were probably the happiest to see this happen.

The same situation occurred in the assessment of Japan. Before the war, Britain believed that Japan and Russia would fight to the death. Even if the Russians were driven out of Northeast China, Japan would be crippled. In particular, the two sides should be evenly matched in naval battles. However, the outcome of the war was far beyond the expectations of Europeans and the British. Russia suffered a crushing defeat in the Far East. The Japanese navy and army demonstrated strong offensive capabilities, while China showed amazing endurance.

According to the Germans' assessment, if the Russians could replicate their offensive capabilities during the Eight-Nation Alliance era, then after forcing Beijing to surrender, the Russians, possessing the resources of North China, might not have been so passive in their fight against the Japanese; in fact, Japan might not have dared to wage war. However, the Chinese army's hold off the Russian offensive at Shanhaiguan gave Japan the courage to launch a challenge.

This war arguably overturned Europe's preconceived notions about Japan, Russia, and China. The bureaucracy of St. Petersburg and the incompetence of the Russian commanders, the vibrant energy of the Japanese army, and the awakening of the Chinese people led to the complete collapse of the British-dominated East Asian order. Although peace was restored in East Asia after the war, this peace had little to do with the British. The main players in this peace were the Japanese and the Chinese; the British merely expressed their concern and couldn't even side with the weak against the strong, because neither Japan nor China intended to invite outsiders to intervene in peace negotiations between them.

The only thing the British could do was make concessions on the treaty revision issue in order to preserve their commercial interests in East Asia as much as possible. The first to feel the chill of British withdrawal from East Asia were the Germans, because it meant an increased probability of British intervention in the Franco-German conflict; otherwise, the British would not have taken this step of overseas withdrawal.

Under these circumstances, the German military strengthened its cooperation with Wuhan, not only transferring a batch of weapons manufacturing technology, but also increasing its procurement of war-related resources from Wuhan. This not only stimulated Wuhan's economy, but also further strengthened the Wuhan regime's ability to defend itself. The Yangtze River fortress that defended Wuhan was protected by advanced artillery designed and supplied by the Germans.

With the external threats gone, internal strife began to escalate. Previously, due to the war, industrialization and land reform were unquestionable policies within the party and the Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Committee. In order for the Workers' Party and the Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Committee to survive, it was necessary to first ensure industrial development and the distribution of land to peasants. Although this policy ensured Wuhan's continued military victories, it also caused dissatisfaction among intellectuals, small producers, small landlords, and self-cultivating farmers, who felt they had not benefited.

During the war, these complaints were forcefully suppressed. Now that external threats have eased, voices advocating for reduced oppression in rural areas have begun to rise. This is precisely a united resistance by those whose interests were harmed by land reform and industrialization policies against the Wuhan regime and the working class. Although these voices are not backed by any organization, but merely the subconscious cries of those whose interests have been harmed, they have undoubtedly gained considerable support from the peasantry.

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Faced with a very favorable situation, the Labour Party and its supporters began to focus on two tendencies: first, to defeat other forces in the country as soon as possible and achieve political unification; and second, to ease the high-pressure policies on the countryside and provide a way out for the landlords and rich peasants who had already submitted to the Wuhan Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Committee.

This tendency did not emerge only after the war. As early as when the Workers' Party launched the Wuhan Mutiny and seized control of Hubei Province, some people within the party and progressive intellectuals outside the party proposed that the gentry who were willing to accept the Workers' Party's policies should be treated well so that the local area could be stabilized as soon as possible and the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee could not be attacked from two sides.

The reason these people raised such opinions was not entirely out of sympathy for these progressive gentry, but also out of fear of the imperial court's military force and the intervention of foreign powers. After all, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was suppressed with the cooperation of the imperial court and foreign powers. The reason why the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could not completely eliminate the imperial court's power was because the landlord class in the south constantly organized local militias to oppose the rule of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

However, the stalemate they envisioned with the imperial court did not materialize. The Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee not only defeated the Yi Army sent by the imperial court, but also blocked the combined fleet of the foreign powers below Jiujiang. This greatly enhanced the prestige of the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee and greatly deterred the local gentry and landlords.

