Campaign to Suppress Bandits in Southwestern China

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The campaign to suppress bandits in southwestern China was a counterinsurgency campaign waged by the forces of the Chinese Communist Party against the Chinese Nationalist guerrillas, mostly consisting of bandits and regular Nationalist forces not withdrawn from mainland China during the transfer of the Nationalist government to Taiwan. The campaign occurred after the conclusion of World War II during the Chinese Civil War in Southwest China. The Communist counterinsurgency campaign was ultimately successful.

The majority of the insurgents were formal members of Ma Bufang's Republic of China Army (Ma clique). Several of them were prominent generals, such as Ma Hushan, who had earlier fought against the Soviet Union in Xinjiang. Others had fought against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War, including Muslim General Ma Yuanxiang, who fought under the command of General Ma Biao and was wounded in action at the Battle of Huaiyang where the Japanese were defeated.

Ma Bufang, Ma Hushan, and the other leaders who led the revolt were all former National Revolutionary Army soldiers and Kuomintang members. Many of the Chinese Muslim insurgents were veterans of the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang, Sino-Tibetan War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ili Rebellion, and the Chinese Civil War. The Muslim insurgents were all Hui people, Salar people, or Dongxiang people.

When Ma Bufang fled after the Ningxia Campaign, he took over $50,000 in military funds and fled to Hong Kong.[1]

Some Hui Muslim Generals and units from Ningxia, like Ma Hongbin, his son Ma Dunjing, and the 81st Muslim Corps, defected to the Communist People's Liberation Army and joined them.[2] Many Muslim units in Xinjiang also defected to the Communists.[3]

Han Youwen, an ethnic Salar Muslim, defected to the Communists in Xinjiang and joined the People's Liberation Army. Han Youwen served in the Chinese government until his death in 1998.

The Muslim General Ma Lin's eldest son Ma Burong defected to the Communists after 1949 and donated 10,000 yuan to support Chinese troops in the Korean War. Ma Lin was the uncle of Ma Bufang and Ma Burong was Ma Bufang's cousin. One of Ma Chengxiang's Hui Muslim officers, Ma Funchen [zh] (馬輔臣), defected to the Communists.[4][5]

Most former Kuomintang Muslim Generals, like Ma Bufang, Ma Hongkui, his son Ma Dunjing, Bai Chongxi, Ma Jiyuan, Ma Chengxiang and their families fled to Taiwan along with the Republic of China government or to other places like Egypt and the United States when the Communists defeated them. However Ma Bufang's subordinate officers who remained behind in Qinghai province were instructed to revolt against the PLA.

Ma Bufang and Ma Chengxiang's forces were stationed across Qinghai and Xinjiang along with Ospan Batyr's men, which were originally battling Soviet backed Uyghur rebels in the Ili Rebellion and the Mongols and Russians at the Battle of Baitag Bogd before the Communist victory in the Civil War and subsequent incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China. The anti-separatist, pro-Kuomintang Uyghur Yulbars Khan fought a final action at the Battle of Yiwu before fleeing to Taiwan.

Pro-Nationalist (Kuomintang) Muslim forces were holding out in the northwest and Yunnan at the time of the Communist victory in 1949.[6]

General Ma Bufang announced the start of the insurgency, on January 9, 1950, when he was in Cairo, Egypt, saying that Chinese Muslims would never surrender to Communism and would fight a guerrilla war against the Communists.[7][8] In 1951, Bai Chongxi made a speech to the entire Muslim world calling for a war against the Soviet Union, and Bai also called upon Muslims to avoid the Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru, accusing him of being blind to Soviet imperialism.[9][10] Bai also called Stalin an ogre and claimed he and Mao were engineering World War III.[9][10] Ma Bufang continued to exert "influence" on the insurgent KMT Muslim leaders.[11]

