In the vast area of Heilongjiang Province, Jiamusi is the hardest hit area by bandits. The south and south of Jiamusi are lofty mountains, and primeval forests cover the sky and the sun. To the east and north of Jiamusi are large swamps and meadows. In meadows, Artemisia grass is taller than people, and mosquitoes are rampant. If you are not familiar with the path, don't think about coming out again if you go in. Such a barren place, inaccessible to the people, has become an excellent habitat for the "beards".

However, under the leadership of Wu Junsheng of the 29th Division, after half a year, the bandits here were basically eliminated. Wu Junsheng, who was born in a beard, has a lot of treasures about the characteristics of his beard, and uses the methods of dividing and suppressing it, separating and trapping and fighting, which is exactly the same as the thinking of Zhang Hanqing, who came over, and his achievements in suppressing bandits are also the greatest, and the credit is naturally the most.

He summed up Jiamusi's experience in suppressing bandits as an example, and extended it to the bandit suppression units of the whole Feng army: such as concentrating superior forces, fatigue tactics, and clearing the wilderness with strong walls, etc., so that the bearded people had no food to eat, nowhere to hide, and everywhere to be frightened, which greatly diluted their will to resist.

Of course, in order to prevent the dog from jumping over the wall in a hurry, both the Bandit Suppression Headquarters and Wu Junsheng put forward a point of view, that is, except for the leaders of the most heinous crimes, the rest of the defectors or captured people surrendered their guns and did not kill them, giving the bandits a luck mentality. In addition, the deterioration of living conditions, and the government's conscious use of the appearance of defectors, gradually weakened the bandits' will to resist. As a result of this move, more than 3,000 of the more than 50 bandits in the Bei'an area surrendered and rehabilitated.

By the beginning of 1919, with the exception of Bei'an, Jiamusi, and other areas in Heilongjiang, where bandits were seriously plagued, Wu Junsheng was appointed commander-in-chief of the 29th Division and several security brigades to step up the crackdown, and the work of suppressing bandits in the whole province of Jilin Province and the vast majority of places in Heilongjiang Province was successfully completed. In addition to the suicide of Lu Yonggui, the biggest bandit leader in Jilin, more than 3,000 habitual bandits under Wang Naikang, the biggest bandit leader in Heilongjiang, were also killed, and more than 50,000 bandits were eliminated in the two provinces, basically stabilizing the situation in the northeast.

In order to prevent the recurrence of banditry that had been settled down with great difficulty, Zhang Hanqing demanded that the People's Party continue to make bold use of land reform to build a consolidated rear on the basis of mobilizing the peasants before, so that the environment in which the bandits relied for their survival would no longer exist. He called for combining the political offensive with the military offensive, organizing a task force to carry out the political offensive, and at the same time investigating the bandits' families, relatives, and friends, publicizing Zhang Hanqing's land reform policy, and mobilizing the bandits to repent and rehabilitate. And strive for bandits to fight against the water, provide intelligence to the Feng army to suppress bandits, and make up for the merits.

That's what the bandits in Xiangxi did back then, and the nationwide banditry was quickly quelled under the dual pressure of GCD's steel guns and horns. At present, the banditry in the Northeast is only a force that "formed spontaneously", and the "heritage" is also lacking, and it is not as difficult to deal with as it is deep-rooted in later generations.

The achievements brought about by the crackdown on bandits are not only reflected in political prestige. Since the bandits have basically disappeared in the areas under the complete control of the Northeast Autonomous Government, the public order situation in various localities has improved considerably, making it possible for the police and armed police to take the place of military personnel to maintain local areas, thus giving a foothold to the real separation of military and police, and may also enable the Feng army to change from mainly maintaining local law and order to a real mobile force.

It is also because of the achievements made in the suppression of bandits and the purpose of purifying the non-commissioned officers of the Feng Army, in the work of expanding the number of troops in the Feng Army, the Patrol Embassy of the three eastern provinces and the General Headquarters for the Suppression of Bandits in the Northeast have successively held meetings to sum up the lessons learned in the early days of the Feng Army's establishment of the bandit troops and impure personnel, and then make new regulations.

These regulations include: In the expansion of the army, the basic mass elements should be the mainstay, and a large number of peasants who had gone through mass struggle should be recruited into the troops, and no ruffians, hooligans, bandits, and other elements should be recruited; The targets of the expansion must be examined, and only those who are politically pure, whose origins and family members are clear, can be recruited and carefully registered, and they cannot be sloppy without examination; Those whose origins are unknown or whose family circumstances are unclear must not be taken in.

With the power of land reform, the expansion of the army affected every poor peasant household. According to statistics, in this vigorous land reform and army expansion movement, more than 5,000 people signed up to join the Fengjun in the sparsely populated Jiamusi alone. In the densely populated Liaoning region, the number of people who joined the army reached more than 30,000. As a result of the policy benefits and the vigorous propaganda of "defending the fruits of victory," the broad masses of peasants enthusiastically joined the army, so that the main force of the Feng army was greatly supplemented. By the end of 1919, the Feng army had replenished more than 50,000 soldiers, giving each division the opportunity to increase the number of supplementary regiments, and successively eliminated a number of unqualified soldiers, and the equipment of various units was also improved. The expansion of the number of troops has strengthened the mobile combat units and has also brought fresh blood and sufficient manpower to the future expansion.