After the victories in the wars against Britain and Russia, integrating into the new regime in Wuhan became the choice of most gentry. After all, those gentry who tried to defend their land had been suppressed by the Wuhan Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Committee, and most of the top leaders of the Labor Party were actually from gentry and rich peasant families, so there was no deep personal conflict between the two sides.

Submitting to the strong under the prevailing trend is an old tradition of Chinese gentry. During the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, gentry who were loyal to the Yuan Dynasty eventually succumbed to the military force of the Ming army. Similarly, the gentry of the Ming Dynasty succumbed to the Manchu Eight Banners army that entered the pass. When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom swept through Jiangnan, many gentry were also willing to surrender. Now that the Wuhan regime has changed, there will be no difference.

Although the land reform promoted by the Wuhan regime greatly damaged the interests of the gentry, the gentry were not necessarily opposed to the new regime's coercive measures, as long as the new regime could accept them. As long as they could integrate into the new regime, even if they handed over all their land now, they could still become wealthy again in the new dynasty. After all, their education could not be taken away, and this alone was far superior to many illiterate nouveau riche.

When the gentry raised their knives to threaten them, the Labour Party was still quite united. After all, this was a life-or-death class struggle. After the Labour Party made the elimination of the landlord class its land reform policy, there was no dissent within the party regarding the suppression of the landlord class's rebellion. Those who sympathized with the landlord class would not have supported the party's land reform policy in the first place, and naturally, they would have had difficulty surviving within the party.

However, when the landlords raised the white flag and surrendered, many people hesitated. After all, many of them came from landlord families. If they did not accept the surrender, wouldn't that be tantamount to denying their revolutionary nature? Therefore, there was a great deal of debate within and outside the party on whether to accept the surrender of landlord families.

Some within the Party argued that these landlord families should be given a way out, since these families were among the most educated in the old era, and the construction of the country needed cultured people. If they were all rejected without selection, what would happen to these people? Should they also be purged from the Party?

Some outside the party believed that the Workers' Party had already achieved a de facto victory, and now as long as it consolidated and developed the territory under its control step by step, the unification of the country would be a natural outcome. After all, neither the most economically developed Jiangnan region nor the northern territory controlled by the Beiyang government had established a systematic industry, while Wuhan had already begun to establish a foundation for the steel industry.

Any intellectual with even a modicum of insight could see that neither the south nor the north could withstand Wuhan's all-out attack. What truly hindered Wuhan's liberation of the whole country was the support of the foreign powers for the Beiyang government and local forces. Therefore, easing the antagonism with landlords and gentry would help the Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee accelerate the process of liberating the whole country.

Furthermore, some intellectuals pointed out the shortcomings of the land collectivization movement: "The land collectivization movement did improve the living standards of farmers. However, the collective communes forced farmers to engage in joint labor, which greatly hindered farmers' independent management and led to bureaucratic tendencies in the communes. Due to the need for unified sowing and harvesting, many places missed the sowing time and the harvest was not timely, resulting in reduced production. Farmers worked hard for a year, but in the end, they could not even afford to eat and wear."

These intellectuals, speaking from the perspective of the peasants, criticized the collective communes and received support from many self-cultivating farmers. They argued that the government should not manage agricultural production so strictly, especially criticizing the policy of unified purchase and sale, which they believed was an exploitation of the peasants and used the peasants' harvest to feed the workers.

These opinions even garnered sympathy from within the party. Although the Workers' Party had reached a consensus on eliminating the landlord class, there were still considerable disagreements on whether to fully promote industrialization. Most overseas students, especially those who had studied in Europe and America, advocated rapid industrialization because they believed that China had been delayed by the Qing Dynasty for 200 years. If it could not catch up with the industrialization level of Europe and America as soon as possible, then China would have to pay an even greater price when the great powers attacked again.