The CCP allowed Ma Bufang's loyalists to go free after taking them prisoner in their takeover of Qinghai, to demonstrate humane behaviour. When Ma Bufang's now free loyalists proceeded to take up arms and revolt, this move turned out to be a major blunder. Former Ma Bufang loyalist Salar fighters were led by Han Yimu, a Salar who had been an officer under Ma Bufang. Han led a revolt from 1951 to 1952 and continued to wage guerilla warfare until joining the major revolt of Salars and Qinghai (Amdo) Tibetans against collectivization in 1958, in which he was captured and executed.[12][13][14][15] After a crackdown and restrictions on the Salar population due to the 1950s revolt, the CCP then lifted the restrictions and measures in the 1980s reforms, and then granted amnesty to the majority of the rebels who had been captured and imprisoned.[16] The Qinghai Tibetans view the Tibetans of Central Tibet (Tibet proper, ruled by the Dalai Lamas from Lhasa) as distinct and different from themselves, and even take pride in the fact that they were not ruled by Lhasa ever since the collapse of the Tibetan Empire.[17]

President Chiang Kai-shek continued to make contact with and support the Muslim insurgents in northwest China. Kuomintang planes dropped supplies and arms to the Muslims; there were 14,000 former Muslim troops of Kuomintang Muslim Generals Ma Bufang and Ma Hongkui who were supplied by the Kuomintang, and with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency support. They operated in the Amdo region of Tibet in 1952.[18]

General Ma Hushan, a Kuomintang member and a Muslim, led an insurgency against the PLA from 1950 to 1954 using guerrilla tactics. Prior to this, he had earlier fought against the Soviet Red Army. He was against the Marxist–Leninist indoctrination of the Communist Party, and he killed hundreds of PLA soldiers in guerrilla ambushes in valleys and mountains. He was captured in 1954 and executed at Lanzhou.[19][20]

Ospan Batyr, a Turkic Kazakh who was on the Kuomintang payroll, fought for the Republic of China government against the Uyghurs, Mongols, and Russians, then against the Communist PLA invasion of Xinjiang. He was captured and executed in 1951.

Yulbars Khan, a Uyghur who worked for the Kuomintang, led a Chinese Hui Muslim cavalry against PLA forces taking over Xinjiang. In 1951, after most of his troops deserted and defected to the PLA, he fled to Calcutta in India via Tibet, where his men were attacked by the Dalai Lama's Tibetan forces. He managed to escape from the Dalai Lama's grip, and subsequently took a steamer to Taiwan.[21] The Kuomintang government then appointed him Governor of Xinjiang, a title which he held until he died in the mid-1970s in Taiwan. His memoirs were published in 1969.[22]

General Ma Liang, who was related to Ma Bufang, had 2,000 Chinese Muslim troops under his command around Gansu/Qinghai. Chiang Kai-shek sent agents in May 1952 to communicate with him, and Chiang offered him the post of Commander-in-chief of the 103rd Route of the Kuomintang army, which was accepted by Ma. The CIA dropped supplies such as ammunition, radios, and gold at Nagchuka to Ma Liang.[23] Ma Yuanxiang was another Chinese Muslim General related to the Ma family.[24] Ma Yuanxiang and Ma Liang wreaked havoc on the Communist forces. In 1953, Mao Zedong was compelled to take radical action against them.[25] Ma Yuanxiang was then killed by the Communist forces in 1953.[26]

Another group of Kuomintang insurgents were in Burma. Many of them were Hui Muslims, like the insurgents in the northwest, but they did not coordinate their attacks with them.

After losing mainland China, a group of approximately 12,000 KMT soldiers escaped to Burma and continued launching guerrilla attacks into southern China.[27] Their leader, General Li Mi, was paid a salary by the ROC government and given the nominal title of Governor of Yunnan. After the Burmese government appealed to the United Nations in 1953, the U.S. began pressuring the ROC to withdraw its loyalists. By the end of 1954, nearly 6,000 soldiers had left Burma and Li Mi declared his army disbanded. However, thousands remained, and the ROC continued to supply and command them, even secretly supplying reinforcements at times.

The Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of National Defence's Intelligence Bureau employed the pro-Kuomintang Yunnanese Muslim Maj. General Ma Chün-kuo to operate in Burma. General Ma became an important figure in the narcotics trade in the region. A guerrilla force led by him worked with General Li Mi's forces in Burma.[28] Ma Shou-i, a Yunnanese Muslim mapang (militia) leader involved in smuggling and narcotics trafficking, assisted the Kuomintang forces under Li Mi with logistics, since the Communists adopted an anti narcotics policy.[29] Forces under General Ma Chün-kuo conducted their first minor assault on Yunnan in April 1963, and various insignificant raids continued in the following years. General Ma himself admitted that they were not doing much. Most of General Ma's activities consisted of jade and opium smuggling, and not fighting, since there was only sporadic aid and few orders to do anything from Taiwan.[30]

Chinese Hui Muslim merchants in Burma and Thailand assisted the Kuomintang forces in the Burmese opium trade.[31]

Since the 1980s, thousands of Muslims from Myanmar and Thailand have migrated to Taiwan in search of a better life. They are descendants of nationalist soldiers that fled Yunnan when the communists took over mainland China.[32]

After the insurgency was defeated, the PLA used Hui soldiers who had served under Ma Bufang to suppress the Tibetan revolt in Amdo.[33]

The Nationalist forces found themselves in a precarious dilemma while conducting this campaign against the Communist forces stemming from the complex politico-military situation in the region. Consequently, several actions proved to be grave miscalculations, contributing to their eventual defeat.

Like other futile Nationalist attempts to wage guerrilla and insurgency warfare against the Communist forces after the evacuation of the Nationalist government to Taipei, the first Nationalist strategic miscalculation made was at least an equal, if not larger, factor than the enemy's political and military pressure in the Nationalist defeat in this campaign. Immediately after World War II, the Nationalists had neither sufficient forces nor adequate logistical capabilities to secure the Japanese-occupied regions of China; the Nationalist government, unwilling to allow these regions to fall into Communist control, ordered the Japanese and their Chinese puppet government not to surrender to the Communists and allowed them to retain their fighting capabilities to 'maintain order' in occupied regions which entailed resisting Communist forces. This decision incurred resentment from the populace in Japanese-occupied territory. This further eroded local support for the Nationalist government, which was already blamed for allowing the successful Japanese invasion in the first place. Half a decade later, as the National Revolutionary Army was driven from mainland China, the Nationalists made another miscalculation in their desperation by enlisting the support of local bandits in the fight against the Communists and ordered those Nationalist forces remaining in mainland China to join the bandits in combat against communism. This decision proved unwise as the bandits were deeply feared and hated by the local populace, whom they preyed upon, and the sight of Nationalist forces joining the bandits further diminished the support for the Nationalist forces and solidified support for the People's Republic of China.

Another strategic miscalculation made by the Nationalists was similar to the one the Nationalist government had made immediately after World War II, when it attempted to simultaneously address the warlord problem that had plagued China alongside its efforts to combat the growing Communist threat together. The warlords who were allied with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government were only interested in retaining their power and defected to the Japanese side when Japanese invaders offered to let them keep their power in exchange for collaboration. After World War II, the forces of the Japanese puppet government realigned with the Nationalist faction, once more with the intention of retaining their power as they had when collaborating with the Japanese. It was difficult for Chiang to effectively dispose of these warlords immediately upon their surrender to the Nationalists, as such an action would have caused discontent among other Nationalist factions. Furthermore, the former Japanese–aligned warlords could aid the Nationalist cause by retaining control of their territory and combating Communist insurgents. This would have the added benefit of weakening both the Communists and the collaborators. Half a decade later, these bandits, whom the Nationalist government had failed to exterminate, were deemed undesirable candidates for evacuation to Taiwan; consequently, their use as a force to combat the Communists appeared to be a logical alternative. If the bandits were able to undermine the Communist governance of mainland China, the Nationalist forces would have an advantage in their anticipated counterattack to retake China. On the other hand, if the bandits were subdued by the Communists, then the Nationalists would have been spared the task of eradicating the bandit forces after retaking China. However, the bandit forces were more interested in keeping their own power than suppressing the Chinese Communist Revolution, and thus did not devote any substantial effort to fighting the Communists. Furthermore, the eventual eradication of bandits by the Communist government only served to strengthen its popular support, as the Communists had succeeded where previous governments, as far back as the Qing Dynasty, had failed.

