PART FOUR TO CONQUER CHINA
26 “革命的鸦片战争”
(1937–45 AGE 43–51)
1937～1945 年 43～51 岁
YENAN, MAO'S HQ during the Sino-Japanese War, was run somewhat differently from former Red bases like Ruijin. With the policy changes the CCP introduced for the “United Front,” the practice of designating “class enemies” for slave labor and dispossession was drastically scaled down. But the maximum extraction went on, through taxation.
延安被叫做中国革命的“圣地”，以共产党人“自己动手，丰衣足食”着称。真正使延安能够生存发展，靠的是什么呢？
This was despite the fact that Yenan enjoyed two enormous external subsidies: substantial funding from the Nationalists (for the first few years), and massive clandestine sponsorship from Moscow, which Stalin personally set at US$300,000 per month in February 1940 (worth perhaps some US$45–50 million a year today).
延安有两项重要外援。一是国民党政府(在头几年)的接济，二是莫斯科的大量秘密援助。一九四0年二月，斯大林亲自把援助规格定在每月三十万美金上。这相当于今天的四千五百万至五千万美金一年。
The chief domestic source of revenue was grain tax, which rose steeply during the years of Communist occupation. Official figures for grain tax for the first five years of Red rule, for which records are available, were (in shi, equivalent to roughly 150 kg at the time):
来自本地的主要收入是农业税，有一个响亮的名字叫“救国公粮”。延安所在的陕甘宁边区公粮数字年年直线上升。有记录在案的头五年的官方数字是这样的(以石计算)：
1937: 13,859 1938: 15,972 1939: 52,250 1940: 97,354 1941: 200,000
1937: 13,859 1938: 15,972 1939: 52,250 1940: 97,354 1941: 200,000
The sharp increases from 1939 on were to fund Mao's aggressive expansion of both territory and army. Coercion and violence were clearly rife, as the region's Communist chief secretary, Xie Jue-zai, noted in his diary for 21 June 1939 that peasants were being “driven to death” by tax collectors. (Xie was one of the few to keep a diary, thanks to his high position and his long relationship with Mao, which went back to Mao's youth.) In 1940, grain tax doubled in spite of severe bad weather and famine. And it doubled again in 1941, even though the harvest was 20–30 percent down on the previous year.
一九三九年的急剧增长，是因为那年毛泽东开始大规模扩展军队和根据地，需要钱粮。征粮常常靠强制与暴力，陕甘宁边区政府秘书长谢觉战六月二十一日的日记提道，征粮有“逼死人”的。谢觉哉地位既高，跟毛又是几十年的老关系，所以胆敢一直记日记。一九四0年天灾歉收闹饥荒，公粮仍增加了近一倍。一九四一年，收成减少两三成，可是公粮却再次翻一番。
Mao was disliked by the locals—a fact he knew, but had no impact on his policy. He later told senior cadres a story about a peasant complaining about heavy taxation. After a county chief was struck dead by lightning, the peasant said: “Heaven has no eyes! Why didn't it strike Mao dead?” Mao told the story as a way of saying he was responsive to discontent, and claimed he had had grain tax reduced as a result. As a matter of fact, the lightning and the peasant's curse occurred on 3 June 1941, well before that year's unprecedentedly high tax was announced, on 15 October. Mao doubled the tax after he heard about the peasant's anger. And that November he added a new tax, on horse feed.
当地人怨声载道，毛也知道这一点。他后来对高级干部讲了个故事，说一天雷雨中某县长被雷电击毙，一位农民就说：老天爷不睁眼，咋不打死毛泽东。毛声称他了解到农民的反感后，决定减征公粮。事实恰恰相反。那个雷雨天和农民的诅咒发生在一九四一年六月三日，而四个月之后的十月十五日，毛的政府宣布了史无前例的高额公粮。也就是说，毛得知农民的怒气后反而加倍向他们征收，甚至还添上一项新的税收：公草税，即马料。
On another occasion, Mao revealed that someone who, according to him, “was feigning madness” lunged at him and tried to assault him—because of the heavy taxes. Mao did not quote other stories that went the rounds, including one about a peasant who cut the eyes out of a portrait of Mao. When interrogated, he said: “Chairman Mao has no eyes,” meaning: “There is no justice under his rule.” Mao's response was simply to cook the figures. In 1942 and 1943, government announcements understated taxes by at least 20 percent.