However, many localist party members lacked this insight. They believed that industrial development was necessary, but the key was to first improve the lives of farmers. The reason the Qing Dynasty could not continue was precisely because farmers were bankrupted by the plunder of foreign powers. At this time, the Chinese did not believe that the Qing Dynasty's economy was destroyed by the industrial products of foreign powers, but rather that the foreign powers forced the Chinese to accept the opium trade with their powerful ships and cannons, and that the devastation of the countryside was truly caused by the opium trade.

The reason these people opposed the Qing Dynasty and supported the Labor Party was that the Labor Party could ban the opium trade and thus restore rural production. However, their understanding of the power of industrialization was still limited to the image of giant ships and cannons. They did not realize that with the advent of electricity, the Western Industrial Revolution began to enter a larger-scale production mode, and the traditional hand-spun and woven cotton yarn and cloth in rural China had been overwhelmed by foreign yarn and cloth.

At the end of the 19th century, rural China consumed approximately 400 million dan (a unit of weight) of cotton yarn annually. Even after the two Opium Wars, the cotton yarn on the Chinese market was mainly domestically produced. However, after the First Sino-Japanese War, the import volume of foreign yarn began to rise rapidly. By 1902, annual cotton yarn imports reached 236.3 million dan, and cotton cloth imports reached 2144.2 million bolts. Imported cotton yarn accounted for 30% of the total imports in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, while the Jiangnan region accounted for 10%.

These local party members were unaware of the changing world situation. They still believed that the rise in the import of foreign yarn and cloth was due to the great powers controlling the customs, which was why local yarn and cloth could not compete with them. They thought that as long as the autonomy of the customs was restored, the countryside could restore the small-scale peasant economy that existed before the First Sino-Japanese War.

They failed to realize that advancements in industrial technology had driven down the cost of imported yarn and cloth, while the cost of traditional yarn and cloth produced under a small-scale peasant economy was unlikely to decrease further. Regaining autonomy over customs duties could hinder the large-scale dumping of imported yarn and cloth, but it wouldn't bring traditional yarn and cloth back to the center of the Chinese economy.

This static worldview simply divides China and the world into different interest groups vying for their own interests, while ignoring the growing technological advantage of industrialized countries over agricultural countries. This is probably the biggest common problem among intellectuals educated in Confucianism.

Tian Junyi was not a time traveler after all. He had never witnessed the terrifying industrial productivity of the future. In the 21st century, Chinese steelworkers produced 1000 tons of steel a year. The price of one ton of steel was equivalent to that of one ton of rice. Even if we calculate based on the high-yield fields that received industrial support in the future, 1000 tons of rice would require 1000 mu of fertile land. In this era, it would require 5000 mu of high-quality paddy fields.

If we directly use today's rice as a benchmark for the value of steel, then one ton of steel is worth at least ten tons of rice. This means that an agricultural country would need 50,000 acres of fertile land to equal the value created by an ordinary steelworker in an industrialized country 100 years from now. And now, industry in Europe and America is moving in this direction, causing agricultural product prices to fall, making agricultural countries easy targets for industrialized nations.

The impressions of the industrial age relayed from Lin Hsin-yi were ultimately incomplete. Therefore, when faced with the voices of the peasants petitioning both inside and outside the party, Tien Chun-yi could not help but hesitate. This was exactly what Lin Hsin-yi saw during his trip to Sichuan: resistance to collective production cooperatives, advocacy that small-scale farming was most beneficial to peasants, and demands that the Workers' Party implement benevolent and virtuous governance, while refusing to discuss the economic basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Now that Lin Xinyi had said this, Tian Junyi immediately realized that he had deviated from the proletarian revolutionary line originally set by the Party. The phrase "treat peasants well" was not invented by modern intellectuals, but rather a famous saying that Chinese intellectuals have been using since ancient times. However, since the beginning of written records, intellectuals have only used the slogan of "treating peasants well" to seek their own interests. No one was willing or knew how to carry out this benevolent policy.

