> The Hakka are an impoverished and stigmatized subgroup of Han Chinese whose settlements are scattered from Jiangxi to Sichuan. Socialist revolution meshed well with the Hakka tradition of militant dissent, so that their 3 per cent of the mainland population has been three times more likely than other Han to hold high position. Six of the nine Soviet guerrilla bases were in Hakka territory, while the route of the Long March moved from Hakka village to Hakka village.(Compare Maps 1, 2, 3 and 4.)1 In 1984, half the Standing Committee of the Politburo were Hakka, and the People's Republic and Singapore both had Hakka leaders, Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kwan Yew, joined by Taiwan's President Lee Teng-Hui in 1988.
> Hakka political history remains almost entirely undiscussed, and Chinese sources virtually never use the word "Hakka," but a vital subset of political alliances appears as soon as Hakka networks are decoded. Hakka solidarity also illuminates how a small sub-ethnic group can gain significance when it meets an historic opportunity. In the early 20th century Hakka poverty made land reform worth fighting for at precisely the moment when socialist organizers desperately needed the traditional Hakka strengths: mobility, military prowess, strong women and a strategically-useful common language.