另一次，毛提到一个“装疯的人”冲过来打他，“对我有义愤，原因即那年公粮负担重。”他没有提到其他悄悄流传的故事，其中之一说一个农民买了张毛的肖像，把像上的眼睛挖出来。审问他时，他说：“毛主席不长眼睛。”真实的公粮数字此后不再公开。一九四二、一九四三年，陕甘宁政府宣布的公粮数字比实际上起码少说了两成。
The Communists claimed that taxation in Yenan was much lower than in Nationalist-ruled areas. But Chief Secretary Xie himself noted in his diary that grain tax per capita in 1943 was “high by the standards of the Big Rear [Nationalist area].” Sometimes, he recorded, grain tax “almost equals the entire year's harvest”; the state took the astronomical figure of 92 percent in the case of one family he cited. For many, “there was no food left after paying the tax.” Large numbers tried to flee. According to the Communists' own records, in 1943 over 1,000 families fled from Yenan County alone, which was no small feat, as the whole place was guarded around the clock, and the county was not on the border of the Red area, which was roughly the size of France.
中共宣传说陕甘宁边区的税收比国民党地区低得多。可是谢觉哉在一九四四年二月二十四日的日记里写道：边区的农业税跟国民党地区比并不轻，有的人“交公粮后没得吃，所交公粮之数几乎和全年收入之粗粮相等”，“如白玉宾全家四口，收粗粮五大石，须出公粮四十六斗六升。”甚至有人“实际收的粮不够交公粮”。
THE REDS FOSTERED the myth that Yenan was under tight economic blockade by Chiang Kai-shek. In fact, there was plenty of trade with Nationalist areas, and the person Chiang selected to place on Yenan's northern frontier, General Teng Pao-shan, was a man who had longstanding ties with the Communists. His daughter was a Party member, and actually lived in Yenan, which he sometimes visited; he also had a Communist secretary. He let the Reds take over two crucial border crossing points on the Yellow River, which gave them uninterrupted communications with their other bases. In addition, his men bought arms and ammunition for the Reds. Chiang tolerated this state of affairs because he did not want an all-out civil war, which Mao promised to start if he did not get his way.
The Yenan region had considerable assets. The most important marketable one was salt. There were seven salt lakes, where all that had to be done, as one 1941 report noted, was “just to collect it.” In the first four years of their occupation, the Reds produced no new salt, and simply used up the reserve built up before they arrived. “The salt stock of decades has been sold out,” the 1941 report said, and the territory “is in a salt famine.” The regime was not only extremely slow to maximize this asset, it had no plan. This reflected the fact that Mao treated Yenan, like the other areas he occupied, as a stopover, inflicting an economic approach akin to slash and burn, with no attention to long-term output.
能为陕甘宁边区带来收入的还有盐。盐很容易生产。根据一九四一年边区政府工作报告，边区有七个大盐池，“产盐方法靠天，夏季太阳一晒，水面结晶，稍微下点雨，融去硝质，打下就是。过去只要盐有销路，产量是无穷的。”共产党占领头四年，没有产新盐，把几十年的存盐都用光了，致使“西北各地都闹盐荒。”报告说这是因为“我们缺乏远大计划”。
By mid-1941, the regime had belatedly come to recognize salt as “the second-biggest source of [domestic] revenue” after the grain tax, and a key money-spinner, which soon came to account for over 90 percent of export earnings.
一九四一年，边区政府终于看到了这个赚钱的宝贝，开始产盐。盐成了本地收入的第二大来源。对国民党统治区的出口中，盐占了百分之九十。中共宣传说延安处在蒋介石严密的经济封锁之下。事实上，它跟国统区之间贸易不断。
The salt was in the northeast of the region, but the export market was over the southern border. As there was no railway or navigable river, let alone motor vehicles, it had to be carried some 700 km on steep, twisting paths. “Transporting salt is the harshest form of taxation,” one Yenan governor wrote to the emperor under the Manchu Dynasty; “those who are poor and cannot afford animals have to carry it on their backs and shoulders, and their hardship is untold …” “Today,” Chief Secretary Xie noted, “it is not much different from the old days.”