Reducing the burden on peasants, lightening taxes and levies, not interfering with their lives, and allowing them to rest—this wasn't how the feudal dynasty initially operated. In the end, it was merely a fleeting period of prosperity before it descended into a decline marked by cannibalism. Ultimately, he unconsciously adopted the values ​​of the old scholar-officials and hesitated to continue the revolution.

Tian Junyi said to Lin Xinyi with great shame but also with perfect clarity: "You are right. My comrades and I hesitated on the issue of the foundation of the proletariat, which gave the comrades below the wrong impression, making them think that the proletarian revolution pursued by the Labor Party and the benevolent rule of the feudal dynasty were the same thing."

This problem definitely needs to be corrected. If we continue to allow the small-scale peasant economy to develop, today's supporters of the Party may become tomorrow's opponents. This is because the small-scale peasant economy inevitably leads to land consolidation, and once land consolidation occurs, a new landlord class will emerge, rendering our current land reform policy a failure.

However, is there no solution to the problem raised by intellectuals: the harvesting of agricultural reserves to support industry? The biggest contradiction between agriculture and industry lies here: farmers feel their harvests are bought at low prices, and whether they work hard or not, their lives won't improve; workers, on the other hand, believe that without industry, the imperial court and foreign powers would have already invaded—this is a necessary price to pay…”

Lin Xinyi also realized that the main contradiction facing the current Wuhan regime was no longer the invasion of foreign powers and the brutal exploitation by the landlord class, but rather insufficient productivity. Precisely because of this insufficient productivity, the alliance between the workers and peasants, after defeating their common enemy, began to fraught with conflict over the distribution of social wealth.

There is no other way to solve this problem except to accelerate the development of productive forces. Either we need to obtain a large amount of interest-free loans from overseas to make up for the gap between the people's needs and the lack of productive forces, or an alien will bring a large amount of supplies to the Wuhan regime for free. Otherwise, we will inevitably have to fight between industry and agriculture for the power to allocate social resources.

After realizing what had happened, Lin Hsin-yi decided not to continue criticizing the issue. Instead, he said, "First of all, I want to reiterate that the Party is the vanguard of the proletariat, not the vanguard of the propertied class, nor is it a representative of the people entrusted with deliberation and political affairs."

In other words, the Party must, and can only, view issues from the perspective of the proletariat. Peasants are allies of the working class in their fight against the landlord class and the bourgeoisie, but peasants are a group, not a class with aligned interests. Among the peasants are landlords who are completely detached from agricultural production, small landlords and rich peasants who are partially detached from agricultural production, self-cultivating farmers who are fully involved in agricultural production but own their own land, small farmers who are part-time self-cultivators and part-time tenant farmers, and finally, tenant farmers who own no land at all.

Of these people, apart from the tenant farmers who were proletarian like the working class because they had no land, everyone else was a propertied person. Even the proletarian tenant farmers had different ideas from the working class. The working class did not want to own the means of production and become capitalists themselves, but rather to receive all the fruits of their labor. The tenant farmers, on the other hand, wanted their own land, and preferably a few long-term laborers, so that they could live the life of masters.

Therefore, the Party cannot represent the peasants, and the peasants will not acknowledge the Party as their representative. They will not even acknowledge that other peasants can represent them in politics, because the production process of small-scale peasant economy is to achieve wealth by annexing land and hiring others to cultivate it. On this path, there can be no friends, only the relationship between hunter and prey.

It is precisely because of the numerous contradictions within the peasantry that the working class was able to unite with one part of the peasantry to overthrow another. However, the proletariat must not be misled into thinking that since the peasants have become allies of the working class, they will automatically become members of the proletariat. In fact, after overthrowing the original landlord class, what the peasants wanted was merely to replace them, not to become agricultural workers who earn their income through labor.

