CHINESE “RED SPEARS”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 6 December 1927, Page 4

CHINESE “RED SPEARS”

W E have been hearing a good deal recently of acts of banditry and piracy in different parts of China. These are attributable in the main to the widespread, though distinct, operations of highly organised bands that are out for pure robbery. Even in times of internal peace they are more or less active, but, of course, die present conditions of civil war and industrial unrest give them added opportunity. There is, however, another and much more important secret organisation, of quite different character, of winch we have so far heard but little here, but which is said to be exercising a very pronounced and increasing inhuence in the struggle that is going on between tile many tactions ngutmg lor supremacy. Discussing it, the Shanghai correspondent of a Vancouver paper says that much of the Chinese revolutionary moveriient, especially m the treaty ports, can justly ba ascribed to foreign influence. Western ideas of democracy and nationalism reached China largely through Lire medium ol Us returned students, many of them from American universities. Russian Communism, too, made a very considerable contribution to the organisation of the newly formed labour and peasant unions. But in the remote country districts of Honan Province, a very strong and cypicallv Chinese peasant movement is crystallising around the secret society known as the Red Spears, with a membership said to be reckoi*ad in millions. The Red Spears, a sort of peasant self-defence corps, was organised to protect the villages against the unbridled exactions of soldiers and bandits. While the rank-and-file Red Spears are usually illiterate peasants, they are led by the small landowners and the gentry, or educated official class. The society has no central organisation, but the more influential leaders can, when need arises, put guerrilla armies of tens of thousands of men in the field. The peasants believe that bullets and other weapons cannot harm them ; and this accounts for the courage, approaching recklessness, with which i hev go into battle. In this respect Hie Red Spears bear some resemblance to the Boxers, the secret organisation which carried out the formidable anti-foreign outbreak of 1900. Implacable in their enmity to soldiers. bandits and corrupt and extortionate officials, the Red Spears are by no means disposed to fall in line with radical theories of agrarian revolution. Most of the peasants in Honan are small proprietors and look with suspicion on communal theories of land ownership. The Red Spears, too, have long been inveterate enemies of the Northern war lord. Chang Tso-lin, and their peasant guerrilla bands have harassed his troops with disastrous results more than once. However, when the Kuomintang armies of the Hankow Government moved northward into Honan last May they w-ero unpleasentlv surprised to find in the Red Spears not allies but enemies. Thus it would not be surprising if the Red Spears, who, whatever their defects and mistakes, are thoroughly Chinese in their methods of appeal, should prove a more permanent factor in their country’s development than some of the political and economic organisations which are imported from abroad.