盐产在边区的东北边，出口口岸在南边，运输全靠农民做义工，跋涉在七百公里的崎岖山路上，称之为“官督民运”。谢觉哉等人向毛上书，反对这个“人民赔累，荒废农时，强所不愿”的严酷政策。但毛告诉他们：“官督民运政策，不但是未可厚非的，而且是完全正当的”。要农民“农暇必须去，非去不行”。他还在“农暇”二字下加了着重号。
The regime imposed corvée labor (unpaid porterage) on innumerable peasant families. Xie and other moderates wrote to Mao many times arguing against this harsh method, but Mao told them flatly that the policy “is not only nothing to criticise, but is also completely correct.” Peasants, he said, must be “forced” to do it, and, he specifically enjoined, “in the slack season.” The underline was Mao's, to stress that they must not neglect farm work.
THE LOCAL PEASANTS were having to support an administration that was both huge and inefficient. A British radio expert who was in Yenan in 1944–45, Michael Lindsay, was so frustrated by the inefficiency that he produced a document called “What's Wrong with Yenan.” The system stifled initiative, Lindsay wrote, and made people frightened of proposing improvements, as any suggestion could be twisted into a lethal political accusation. “Technical people all [sic] run away at the first opportune moment.” A copy was given to Chou En-lai. Lindsay heard nothing more.
Others had raised their voices against the bloated bureaucracy earlier. In November 1941 a non-CCP member of the region's dummy parliament had proposed cutting down on the army and administration, quoting a traditional adage that a good government should have “fewer but better troops, smaller and simpler administration.” For propaganda purposes, Mao made a public show of adopting the adage. But he was not interested in reducing the number of cadres, or soldiers. He wanted more of them, not fewer, in order to conquer China.
It is part of the founding myth of Communist China that in Yenan both the army and the administration were reduced, and that this relieved the burden on the population. In fact, what the regime did was to weed out the politically unreliable (termed “backward”), and the old and the sick, and reassign them to manual labor. The rules for relocating them said they “must be placed round the centre of the region to avoid the Nationalists enticing them away.” In other words, to prevent them fleeing. But even with these reductions, as a secret document of March 1943 noted, there was actually “an overall increase” in employees in the region's administration, mainly at lower levels, in order to intensify control at the grassroots. Meanwhile, Mao used the drive to merge departments and carry out a reshuffle at the top to tighten his grip.
THE GERMAN INVASION of Russia in June 1941 made Mao look around for an alternative source of funding in case Moscow was unable to continue its subsidy. The answer was opium. Within a matter of weeks, Yenan brought in large quantities of opium seeds. In 1942, extensive opium-growing and trading began.
一九四一年德国入侵苏联后，毛担心苏联不能继续资助他，找了个新的收入来源：种鸦片。几个星期不到，延安就买了大量鸦片种子。次年，大规模的种植鸦片开始。
To a small circle, Mao dubbed his operation “the Revolutionary Opium War.” In Yenan, opium was known by the euphemism “te-huo,” “Special Product.” When we asked Mao's old assistant, Shi Zhe, about growing opium, he answered: “It did happen,” and added: “If this thing gets known, it's going to be very bad for us Communists.” He also told us that conventional crops, mainly sorghum, were planted around the opium to hide it. When a Russian liaison man asked Mao outright over a game of mah-jong in August 1942 how Communists could “openly engage in opium production,” Mao was silent. One of his hatchet men, Teng Fa, supplied the answer: opium, he said, “bring[s] back a caravan loaded with money … and with it we'll whip the [Nationalists]!” That year a carefully researched study put the opium-growing area at 30,000 acres of the region's best land.
