Although the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed they were benefiting and giving liberation to peasants, and they actually did in different ways, such as land reforms, and those peasants did accept and support the CCP, the true purpose of the CCP is to use the population as a tool to start revolution and industrialization. In other words, the concept of this relationship is ultimately an exploitation of people after training them rather than genuinely benefiting them. During the years between 1925 and 1950, China was in a state of chaos after several upheavals, such as the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion, and severe foreign invasions by Japan, Britain, etc., in the years before this period. At the same time, the USSR was directed and controlled by Stalin, who was implementing a special ideology and industrial structure known as Stalinism. This system was mainly focused on rapid industrialization with a centralized economy. During that time, China borrowed much of its ideology from the USSR, including rapid land reforms and peasant militarization, which enabled the CCP to sustain its revolution and consolidate power.
Examining several sources across each other, we could identify that the CCP provided a lot of resources that benefited peasants in different ways, but their purpose wasn’t necessarily directly to be the thing. Doc 2 was the most significant one. It directly illustrates the standard of living before and after the CCP’s support. It mentions that they got free schools, news radio reports, cooperatives, farm lands, and plenty of food, but they didn’t have them before the CCP. He also mentioned that her sister’s death because of starving, which could be inferred that the life circumstances before were a disaster. This contrast strongly suggests the fact that the CCP was actually giving supplements to those poor peasants. Another point is that this was spoken by a teenage peasant to his grandfather, who was trying to convince him to support the CCP. This literally suggests that the CCP’s ideology was deeply spread into his mind solely because of these material supports, however, the older person, who had more experience of critical thinking skill and diverse ideology was still questioning about the CCP, which might reflects he realized something like there’s no free meal so they might need to pay back to the CCP in the future. Another piece of evidence outside of those sources would be that Chiang Kai-shek’s leading party, the Kuomintang, failed to give peasants rights while they were still borrowing landlords’ power to regulate people, especially in rural areas. This led to a large distrust of people in the KMT and moving to the CCP, which was represented the most in the new generations. In this case, the CCP did a solid job in gaining prestige by offering lands to peasants and gathering their trust. Doc 6 suggests that the arming of the people for resistance against Japan had placed the peasants in a position to challenge the landlords and money lenders in the countryside. This reflects that the CCP’s original purpose of peasants’ militarization was not land reform but fighting against Japan, and land reform was just a subsequent consequence. Although this excerpt was from a CCP member, he was born in the US, which his POV provides a perspective of the 3rd party to some extent. It indeed strengthened the fact that the CCP’s purpose was different. Doc 7 provides constitutional evidence of marriage freedom, which is actually a liberation of people. This was to perhaps gain women’s support by giving them a higher social power. Doc 8 gives evidence of land reforms that abolished feudal land ownership to peasant ownership. However, it mentions “thus pave the way for the new China’s industrialization.” This reflects the case that all those reforms are designed to serve the country instead of just benefiting peasants.
From another perspective, peasants provide a lot of value to the CCP as well. The most significant one is Doc 1, which Mao Zedong, the boss of the CCP at that time, illustrated those peasants as a revolutionary power used to fight against imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants, and evil landowners. Notice that he didn’t mention anything about benefiting or supporting people, which could be interpreted as meaning that he, or the entire CCP, did view peasants as a tool for their purpose. This was a written report from the rising leader of the CCP, whose purpose is to promote people to follow their lead and contribute to their revolutionary work. Doc 3 even strengthened this argument, as a Japanese political figure, who was an enemy of China at that period, directly mentioned that the Chinese Communist Red Army champions army-civilian integration and is continuously organizing local guerrilla units, and it is hard to separate the Communist bandits from the peasants. This reflects a strong binding relationship between peasants and the CCP. In that context, Japan had a lasting conflict with China, which suggests that his POV provided a third-person view on this event, which increased its reliability. Doc 5 suggests this argument as well, which, although it leads to reducing feudal exploitation by the landlords, the main purpose was to show in this sentence, “Recognize that peasants constitute the basic strength of the Anti-Japanese War.” They are used as a power to fight Japan. This was also an instruction to local party officials, which reflects the CCP’s internal ideology and purpose of exploiting peasants.