Lin Xinyi paused here, observed Tian Junyi's expression for a few seconds, and then continued: "Therefore, these so-called intellectuals who speak out on behalf of the peasants, those small landowners who claim that they have been oppressed by the working class, their real purpose is not to emphasize the supply of agriculture to industry, but to demand the protection of private ownership."

Only on a socio-economic basis of private ownership can farmers cultivate and dispose of the output of their private land without restriction. This is also where small landowners perceive the unified purchase and sale system as unfair, because they have no right to freely price the output of their land, which undoubtedly blocks their path to wealth.

The path to wealth envisioned by small landowners is entirely different from the wages demanded by the proletariat. Consider this: if every worker on every piece of land could be compensated according to their labor input, then these landowners would be unlikely to sell their land.

The wealth that small landowners hoped to achieve was only feasible under one condition: by exploiting the scarcity of grain and selling it at high prices during periods of market shortage, thereby obtaining extra profits beyond their own labor input. This extra profit was what constituted wealth. It was through market prices that the relationship between the value and price of labor was distorted, allowing some small landowners to accumulate additional wealth and eventually acquire the land of those laborers who were not skilled at managing it, thus transforming themselves into members of the landlord class.

Therefore, the Party must be clear that it represents the interests of the proletariat, and it must also be clear about its subordinate relationship with the proletariat. It cannot regard itself as a righteous messenger that transcends class. In this way, it can know what these intellectuals and small landowners really want, and naturally it will not be deceived by their sweet talk.

As for how to solve this problem, I can only say that the key lies in meeting the people's needs. Once productivity develops to a certain level, small landowners will realize that there is no longer any opportunity to get rich from their small plots of land. They will then completely abandon their dreams of getting rich through labor and accept the transformation of the proletariat, becoming members of the proletariat...

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Tian Junyi did not express any dissatisfaction with Lin Xinyi's proposals, which put Lin Xinyi at ease. After the establishment of the Wuhan Workers' Party, he was actually quite worried that Tian Junyi and his group would remain stagnant after the situation in China improved, or turn to the position of large landowners and the bourgeoisie.

This possibility cannot be ruled out. After all, Tian Junyi and others only listened to his advice and mobilized the grassroots people to fight against the Qing Dynasty and foreign powers because they felt that China had no way out. Strictly speaking, they could not even be considered enthusiasts of scientific socialism.

In the midst of battle after battle, the Workers' Party had no time to consider whether scientific socialism was suitable for China or its own interests; they simply seized upon this banner, calling on the vast majority of workers to rise up and defend their interests. As the external threats gradually receded, the party's top leadership naturally began to examine the conflict between scientific socialism and their own interests from a different perspective.

Although the party is a vanguard established on the basis of the proletariat, after its establishment it is no longer a gathering of workers' representatives, but an executive organization with a strict hierarchy and high degree of centralization. Because the party was established to overthrow the existing regime, the party itself is a small ruling group. This means that the party also has all the common problems of the regime, only to a lesser degree.

Once the Party gained control of a portion of the territory and transformed it into a legitimate government, the close ties between Party members and officials naturally led the Party toward traditional elitist politics. As a unified country with a long history of civil service rule, intellectuals naturally regarded joining the Party as a new era's imperial examination—join the Party first, then become an official. As for the Party's ideology, it became a new version of the Four Books and Five Classics, which Party members would enthusiastically recite and praise, but few truly believed in it, and there were even instances where genuine believers were attacked as outcasts.

There are many historical examples of this. For instance, Zhang Juzheng wanted to personally build a utopian world or to govern the country in the direction of a utopian world. However, Zhang Juzheng was punished after his death. The civil officials not only starved his family to death, but even tried to dig up his body and grind his bones to ashes.

The factional struggles in the Ming Dynasty and those in the Tang Dynasty were actually two different types. The factional struggles in the Tang Dynasty were about the power to do things, while the factional struggles in the Ming Dynasty were about opposing those who wanted to do things. Therefore, even though the Tang Dynasty was fragmented, it was difficult for foreign tribes to invade China, while the scholar-officials in the Ming Dynasty quickly surrendered to foreign tribes.