在小范围内，毛把此举称为“革命的鸦片战争”。在延安，知情的人们含蓄地说着“特货”。中共掌权后，这件事在历史中消失了。我们问师哲时，他先说：“这个东西传出去，对我们共产党很不利的。”接着承认说：“是有这个事情。”“鸦片周围种了很多粮食，是高粱，鸦片种在中间。”一九四二年八月，在延安的一个苏联人打麻将时直截了当地问毛，共产党人怎么可能“公然种鸦片”？毛不吭声，邓发替他回答：鸦片能赚钱，“有钱我们就能打国民党！”西安报纸上有一个很详细的调查报告，指出陕甘宁边区那年种鸦片的地有三万英亩。
The major opium-producing counties lay on the borders with the friendly Nationalist general to the north, Teng Pao-shan, who was actually known as “the Opium King.” Mao received invaluable collaboration from him, which he reciprocated by facilitating Teng's own opium-trafficking. When Chiang Kai-shek was thinking of transferring Teng, Mao sprang into action to prevent this: “Ask Chiang to stop at once,” he told Chou in Chongqing, saying that he (Mao) was “determined to wipe out” the unit scheduled to replace Teng. Chiang canceled the transfer. Mao showed how much he appreciated Teng by mentioning him twice when he addressed the 7th Congress in 1945, once even in the same breath as Marx, leading the Russian liaison Vladimirov to ask: “What sort of man is this Teng Pao-shan whom Mao Tse-tung cited … alongside Marx?” Yet Mao never trusted his benefactor. After the Communist takeover in 1949, Teng remained on the Mainland and was rewarded with high nominal posts. But when he asked to travel abroad, the request was denied.
鸦片的主要种植地跟国民党将军邓宝珊的管辖地接壤。邓将军是中共的“老朋友”， 有个中共党员作秘书，女儿也是中共党员，住在延安。他不时造访延安，还把黄河上的两个要紧的渡口拱手交给中共，使延安跟其他根据地的来往畅通无阻。 邓将军本人也种鸦片，号称“鸦片大王”。他跟毛互相开方便之门。蒋介石曾考虑让邓将军换防，毛一听说就电告在重庆的周恩来，要蒋停止调动，否则他要“用武力”，把调来的部队“消灭之”。蒋只得打消换防的念头。毛对邓将军的感谢从他在“七大”上的讲话中可见一斑，他两次特地提到邓，一次与马克思并举，引得苏联驻延安代表孙平发问：“邓宝珊到底是个什么人哪？毛泽东居然把他跟马克思相提并论！” 但毛并不信任他的这位恩人。中共掌权后邓留在大陆，也挂上一连串头衔，但当他提出想出国看看时，他却未能如愿。
In one year, opium solved Mao's problems. On 9 February 1943 he told Chou that Yenan had “overcome its financial difficulties, and had accumulated savings … worth 250 million fabi.” Fabi was the currency used in the Nationalist areas, which Mao had been stockpiling, along with gold and silver, “for when we enter Nationalist areas,” i.e., once all-out war began against Chiang. This sum was six times the official Yenan region budget for 1942, and it represented pure saving. In 1943 the Russians estimated Mao's opium sales at 44,760 kg, worth an astronomical 2.4 billion fabi (roughly US$60 million at then current exchange rates, or some US$640 million today).
一年的工夫，鸦片解决了中共的困难。一九四三年二月九日，毛电告周恩来：“边区财政难关已度过，现党政军积蓄资产值边币五万万以上一(合法币二万万五千万以上)。”这个数字六倍于陕甘宁边区一九四二年的政府预算七千九百万元。据苏联人一九四三年估算，中共卖了四万四千七百六十公斤鸦片，价值二十四亿法币(相当于今天六亿四千万美金)。到一九四四年，用秘书长谢觉哉的话说，中共很“富”了，而这“无疑是由特货”来的。
By early 1944 the Communists were “very rich,” according to Chief Secretary Xie. The huge fabi reserve “is without doubt thanks to the Special Product,” Xie wrote in his diary. The lives of Party members in Yenan improved dramatically too, especially for senior officials. Cadres arriving from other base areas marveled at how well they ate. One described a meal with “several dozen dishes,” and “every table left many dishes unfinished.”
延安干部的生活大为好转。王恩茂日记里描述了一顿不算特别的饭局：“开始吃了一顿点心，糕、糖、油煎的花生和面块、梨子、枣子、花生等，继续吃了几十碗菜，每个桌都剩了很多的菜吃不完。”从其他根据地来的干部常常惊呼延安吃得太好了。“延安党校伙食，每天都是四菜一汤。大盆四方块红烧肉，让你吃个够。我问他们是不是“七大”代表都是吃这么好？答覆的是你来已减少了一半，过去是八个菜。”
Mao put on weight. When Opium King Teng met him in June 1943 after some time, his first words of greeting were: “Chairman Mao has grown fatter!” He meant it as a compliment.