Yet another strategic error by the Nationalist government involved the Nationalist forces left behind in mainland China. The Nationalist government required high-quality and disciplined forces to defend Taiwan, the last Nationalist sanctuary. The forces which mainly comprised the forces of the Nationalist warlord allies were not the most suited to effect the last stand defense the Nationalists were preparing, and as such these forces were not given a high priority for evacuation. Instead, these forces were to remain on the mainland and continue to fight the Communists with guerrilla tactics. However, this decision angered many of the troops left behind, and it was unlikely that they would fight the Communists with the same vigor as the Nationalist forces with political motivation. Compounding this problem, due to the need for bandits' knowledge of the local area, leaders among the bandits were often granted higher ranks than the Nationalist troops left behind. As a result, the Nationalist regulars–turned–guerrillas often were unwilling to work in conjunction with the bandits they were once tasked to exterminate, especially as many of these forces had earlier engaged each other in combat during pacification campaigns. Similarly, the bandits were willing to cooperate and attempted to spare those Nationalist troops when possible in order to save their comrades.

The retreating Nationalist government made another significant error, which was financial in nature. Due to the lack of money, those bandits turned guerrillas were mostly provided with arms, but not sufficient supplies and money. The bandits turned guerrilla had no problem of looting the local population to get what they needed, as they had done for decades, which inevitably drove the general popular support further into the communist side. The little financial support provided by the Nationalist government was simply not enough to support such guerrilla and insurgency warfare on such a large scale. Another unexpected but disastrous result of the insufficient financial support was that it had greatly eroded the support of the Nationalist government within its own ranks. The wealthy landowners and businessmen were the strong supporters of the Nationalist government and as their properties were confiscated by the communists and redistributed to the poor, their hatred toward the communist government was enough to cause many of them to stay behind voluntarily to fight behind the enemy line. However, the landowners and businessmen were also longtime victims of bandits due to their wealth, and many of them had suffered even more than the general populace, who had far less wealth. As these former landowners and businessmen turned guerrilla fighters were ordered to join their former bandits who once threatened, looted, kidnapped and even killed them and their relatives, it was obvious that such cooperation was mostly in name only and could not produce any actual benefits, and the alienation and discontent toward the Nationalist government harbored by these once ardent Nationalists would only grow greater.

Another problem for the Nationalists was the strong disagreement among themselves over how to fight the war against their communist enemy. Military professionals preferred to fight a total war, incapacitate the enemy's ability to fight, but this inevitably conflicted with the interests of another faction of strong supporters of the Nationalist government: the landowners and businessmen, who joined bandits to oppose such a tactic. The reason was that landowners and businessmen supporting and joining the Nationalist guerrilla firmly believed that the Nationalists would be able to retake mainland China within several years and they would be able to regain their lost lands, businesses, and other properties that were confiscated and redistributed to the poor by the communists. As the Nationalist military professionals in the guerrilla suggested and destroyed the production facilities and businesses as part of the total war, the landowners and businessmen would not be able to regain any valuable properties after the return of the Nationalist government because those properties had been destroyed. The bandits agreed with the businessmen and landowners to oppose the idea of total war for a different reason: when the properties were destroyed and productivity dropped, they would not be able to loot enough supplies to survive. As a result, despite animosities between the bandits and landowners and businessmen, they were united in opposition to the military professional faction of the Nationalists.

In contrast to the Nationalists, the Communists had a much simpler and more effective strategy, aided by their lack of the same order of problems as the Nationalists: the Communist forces simply needed to eradicate bandits. The Communist forces exploited Nationalist error to their advantage. As with all other bandit eradication campaigns, the Communist strategy sought to mobilize the victim populations to against the bandits. Furthermore, the Communists were in a position to custom-tailor specific strategies to combat bandits in specific localities.

Southwestern China had been long plagued by bandits that had continuously existed for centuries. By the time the Nationalist government had lost control in the region in the face of the advancing Communist army, there were over half a million bandits active in the region. In Sichuan alone, there were over three hundred bands of bandits. In Yunnan, there were a hundred forty-eight bands of bandits. In Guizhou, there were five hundred forty-one bands of bandits. In addition, large numbers of bandits were also active in Xikang. The number of bandits would soon more than double to more than a million, encouraged by the Nationalist government, which previously had attempted to eradicate them. After the Chengdu campaign concluded in December 1949, many retreating Nationalist military units joined forces with local bandits to continue their struggle against the Communists, but the alliance was a fragile one, and still allowed the Communists to defeat them separately.