The reason Lin Hsin-yi proposed visiting Sichuan first during his trip to China was to observe whether the Workers' Party still insisted on being the representative of workers, or whether, after achieving its current success, it was thinking of becoming an organization that represents all the people.

Why can't the National People's Congress be the vanguard of the proletariat? Because China's National People's Congress is mandated by Heaven, representing a restoration of imperial rule, or what Confucianism calls the rule of the Three Dynasties. Under the system of rites, music, and social order, China had no class contradictions, only different social divisions of labor: a society of four classes—scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants—so where did class struggle come from?

All social problems were divided into two categories: one was the restless populace seeking to challenge social order, which constituted a mob; the other was the emperor abandoning the ways of the sages, leading to constant strife, which constituted a tyrannical ruler. In this way, class contradictions were completely eliminated, because Confucianism had found two scapegoats to solve both the legitimacy of the government suppressing the people and the legitimacy of the new regime after the change of dynasties.

The observation of the Labour Party aims to determine whether the party sees itself as the representative of the people or as a new mandate of heaven. If it is the latter, then Lin Xinyi will have to readjust his stance on the Labour Party, since he is not doing these things for a new dynasty in China. The oppression of the people by a reactionary regime that has mastered organizational capabilities is indescribable.

The Kuomintang, established with Soviet assistance, perpetrated the April 12th Massacre, while Hitler's Nazi Party wiped out a generation of young people in Europe. This was certainly not the future Lin Hsin-yi wanted to see.

However, the situation seems to be much better than he expected. Perhaps when he left Japan, Tian Junyi only saw scientific socialism as a theory for saving the country. But today, Tian Junyi's belief in scientific socialism is obviously much more sincere. He did not take the threat of a counterattack from small landowners raised by Lin Xinyi seriously, nor did he show any moral sympathy for these small producers.

Tian Junyi's performance reassured Lin Xinyi, allowing both sides to finally engage in an open discussion on this issue from the perspective of the proletariat. If Tian Junyi hadn't taken the proletarian stance, it would have been virtually impossible for them to reach any agreement, and Lin Xinyi wouldn't have been able to fully express his thoughts to him.

Therefore, after criticizing the harm that the small landowners' rejection of the collectivization movement brought to the economic foundation of socialism, Lin Xinyi finally spoke about his solution to this problem. He frankly told Tian Junyi: "The Wuhan Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Committee, which only regards itself as the regime of the Chinese proletariat, is unlikely to solve the problem of unfair distribution of social resources raised by these small landowners, because this problem does indeed exist."

In our view, the value of a commodity should depend on the socially necessary labor time. This standard can indeed be used to measure the real value of commodity production around the world. However, the price of a commodity is closely related to labor costs. For example, the hourly wage of an American worker is one and a half times that of a British worker, while the hourly wage of a British worker is two and a half times that of a Chinese worker. This means that even if the same commodity is priced with the same socially necessary labor time in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom, their actual prices will vary drastically due to the different labor costs.

The problem now is that small landowners do not recognize that the value of a commodity is determined by socially necessary labor time. They believe that the ownership of land is the core value of grain as a commodity. Therefore, small landowners hope to occupy more land in order to further consolidate their control over grain production and ultimately affect market prices.

With a population of 450 million and only 850 million mu of arable land, the average arable land per person is less than two mu. Assuming a yield of 1.5 shi per mu, this is barely enough to sustain the entire population. Therefore, the idea of ​​small landowners cannot be considered wrong. Since China's grain production is insufficient to sustain the population, the more land they own, the more grain they have, and the more wealth accumulates in their hands, because people cannot survive without food.