“毛主席发胖了！”邓宝珊将军一九四三年六月与毛重逢时恭喜他说。
FOR THE PEASANTS, the main benefit opium brought was that it lessened the impositions visited on them. Up till now, they had been liable to have their meager household possessions and vital farm tools commandeered. After he became opium-rich, Mao ordered steps to improve relations with the locals. The army began to return goods it had taken, and even to help peasants work the land. Mao himself later admitted that the locals' attitude towards the Party until spring 1944 had been to “keep an awe-struck and fearful distance as if it were deity and devil,” i.e., to try to steer well clear of the Reds. And this was seven years after the Communists had occupied Yenan. Throughout, the Communists had little contact with the locals, except when their work required it, or on token New Year visits to villages to exchange ritual greetings. Intermarriage, and social relations, were rare.
一九四四年，中共停止种鸦片，原因之一是鸦片过剩。有人提议“特货内销”， 即卖给边区的老百姓。毛泽东否决了这个提议，农民吸鸦片对他有害无益。 知情的干部对种鸦片感到不安，毛针对他们讲了一次话。谢觉哉一九四五年一月十五日记道：“毛说我党犯过两次错误，一是长征时乱拿人民东西(不拿不得活)，二是种某物(不种度不过难关)”。这样看来，中共只犯过两个错误，两个都犯得有理。
Opium wealth, however, did not improve the locals' standard of living, which remained far below that of the occupying Communists. The lowest-grade Communist's annual meat ration was almost five times (12 kg) the average local's (2.5 kg). While conserving its vast hoard of cash, the regime still lost no opportunity to milk the population. In June 1943, on the grounds that Chiang was about to attack Yenan (which he did not), civilians were made to “voluntarily donate” firewood, vegetables, pigs and sheep, and what little gold they had, which was often their life savings.
对当地老百姓来说，鸦片的主要好处是不再受驻军骚扰。在此以前，他们的房子被占据，日用品和农具也被征用。鸦片带来财富以后，毛泽东采取措施要改善与当地人民的关系。部队退还拿用的老百姓的东西，他们得填“赔偿群众损失统计表” 等，还帮助农民种田。据毛说，迄今老百姓对共产党都抱着“敬鬼神而远之”的态度。外来共产党人跟当地人之间的关系局限在工作需要，或是新年到村子里去扭扭秧歌，象征性地拜拜年。通婚，甚至一般来往，都是稀罕事。
鸦片带来的财富并没有用来提高老百姓的生活水准。据谢觉哉记载，共产党吃大灶的，每年也吃肉二十四斤，而老百姓平均每人吃肉仅五斤。毛一面储备巨额财富，一面不放过机会搜括人民。一九四三年六月，他称蒋介石军队要打延安(其实蒋并没有要打)，要陕甘宁边区人民“自愿捐献”柴火、菜蔬、猪羊、存款，还有他们终生的积蓄：一点点金子。
A mention of the CCP's huge reserves in Xie's diary on 12 October 1944 is sandwiched between dire descriptions of peasants' lives: the mortality rate was not only rising, it was vastly outstripping the birth rate, in one district by nearly 5 to 1. The reasons, Xie noted, were “inadequate clothing, food and accommodation,” foul drinking water, and “no doctors.” The regime had introduced a major cause of mortality by banning firearms. Wolves sauntered into people's front yards, and leopards roamed freely in the hills.* So people had to bring their precious livestock into their dwellings, or risk losing them. The resulting abysmal hygiene led to many diseases. Access to game as food was also strangled by the firearms ban.
