893.00/3–1845
Report by the Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Service)68
Summary: Organizations have been set up unifying all labor and women’s organizations in the Communist liberated areas. These indicate a trend of more open opposition to the Central Government and may become a step in the establishment of a separate Communist-dominated government if the Kuomintang continues to exclude the Communists from the Government and the coming National Congress. End of Summary.
Within the past few weeks the official Communist Party newspaper at Yenan has announced the establishment of federations of labor and women’s organizations of all the Communist liberated areas.
Details of these new organizations are not yet available and will be reported more fully at a later date. It is probable that the organizations are not yet complete. For instance, it is understood that the labor federation at present comprises only the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region, Shansi-Suiyuan and Shansi-Hopei-Chahar. A close-knit organization will probably be impossible because of the physical separation of the various bases involved and the difficulty of travel or other communications. At the same time unity is facilitated by the fact of pervading Communist influence and leadership.
This creation of federal organizations covering several areas is a new development. Labor and women’s groups, as well as other categories [Page 291] of mass organizations sponsored by the Communist Party, have of course been unified within the different Communist bases. But each of the 14 main bases is a separate entity under an independent government.
It may be said that the independence and separateness of these governments, and of the mass organizations under them, is more nominal than real because they are all dominated by the Communist Party. This is true. But the Communist Party in the past has consistently maintained this separation on grounds of policy. It supplied the stimulus and organizing ability but sought to have the different bases develop as spontaneous, local expressions of popular resistance to the Japanese in areas behind the fighting lines and abandoned by the Kuomintang. To have set about the consolidation of these governments, or the creation of broad mass organizations, would have given the impression of undermining the United Front by setting up rivals to the National Government or its subordinate organizations, such as the Ministry of Social Affairs’ labor unions.
As I wrote last year (in my report no. 26 from Yenan69), this upholding of local democracy, separation of governments, and limitation of Communist participation through such measures as the three: three system, has not actually hampered Communist control and effective unity. This control and unity is a reality because the Communists are the only well-organized, aggressive party common to all the governments. The newly announced federations are, therefore, more a change in appearance than in fact.
This, however, is precisely their importance. They are indications of a forward step in Communist policy toward the Kuomintang and Central Government. The formal linking up of these mass organizations into unified bodies covering practically all of occupied China is a logical step toward open opposition to the Central Government and the possible eventual federation of the various bases under a Communist-dominated government. If labor and other groups within the present independent governments are unified, the separateness of those governments becomes more and more a fiction.
Such a federation of the various Communist base governments is actually under consideration now. Its establishment, and the form and powers which it will assume, will be determined by the policy of the Kuomintang. As far as I can judge from the present guarded statements of Communist leaders, the federation (implying at least a semi-government for all the liberated areas) will certainly be set up if the Kuomintang continues its present rigid attitude of refusing to admit the Communist and other parties to any actual share in the Government and persists in its present plans for a wholly Kuomintang [Page 292] National Congress, elected 9 years ago during a period of civil war, to institute “constitutional government”. The decision on this matter is one of the most important matters on the agenda of the imminent Communist Party Congress.
Even though this union of the Communist area governments does not materialize, the creation of these unified mass organizations (and the central relief and rehabilitation body mentioned in my report no. 16 of March 17, 1945) will create future problems in relations between the Kuomintang and Communist parties. They will be large, well-organized, thoroughly indoctrinated political organizations competing with similar Kuomintang organizations.
The labor organization may be particularly important. The Communists claim that they have 800,000 organized workers. Most of this number is within their actual areas of present control and includes many handicraft workers. But it also includes secret trade-unions among the Chinese workers of the Japanese-held railway and mines of North and Central China. Significantly, the Communists make no specific claims in this figure of labor organizations in such cities as Hankow and Shanghai. But their leaders have repeatedly stated, and it is probably true, that their underground organization among the workers in these industrial centers is active and extensive.
By openly setting up their own general labor organization, the Communists prepare for competition with the Kuomintang when it tries to regain control of these cities and the occupied areas of Central and North China. In such competition to organize and hold the support of the workers, the Kuomintang is, on the basis of its past history, going to be a poor match for the Communists. The Kuomintang labor organizations have been government-controlled with little actual worker representation. They have been repressive in character and have done little to benefit the workers.
The establishment by the Communists of a general labor organization, therefore, brings the future conflict almost into the open. It comes close to throwing down the gauntlet to the Kuomintang.
- Received in the Department about April 27.↩
- September 10, 1944, Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. vi, p. 623.↩