In February 1950, the Communists made it a top priority to eradicate the bandits. The Communists decided to first eradicate bandits in wealthy areas and regions adjacent to the communication/transportation lines, gradually expanding their efforts into more remote regions. The Communist 3rd Corps, IV Corps, V Corps, XVIII Corps and the 7th Army of the I Corps, totaling seventeen armies, were deployed for the bandit suppression campaign. From March 1953 onward, the Communists first targeted large bands of bandits, with each military formation responsible for the pacification of its designated area. Due to the heavy bandit activity in Sichuan, the planned deployment of Communist troops in Tibet was postponed to eradicate bandits first. The 11th Army and the 12th Army, totaling six divisions of the Communist III Corps, were responsible for eradicating bandits in eastern Sichuan. Eight divisions from the 10th Army, 18th Army and 15th Army of the Communist southern Sichuan Military Region were tasked to eradicate bandits in southern Sichuan. Seven divisions of the 60th Army, 62nd Army, and 7th Army of the Western Sichuan Military Region were tasked to eradicate bandits in western Sichuan. The 61st Army was tasked with eradicating bandits in northern Sichuan, and the 62nd Army was tasked with eradicating bandits in Xikang. The 13th Army, 14th Army and units of the 15th Army of the Communist IV Corps were tasked to eradicate bandits in Yunnan. The 16th Army of III Corps was tasked with eradicating bandits in Guizhou. After ten months of fighting, large organized bands of bandits were wiped out by the end of 1950, with over nine hundred thousand bandits annihilated.

From 1951 onward, the People's Liberation Army switched its focus to bandits who had gone into hiding in remote regions while it continued strengthening the security of warehouses, transportation infrastructure, and communication lines. Large numbers of Communist cadres were sent to strengthen the local garrison and security forces. The main targeted area included the border regions of provinces and counties, remote mountain ranges, and the area near Yunnan – Burmese border. From February 1951 to March 1951, the Western Sichuan Military Region successfully eradicated bandits active in Maogong (懋功), and secured the region by stepping up political pressure and mobilizing the local population. The success was approved by Mao Zedong and became an example for others to follow. Additionally, to better coordinate bandit suppression efforts between different provinces and counties, bandit suppression operations headquarters for joint command were established at the border regions between provinces and counties. In 1951, over two hundred seven thousand bandits were annihilated in Sichuan, Xikang, Yunnan and Guizhou. Towns that had been occupied by bandits for more than a year were successfully taken back, including Ceheng (册亨), Wango (望谟), Libo (荔波) and Luodian County. Meanwhile, fourteen Communist regiments were deployed to annihilate bandits who fled from southwestern China to northwestern China.

By the end of 1953, all bandits in southwestern China had been successfully eradicated, with a total of more than one million and a hundred sixty thousand bandits annihilated, over seven hundred artillery pieces and over six hundred thousand rifles captured. The internal conflicts between the bandits and the former Nationalist regulars contributed greatly to the Communist victory, and some female Nationalists totaling over thirty thousands had suffered grave personal tragedies in the campaign: refusing to surrender to the Communists after that Nationalist governments collapsed in the unstoppable Communist advance, many Nationalists opted to continue their fight by joining bandits in the hope of forming a united front to wage the guerrilla war against the war, as the retreating Nationalist government had directed. However, many bandits took the opportunity to settle old scores with the Nationalist government they once fought. Over thirty thousand female Nationalists who attempted to join bandits were treated as enemies. These female Nationalists were brutally raped and tortured by the bandits; afterward, they were sold to minorities in the remote regions as sex slaves. It was not until 1956 that the last of these unfortunate women were finally rescued from slavery and finally, returned home.

Although they shared a common anticommunist goal, the Nationalist guerrilla warfare campaign was largely handicapped by the enlistment of bandits, many of whom had fought Nationalist troops in the earlier pacification campaigns, and looted, kidnapped and even killed landlords and business owners, an important faction that supported the Nationalist government. But their union against their common enemy was half-hearted at best. Compounding the problem further were internal differences within the ranks of the Nationalist guerrillas. The futile Nationalist guerrilla campaign failed in the face of the expanding Communist state.

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