And it wasn't helped by nationalist corruption or the collection of onerous taxes from peasants or stories about nationalist troops putting on civilian clothing and abandoning the city of Nanking during its awful destruction by the Japanese army in 1937. Meanwhile, the communists were winning over the peasants in their northwestern enclave by making sure that troops didn't pillage local land and giving peasants a greater say in local government. Now, that isn't to say that everything was rosy under Mao's communist leadership, even at its earliest stages. By the way, that is an actual chalk illustration. Very impressed. In a preview of things to come in 1942, Mao initiated a rectification program, which basically meant students and intellectuals were sent down into the countryside to give them a taste of what real China was like in an effort to re-educate them. We try to be politically neutral here on Crash Course, but we are always opposed to intellectuals doing hard labor.