贫困给陕甘宁边区带来高死亡率。这使中共高官也感到不安。谢觉哉一九四四年十月十二日的日记写道，延安市“一年生一百八十三，死二百二十四”； 志丹县“今年上半年出生率百分之三，死亡率百分之十四”，死亡率是出生率的五倍。至于原因，谢说是：“衣食住均薄”，“怕豹吃牲口，人畜同居”。生了病又“没医生”。财政部长李富春一九四四年十一月说边区是“财旺，人不旺(疫病流行、人畜死亡率仍高)”。
Mortality was highest among immigrants, who formed a sizable part of the population. They had been moving to the Yenan area because it had spare arable land. Mao encouraged them to keep coming, but then did little for them when they got there. Herded into mountain country and left to fend for themselves, they died like flies—31 percent within two years in one area. Mao knew that the mortality rate for children was 60 percent (and nearly all who survived grew up illiterate). And yet, as a top administrator recalled, “the massive death tolls in people and livestock were never given proper attention.” When pressed to do something, in April 1944, Mao said: Let's discuss this in the winter. Public health did become the focus of discussion in November that year, for the first time since the Communists had arrived in the area nearly a decade before; but there was no mention of spending money on it.
有一个故事广为人知：毛在延安搞“精兵简政”，减轻了人民的负担。实际上，毛泽东要征服中国，需要更多的干部，更多的兵，精兵简政是不可能办到的。但这是个有利于宣传的口号，他便接了过来，利用它把老弱病残和政治上不可靠的“落后分子”，清理出干部队伍，送去“参加生产”。为了防止他们寻机逃跑，有特别规定说，对这些人“须安置在较中心地区，一则能使他们安心生产，再则免遭边境顽固分子之破坏挑拨与勾引。”
FOR THE LOCALS, opium also brought astronomical inflation, much worse than in Nationalist areas. “We have caused great inflation,” Xie wrote in his diary on 6 March 1944, “not because we are poor, but because we are rich.”
即使算上这些被精简的人，从一九四三年三月的机密文件《各级政府及参议会整编办法》可以看出，边区政府工作人员总数是“较前增加”。增加的大多在基层，目的是加强控制。毛也以精兵简政为名，合并最高层的部门，便于自己一手掌控。
Mao played a key role in this. In June 1941 he had personally ordered unrestrained printing of the local Communist currency, bianbi. The original plan had had a ceiling. After he saw the budget, Mao wrote: “don't get fixated on the idea that bianbi should be kept within 10 million yuan … don't tie our hands.” He urged spending “generously” on administration and the army, showing a total disregard for the local economy: “If in the future [the system] collapses, so be it.” In 1944 the price of salt was 2,131 times that in 1937, cooking oil 2,250 times, cotton 6,750 times, cloth 11,250 times, and matches 25,000 times, according to Chief Secretary Xie.
人们熟知国民党统治区的通货膨胀，有所不知的是陕甘宁边区毫不逊色。据谢觉哉日记，一九四四年跟中共初来的一九三七年比，盐涨了二千一百三十一倍，清油二千二百五十倍，棉花六千七百五十倍，火柴二万五千倍。一九四二年六月二日《解放日报》一篇文章，标题是“娶不起老婆”。里面说：过去娶老婆费钱是几十元至一，二百元，现在花数万元边币才能娶到个寡妇。
This hyper-inflation did not hurt those feeding at the state trough. Russian ambassador Panyushkin, who probably had a better picture than most, said it hurt the “toilers,” i.e., the peasants, who needed cash to buy basics like cloth, salt, matches, utensils and farm tools—and medical care, which was never free for non-state employees, if they could get it at all. A hospital official in one Red area revealed: “Only when we want wheat do we admit the lao-pai-shing [man-in-the-street].”
One practice where cash was needed, and the impact of inflation can be measured, was buying a bride. In 1939 a bride cost 64 yuan. By 1942 the prices were: seven-year-old girl: 700; adolescent: 1,300; widow: 3,000. By 1944 the price for a widow was 1.5 million.
Loan-sharking flourished, with average interest rates running at 30–50 percent monthly, according to Chief Secretary Xie, who also recorded the astronomical rate of 15–20 percent from one market day to the next—which was five days. These rates were as bad as the worst before the Communists. To raise cash, many peasants presold crops, which sometimes meant accepting as little as 5 percent of the harvest-time price.
