Nelson Fu - Fujian Liberated

Fujian Liberated

In March, 1929, a column of the Red Army under the irregular command of Mao Zedong crossed over from the adjacent province of Jiangxi and seized Tingzhou. Wealth was confiscated, the statelier houses were requisitioned. Tingzhou was soon declared the capital of Red Fujian --the liberated portion of that province—replete with governmental apparatus; the Fujian Communists were eventually centralised there also.

Although Zhu De was shortly restored by vote as Party boss of the column (June 22), before the year was out Mao had secured the backing of CCP leadership in Shanghai and taken effective control of the column back from Zhu. Mao cemented his position at the Gutian Congress, and in February (1930) could leave Tingzhou and Red Fujian under his subordinates, and move on his party rivals in Jiangxi (hereafter JX). His political manoeuvring there resulted in a long and terrible purge of anti-Bolshevik elements—a meaningless, catch-all charge (named for an anti-insurgency section of the Guomindang's national government in Nanjing). This was to mean the deaths of five members of the Fu family, including one of Nelson's daughters and her husband.

On November 7, 1931, in Ruijin county, JX, amidst a great amount of internecine killing, the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) was declared, a sovereign state never recognised diplomatically, even by its patron the Soviet Union. Mao was both Head of State (Central Executive Committee Chair) and Head of Government (People's Committee Chair); Zhou Enlai, however, reigned supreme as Party Chair. From now to 1935 (when the last Red forces here were eliminated) the Fujian-Jiangxi border area would suffer the greatest population decrease in the whole of China—about 20%, coincidentally the lowest estimate of population loss in Cambodia during its four years under the (Maoist) Khmer Rouge.

The first full year under the CSR (1932) did see heightened economic activity in Tingzhou as the nascent state resumed the mining of tungsten, exporting the valuable mineral down the Tingjiang to the mercantile warlords of eastern Guangdong. In April Mao passed through the Red provincial capital with another commandeered column - to seize the Fujianese port of Zhangzhou. Western gunboats in nearby Xiamen (then Amoy to their sailors) made Zhangzhou an impractical conduit for Soviet arms shipments, alas, and by the end of May Mao's column, loaded with loot, passed though Tingzhou in the opposite direction.