Therefore, the core of this problem is insufficient agricultural productivity. Although China is an agricultural country where more than 80% of the population is engaged in agriculture, Chinese agriculture still cannot feed the Chinese people. This is the key reason why farmers were willing to support us in overthrowing the landlord class. However, the overthrow of the old landlord class did not mean that the problem was solved. In fact, the problem still existed, so small landowners strived to develop in the direction of becoming new landlords.

In such circumstances, attempting to prevent these small landowners from becoming wealthy would turn us into their enemies. Given China's vast peasant population, coupled with intervention from foreign powers, we would inevitably be defeated by widespread rebellions launched by these small landowners. China would then descend into an even darker period of regional separatism, because it would be impossible for a prestigious leader to emerge from among the small landowners. Their small-scale private ownership would lead them to seek separatist regimes within their own territories. This is the history of the Indian subcontinent after the fall of the Mughal Empire, when it was colonized by Britain amidst chaos.

Therefore, solving this problem requires a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, we should prevent the power of small landowners from expanding further. The current calls for the rapid unification of the country are not that we cannot do it, but rather that such unification will only further expand the power of small landowners, while the revolutionary forces will be weakened.

For example, the Beiyang clique consisted of newly wealthy northerners, while the Jiangnan gentry were established beneficiaries of the Qing dynasty. Their commonality lay in their possession of vast amounts of land, making them the military and political representatives of large landowners. Although they were hostile to us, they were also hostile to the smaller landowners. As long as the larger landowners remained undefeated, they would welcome our liberation rather than fear that land reform would confiscate their land.

However, after we used military force to overthrow these large landowners, the small landowners became the targets of their opposition. Therefore, unifying the country now is politically premature, because we cannot gain the support of the proletariat from the newly liberated areas, and instead, we allow the small landowners to unite.

On the other hand, it's about improving agricultural productivity. Currently, there are only two ways to improve agricultural productivity: land reclamation and increasing yield per unit area. Most of the land in the south has already been developed. The only place with a large amount of undeveloped land is the northern region. Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Outer Northeast, and Northern Manchuria have a large amount of uncultivated land.

However, such reclamation should be carried out under the organization of the Party, through state-owned farms or military reclamation units, because only in this way can it be guaranteed that these newly developed lands will become the economic base of the proletariat, rather than strengthening the private economy.

As for increasing yield per unit area, this requires the help of industry. Looking at the current agricultural development in various countries, agricultural machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, water conservancy facilities and basic roads are all closely related to industry.

However, China is an agricultural country with extremely underdeveloped industry. Importing industrial technology and equipment from abroad, training the working class, and implementing compulsory education all required substantial investment. This meant that reaping agricultural gains in the short term was the established policy, and it was normal for farmers to feel dissatisfied, as they did not receive returns commensurate with their labor.

This is why peasants are allies of the proletariat. Although peasants disagree with the working class on the issue of private ownership, they are inevitably allies of the working class in the construction of industrialization. An agricultural country cannot transform into an industrial country out of thin air. Therefore, when forcing peasants to contribute their labor, it is necessary to formulate reasonable plans to gradually increase the purchase price of agricultural products and decrease the price of industrial goods in order to reward agriculture…

Tian Junyi was deeply moved by his conversation with Lin Xinyi that evening. After thinking about it all night, he had another brief conversation with Lin Xinyi the next day and asked him to write an article on the relationship between agriculture and industry, which would then be submitted to the Central Committee of the Party for discussion.

Lin Xinyi readily accepted the request and participated in the discussion at the meeting. Compared to four years ago, the Party's central organs had also undergone significant changes. Previously, the Party's major resolutions were determined by the Central Presidium, composed of six Central Committee members, while the enlarged meeting added nine alternate Central Committee members.

By 1908, the Workers' Party had grown to nearly 500,000 members, with 300,000 in Hubei alone and about 40,000 in Hunan. These 340,000 members formed the core of the Workers' Party. There were also over 100,000 members in other parts of the country, but their understanding of party theory was relatively superficial. After all, party organizations in other regions were almost all busy with struggles and had little time to study theory.