中共在抗战中的政策是“减租减息”，但陕甘宁边区高利贷盛行。原因是政府发放的贷款太少，要靠私人贷款来弥补，利率“听任民间自行处理”。谢觉哉一九四四年十月十六日记载：“一般放帐利率，去年月息为百分之三十至百分之五十。”更可怕的还有“每集(五天)每万元出利一千五百至二千元”，即五天之后就涨百分之十五至二十。为了筹款而被迫卖青的农民，有时要价只相当于收获时粮价的百分之五。
“Reducing loan interest” was one of the Communists' two main economic pledges at the time; the other was to lower land rent. But, whilst there were specific regulations about the latter (which actually meant little, as the peasants just had to hand over their harvest to the state instead of to landlords), the regime set no ceiling on loan interest. All it said was: “it should be left to the people themselves to fix … and the government should not fix too low an interest rate, in case lending dries up.” As the regime advanced virtually no loans, it had to find some other way to get credit floated. Some Red areas enforced low ceilings on interest rates, but in the Yenan region the regime let loose the most rapacious forces of the private sector on the most helpless of its subjects.
In March 1944 the regime stopped the runaway printing of money and started to call in bianbi. This was partly prompted by the imminent arrival of the first non-Russian outsiders for five years—an American mission, and some journalists. Hyper-inflation did not look good. But deflation was no boon to those in debt either, as Xie noted on 22 April: “No matter whether the currency goes down or up, those who suffer are always the poor … the debt they owed when prices were high now has to be paid back by selling more of their possessions. I heard that many are selling their draft animals.”
Opium-growing stopped at this point. Apart from not wanting the Americans to see, there was overproduction. In fact, the surplus had become a headache. Some hard-liners advocated dumping it on the population within Yenan, which Mao vetoed. A drug-addicted peasantry was no use to him. But some peasants had inevitably become hooked by growing the stuff. The regime ordered locals to kick the habit, with tough deadlines, promising to “assist addicts with medicine” and saying that “the poor” did not have to pay for treatment, clearly showing that one had to pay if one could remotely afford it.
To officials in the know, Mao met the widespread disquiet about opium-growing by calling it one of the Party's “two mistakes,” but he went on to justify both in the same breath. One mistake, he said on 15 January 1945, “was that during the Long March we took people's things”—“but,” he immediately added, “we couldn't have survived if we hadn't”; “the other,” he said, “was to grow a certain thing [mou-wu, i.e., opium]—but without growing this we couldn't have got through our crisis.”
YENAN STAYED extremely poor even years after Mao had taken control of China. A visitor from Communist Hungary, itself by no means rich, commented on “indescribably squalid and poverty-stricken villages” near Yenan in 1954. In fact, all the Red bases remained among the poorest areas in China, and the reason was precisely that they had been Red bases. An exchange between Mao and a Swedish enthusiast in 1962 ran:
毛统治中国多年后，延安像其他老根据地一样，依旧穷困不堪。一个对红色中国热情澎湃的瑞典人米尔达(J．Myrdal)一九六二年跟毛有这么一段对话：
J. MYRDAL: I have just come back from a trip to the Yenan area.
米：我刚从延安地区回来。
MAO: That is a very poor, backward, underdeveloped … part of the country.
毛：延安是个贫穷、落后、不发达的地方……
MYRDAL: I lived in a village … I wanted to study the change in the countryside …
米：我住在一个村子里，我想学习农村的变化……
MAO: Then I think it was a very bad idea that you went to Yenan … Yenan is only poor and backward. It was not a good idea that you went to a village there.
毛：那么我认为你不应该去延安。延安又穷又落后，你不该去那 里的村子……
MYRDAL: But it has a great tradition—the revolution and the war—I mean, after all, Yenan is the beginning—
米：但那里有伟大的传统--革命、战争--我的意思是，延安 到底是开端呀--
MAO [interrupting]: Traditions—[laughing]. Traditions—[laughing].
毛没等他说完就打断他：“传统--[大笑] ，传统--[大笑]。”
*Control of guns was watertight. An Austrian doctor kidnapped by the Communists in the later 1940s observed that if you heard wolves, you knew you were in a Red area. No one we interviewed recalled hearing a shot in Yenan throughout the war. One night, when a Russian radio operator on the outskirts of Yenan shot a wolf that had killed one of their two guard dogs, Mao's guards immediately appeared to complain that the sound of the shots had “very much unsettled” Mao. Another time, Russian liaison Vladimirov shot a rabid dog (rabies was common) that was attacking his guard dog. A group of Mao's guards instantly descended, saying that Mao “was very agitated” and that the shooting “had interrupted his work.”