All the Tea in China
All the Tea in China
Excerpt from China’s Wars by John Fulnauer
For the Chinese the years between 1959 and 1967 were a long stalemate. The years of brutal fighting had burned out both sides, and as a result both had turned inward and focused on governing and rebuilding their nations rather than conquest. Of the two sides the KMT proved to be much better at this, mainly due to American intervention. From 1965 onward President Knowland made the support of the ROC his signature foreign policy. The most important element of this was the Jackson Plan, named after Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, one of the key organizers of the plan. The Jackson Plan was much like the Marshall Plan that had helped Europe recover from the devastation of World War II. $15 billion was spent on rebuilding China’s infrastructure, industry, and military. The most intensive efforts were put into rebuilding northern and eastern China, the areas which had seen the worst of the fighting. The Jackson Plan resulting in major successes. China entered an era of unprecedented economic growth. New factories sprung up across the nation, thousands of miles of road and rail were rebuilt, and living standards rose back to pre-war levels. The best example of the reconstruction was Beijing, which by 1964 had fewer than 500,000 people living in the ruins. The city was rebuilt virtually from scratch, and by 1970 there were over 3 million people living there.
Lacking a foreign power to aid them the Yellow Banners were much less successful. The biggest success of the Yellow Banners was ending the famine in the areas they controlled. Almost immediately after taking power the Tianshi Emperor had abolished the collective farms, redistributing the land in private plots to the farmers. Prisoners of war and ex-Communist officials were put to work in the fields, which lead to a boost in productivity. The famine and the smallpox epidemic also resolved themselves to a certain extent. The loss of so many people also meant that there were far fewer mouths to feed, and eventually the survivors of the smallpox outbreaks developed a resistance. However, in other areas the Yellow Banners were much less successful, with the best example being the rebuilding of infrastructure. The Yellow Banners simply lacked the resources to carry out mass reconstruction, so instead they focused on rebuilding infrastructure in areas where it was militarily essential.
Excerpt from The Yellow Banners by Li Zhimin
On September 22nd, 1967 the KMT launched a massive offensive against the Yellow Banners. With 2 million men and hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, and planes it was one of the largest offensives of the war. The army was divided in half, with one part moving through Chunking and the other moving through the Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces; they were supposed to meet up at the Yellow Banner capital of Guiyang. The Yellow Banners had never encountered an enemy this large and well-equipped before, and when they did meet the Yellow Banners were crushed. The KMT was able to use their artillery and uncontested control of the skies to hammer their enemy’s fortified positons into the ground, then use their numerical superior troops (the ratio of KMT to Yellow Banners was about 2:1) and armor to roll over the survivors. That isn’t to say that the Yellow Banners didn’t fight. To the contrary they fought ferociously and to the death. Many KMT soldiers later recalled seeing Yellow Banners who were horribly injured continue to fight, while others launched banzai-style suicide attacks. But in the end by December the KMT was only 50 miles from Guiyang.
As the KMT closed in the Tianshi Emperor and his court debated what to do. Many were in favor of turning Guiyang into a last stand, while others wanted to retreat and return to their guerrilla roots. It was at this point that the Tianshi Emperor had a vision in which he was slain by a monster, who was then killed by his followers. The Emperor took this to mean that he was destined to die, but that a new emperor would take command and bring the Yellow Banners to victory. He appointed one of his lieutenants, a man named Ming Shihkai, as his successor, giving him the royal name the Tianlong (Heavenly Dragon) Emperor. The Tianlong Emperor departed with several thousand Yellow Banners towards Yunnan, while the Tianshi Emperor and some 200,000 troops prepared for a fight to the death. For weeks the Yellow Banners and the KMT fought over the city, until on February 1st, 1968 the KMT broke through the front lines and into the city. They had expected to encounter fierce resistance, but instead they found a necropolis. Bodies were scattered everywhere, with the nearby Nanming River being so full of bodies that one soldier remembered “you could walk across it.” Talking with the survivors it soon became clear what had happened. The Tianshi Emperor had no intention of being captured alive, and once it became clear that a KMT breakthrough was imminent he decided to kill himself. But the Tianshi Emperor didn’t want to go alone, and asked that everyone in Guiyang join him. Those who killed themselves were promised a much better position in the afterlife, and as a further incentive horror stories were spread about how the KMT ravaged captured cities. Over the next few days thousands upon thousands of people took their own lives. Poison was widely distributed, while others chose to jump in the Naming River where, unable to swim, they drowned. There is strong evidence that many people didn’t want to kill themselves, but were forced to by Yellow Banner soldiers. The Massacre of Guiyang, as it came to be known, is by far the largest mass suicide in world history.
