"Listen to What the Bandits Have to Say!": Voices from the Post-"Liberation" Suppression Campaign in Guangxi(Special Issue Dedicated to Professor HAYASHI Kousaku)
One of the principal claims to legitimacy of the post-1949 Communist Party of China (CPC) regime was its elimination of the country\u27s bandit gangs. More than three years passed before the CPC achieved unchallenged control over China, largely because of the continuing nuisance posed by "bandits", many of whom were being instigated by agents of the Nationalist government on Taiwan. "Bandit suppression" campaigns became a constant feature of the new regime\u27s early years, but the truth about these campaigns was swept under the carpet for more than 40 years. Since the mid-1990s, numerous volumes of reportage describing the post-1949 bandit suppression campaigns have appeared. While they provided details of the number of gangs suppressed, these reports gave no voice to the "bandits" themselves. We learn much about the regime\u27s anxieties, but no understanding of the "bandits\u27" reasons for existence. A new book has now appeared that throws a very different light on the post-1949 campaigns. Huang Jishu\u27s `Defeated Soldiers become Bandits: a History of the 1949_1952 Suppression Campaign\u27 (敗兵成匪: 1949到1952年的剿匪往事), about the "bandit suppression" campaign in Guangxi province, is based largely on interviews with former "bandits" or with their surviving family members. As well as describing the military campaigns, the book also tells the story through the eyes of the campaigns\u27 targets. This essay seeks to give a more accurate picture of the post-1949 situation in one part of China by focusing on Huang Jishu\u27s book
