CHINA: Mopping Up the People

Dr. Pei Wen-chung is China's most noted paleontologist. He made his reputation in 1929 when he discovered the skull of Sinanthropus, the Peking man, who lived half a million years ago. Recently Dr. Pei discovered some Chinese contemporaries known as "The Fire Society." Shocked and angry after a trip to his native village, he wrote about it in Tientsin's Ta Kung Pao:

"The legal names of the society are plenty. It was first called 'The Loyal People's Home Returning Squad,' then 'The Volunteer Young Men's Squad.'. . . These squads were ordered dispersed because of their evil deeds [but] the squad that controls my village was renamed 'The Self-Protecting Squad.' . . . The ignorant farmers just called it the Huo Hui—Fire Society.

"Whenever the Nationalist Army comes to mop up a place of Communists, it is the Fire Society that points out to the troops which village is a bandit [Communist] hideout ... or who is a bandit and should be killed. In other words, a single word from the Fire Society can turn a whole village to ashes or deprive a peasant of his life. . . .

"Expenses of the Fire Society are paid constantly by the people.. . . [It collects] for 'comforting the National Army.' This is paid in the form of live pigs and cash. ... As it has worked out this year, the 'official funds' to be paid by one mu [one-sixth of an acre] of land actually exceed the value of the total crop which that mu can yield. As a result, nobody in the village will accept any land, even as a gift. So land is going idle.. . .

"Besides the 'official' or constant contributions, there are also extraordinary ones to be paid. . . . 'Constructing fences payment' is a polite term for kidnaping for ransom. If a peasant is unlucky, the Fire Society can easily arrest him on a charge of 'collaborating with bandits.' If he is clever and rich enough to send in some $200,000 CN or $300,000 CN, he becomes a 'repented' good citizen. Otherwise, his charge will change from collaboration to 'being a bandit'—and the sentence is death.

"I am not against the mopping up of 'bandits,' but the question should be asked, 'Who are the bandits?' In any case, the people should not be mopped up. ... I have tried to call the attention of the authorities to the situation. The higher officials simply will not believe such things really happen. . . ."