This book is rather obscure and is steep in what could be considered a rather esoteric writing style and topics to a person who is not familiar with communist terminology and the history of China directly leading up to the proclamation of the People’s Republic. So for this book, perhaps even more so than the previous two, requires a thoroughgoing contextualization of the concepts and historical events which transpire within it.

China has a very long history, among the longest recorded histories in the entire world, and due to a combination of circumstantial and climatic factors, for much of its history it was the center of power on the easternmost side of the Afro-Eurasian continent. Everyone wanted Chinese goods and trade routes stretching as far away as the Swahili coast, and western Europe had been formed (historium, 2021) (LumenLearning).^[2][3]

With the dawn of the industrial age all of this changed however. Burgeoning European imperialist powers were eyeing up new markets and labor pools. China by this point in the 18th and 19th centuries had been so degraded after a long isolation and suspicion of the outside world that after a series of hostile encounters the western powers were able to essentially subjugate China (Nakayama, 2023)^[4]. This leading to immense social strife within the country resulting in the collapse of the Chinese monarchy in 1912, which had otherwise been ruling by one dynasty or another for thousands of years. It was superseded by a republic which was very unstable and had weak power and legitimacy. As a result China broke apart into many different competing warlord states. The main bulk of the Republican forces regrouped in southern China alongside the newly formed communist party forced into alliance with the republicans (Kuomintang-KMT) by the comintern (Communist International, also known as the third international) (Li, 2013)^[5]

This being a functional enough policy until the death of Sun Yat-sen and the ensuing rise of the right wing of the KMT resulting in the communists splitting off from the united front with the KMT and starting haphazardly initiating armed struggle, soon followed by the long march (wikipedia)^[6]

Following this the communists settled in northern China in the province Shaanxi with it serving as their new base of operations. This is roughly where history and the plot of the book intersect, as a few years after this in 1937 Japan engaged in its second war of aggression against China. And during this war the nationalist KMT was coerced into accepting a second united front for the national resistance of China against Japan. And during the second Sino-Japanese war the communists lead the resistance in the north of the country, which is how the story of the characters intersects with the then formation of the Chinese Red Army/People’s Liberation Army the “8th Route Army”.

After the war ended there was a short period of comparatively minimal armed conflict between the KMT and communist party before ultimately resuming in June of 1946 (wikipedia)^[5]. he communists were briefly on the defensive before make great sweeping advances where by 1949 the KMT had completely retreated to Taiwan and setup the government in exile there.

Before the communists conquered power in 1949, outside of the communist controlled areas, the agricultural sector of China, which up till then constituted the majority of their economy, operated under a feudal like system. There were landlords who owned the land and then peasants who actually worked the land and then payed taxes to the landlords in the form of their agricultural produce. What the land reforms instigated by the communists did was “give the land to the tiller” and distributed the available fertile land to all those who actually were working the land and confiscated the landlord of their property making them equal, property wise, to the peasants. This is the background in which all the events of the novel take place, in wake of this land reform and the ensuing struggle for peasants to improve their crop yield in order to support the industrialization of the country.^[7]

Another important thing to make note of is the fact that while based on the Soviet model to socialism, the Chinese model departed in some rather stark ways from the soviet model and approach to socialism and ultimately communism.

Not in the same dramatic and drastic manner as today where modern China is no longer socialist, but rather an advancement on the principles laid down by the October Revolution. This in large part has to do with the different situation which the Chinese revolution was founded upon.

The Russian Empire, despite still having a sizable remnant feudal economy, was considered by the Marxists (those following Lenin’s line) to be an imperialist power (Lenin, 1915)^[8], and therefore by extension, capitalist. Therefore the revolution, roughly, moved out from the city and into the countryside. In contrast China was an imperialized nation with a thoroughly feudal economy remaining completely dominant throughout the country (Mao, 1926) (Mao, 1928)^[9][10]. The proletariat was very small in contrast to the vast peasantry of the country. Consequently the communist party eventually concluded on making revolution starting in the countryside and then advancing into the cities. More important than this is what they did after they conquered power. Which is that rather than immediately transitioning into socialism, which required industrial development, there would instead be a period of capitalist development preceding it to form the necessary economic base for the socialist revolution. This stage existed in embryo with the Soviet’s “New Economic Policy (NEP)” which lasted up till 1928 which was analogous to this concept but in a much more restricted form (Mao, 1940).^[11]

Then there was also a heavier emphasis on mass participation in the transformation of society than was the case in the Soviet method, not to say that the Soviets didn’t emphasize this alongside placing a higher emphasis on people motivated by the transformation of society rather than material incentives which characterized Stalin’s economic approach to socialism. Which then of course form the basic points of rupture leading to the Sino-Soviet split in the later 1960s after more liberal reforms were pushed within the Soviet Union.