What about the captives? Easy to do! Zhang Hanqing still suspects that there are not many people.

Why does the Northeast have a lot of beard? In addition to historical reasons, the vast majority of the causes are due to poverty. Land monopoly or annexation leads to no land to grow, scarcity of industry leads to poor employment, and in addition to being bandits, they are starved to death. This kind of thing is to blame, and if you want to blame it, you have to blame the evil old society.

Zhang Hanqing wants to eliminate this phenomenon. Just as the bandits had been basically eliminated, and the international situation was also conducive to launching a major move in northeast China with economic construction as the mainstay, he made a detailed summary of the relevant materials he had collected along the Middle East Road and submitted to Zhang Zuolin a draft of the "Draft on Implementing the First Three-Year Plan for Northeast China." The current situation of the three eastern provinces was briefly introduced, and specific measures were also made in detail.

According to the official history, Fengtian Province is the earliest developed, most populous and most economically developed province among the three eastern provinces. Three-quarters of the industry in the northeast is concentrated in Mukden. Mukden is also rich in mineral deposits, such as: iron ore in Anshan, coal mine in Fushun, etc. Most of the Feng's army was also deployed in Mukden. Fengtian City (Shenyang) was the imperial capital of the Manchu Qing Dynasty before the entry of the Guan, and it was also the political and military center of the Northeast region before the "9.18 Incident". The Mukden Arsenal was the largest arsenal in the country at that time, capable of producing not only rifles, light and heavy machine guns, but also mortars, cannons, and corresponding ammunition.

There was no industry in Jilin Province at that time. However, according to his opinion, Jilin has fertile land known as the "Songliao Plain", huge mineral resources, the Songhua River flowing through the whole region, and endless timber, so it has huge reclamation value. As long as the immigration work continues, Jilin, which is in the heart of the northeast, will be the foundation for the future domestic competition.

Heilongjiang Province was the northernmost of the three eastern provinces, and its capital was Qiqihar. The main city of Harbin was originally just a small village on the Songhua River, but in 1898 the Russians built the Eastern Railway, which quickly expanded Harbin into a larger town. In February 1903, after the completion and opening of the whole line of the Eastern Railway, the Eastern Railway Administration, which was responsible for the management and operation of the railway, was located in Harbin, which was the beginning of its rise, and therefore Harbin is a city with a strong Russian style. To this day, the big column of Qiulin Department Store, the Harbin red sausage, the Russian-style buildings of Zhongyang Street, and the magnificent Sofia Cathedral can still remind people of the Russian style of Harbin in the past. After the liberation, marked by the development of the Great Northern Wilderness in the 50s and the Daqing Oilfield in the 60s, Heilongjiang gradually became a relatively economically developed province among the three eastern provinces.

Similarly, Hei Province also has great development value, and for Zhang Hanqing, the purpose of doing everything possible to eliminate the Japanese infiltration plan is to create a "safe province" that is completely controlled by the Northeast Autonomous Government.

What is most lacking in the Northeast? Industry! What is the basis of industry? Steel and coal! How do I get steel and coal? Mining! What if there is a lack of manpower? With captives!

Nearly 2,000 people from the former Gao Shifu Jilin Second Mixed Brigade were used as front-line prison guards to manage nearly 60,000 beards, and work on nearly 300 mines that had been explored. Of course, the garrison is also manned by the provincial security brigades.

Labor can purify people's souls, and the new China is using the method of re-education through labor to turn a large number of cancers of the old society into socially useful people through self-reliance. Prostitutes, landlords, beards, prisoners of war, reactionaries, you name it, the most sensational example is the transformation of the puppet emperor Puyi. Subsequently, the party and government, which had tasted the sweetness, enacted re-education through labor as part of the criminal punishment in the law, and achieved very good social results.

Now, as a practice of re-education through labor, this group of people, under the arrangement of the Chinese People's Party, has begun to atone for their past sins in a planned way. According to the announced plan, the RTL will last for three years, and those who perform well will be promoted internally (from detainees to superintendents), released early, and even better will be given a piece of land in their hometown.

Of course, the punishment is also severe: those who flee without permission may be confined and sentenced to increased punishment up to being shot on the spot, depending on the severity of the situation. In the dense forests of the Northeast, in an environment where the surrounding cities have been liberated, escaping is not an easy task. The white mountains and black waters, where the mountains were high and the forests were dense and easy to do, have now become a natural labor camp where hands and feet are bound.

In addition to going to the mines, these free laborers are also tasked with paving roads and bridges. With the expansion of the war against bandits, the "new forces" captured from all over the country were concentrated and sent to inaccessible places such as Hei Province. As part of the strategic plan to develop the Northeast and take Heilongjiang as the rear base, these energetic and organized people began to move forward to other fields to replace the shortcomings of the shortage of people and animals: railway branch lines, highways, docks, river dredging, water conservancy facilities, and even under the instruction of Zhang Hanqing, they also built a huge farm, which is as much as one million acres, and Zhang Hanqing named it "the first farm in the Great Northern Wilderness"...

This is a group of strong people, this is also the people who have caused great disasters to the Northeast, through labor, can they be transformed into self-reliant ordinary laborers? Zhang Hanqing does not have big expectations, but as free labor, they have written a strong stroke for the economic construction of Northeast China, and they should be remembered in the annals of history forever.