MEMORANDUM

RM-5731-PR
AUGUiT 1968

POWER, POLICY, AND IDEOLOGY

IN THE MAKING OF CHINA•S
"'CULTURAL REVOLUTION"
WV. F. Dorrill

- I
PREPARED FOR:
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE PROJECT RAND

SANTA MONICA * CAtIFOINIA

L
 MEMORANDUM

1 RM-5731-PR
AUGUST 1968

POWER, POLICY, AND IDEOLOGY

I IN THE MAKING OF CHINA'S
"CULTURAL REVOLUTION"
1 W. F. Dorrill

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Published by The RAND Corporation

 -iii-

PREFACE
I

This Memorandum is a product of The RAND Corporation's

continuing program of research for the United States Air
Force on military and political developments in Communist
China. It deals with the dramatic sequence of events that
culminated in what its initiators have proclaimed as the
"Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." The objective
of the research is to examine some of the implications of
this upheaval for present and future policy and to spell
out, however tentatively, what historical trends may be
discerned in these events. The present study is being
published as a contribution to our understanding, neces-
sarily limited by the problem of access to Chinese sources,
of the phenomena of leadership and control in Communist
China and of the consequences of ideological quarrels for
military and foreign policy.
The author, W. F. Dorrill, is a consultant to The
RAND Corporation.

k~Ii
'I

iI
 SUMMARY

Various theories have been advanced to explain the

upheavaI in Communist China that the followers of Mao have
proclaimed as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
designed, says Peking, to "overthrow the handful of Party
people in authority taking the capitalist road." Some
Western critics see it as essentially a power struggle for
the succession to Mao, some as a clash over domestic and
foreign policy, still others as mainly an ideoiugiczl dis-
pute. Even greater is the experts' disagreement on the
likely implications of the struggle for the future of China.
With cautious use of the scant and often one-sided
evidence, the author of this Memorandum traces the origins
and development of this complex struggle, which he sees
not as a master plan of Mao's but as a logical series of
spontaneous eruptions. Although aware that the aforemen-
tioned interpretations are not mutually exclusive -- that
indeed there is likely to be a close interaction of power
struggle, policy debate, and ideological conflict -- he
tries to clarify their separate roles, their sequential and
* causal relationship, and their relative importance.
As early as 1956, there were signs of strain and frus-
tration in the Peking leadership arising from an apparent
division over methods of speeding up the pace of industri-
alization and modernization and increasing agricultural
production, and from a growing disenchantment with the
Soviet model. But the leadership weathered these early
disagreements; although, in March 1957, Mao called for a
protracted struggle to defeat erroneous ideas and "revieion-
ism,'" there is no proof of the serious rift between Mao and

I
I
 -vi-

some of his lieutenants (especially Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng

Hsiao-p'ing) that has recently been described in the Red
Guard press. While the momentous program of the Great
Leap Forward and the Communes, launched in 1958, suggested
a general shift leftward, it implied a consensus of the
leadership on this uniquely Chinese path to socialism,
being enthusiastically endorsed by Liu, Teng, and Minister
of Defense P'eng Teh-huai in the face of its condemnation
by Khrushchev. Later in 1958, as the Great Leap Forward
took an economically disastrous turn and the Sino-Soviet
rift grew, Mao gave up (voluntarily, the author believes)
his control over the daily affairs of state, without, how-
ever, relinquishing supreme authority.
Not until August 1959, when the Eighth Plenum of the
Central Committee met at Lushan and initiated an official
retreat from the economic program of 1958, did a major
leadership crisis become apparent. Many of the charges
subsequently raised by the Red Guards have turned on an
alleged "rightist" anti-Mao conspiracy antedating the
Lushan meeting and said to explain the criticism there ex-
pressed, in particular, by P'eng Teh-huai. The few avail-
able records, including some supposedly (but not necessarily)
authentic texts published by Cultural Revolutionary sources
long after the events, suggest that P'eng -- whose "Letter
of Opinion" forms part of the evidence -- may well have
been openly outspoken in his attack on economic and com-
mercial policies, but that his criticism was compatible
with the shift in policy decided at Lushan, and charges of
an earlier conspiracy with Khrushchev for the overthrow of
Mao were almost certainly unfounded.

" - --..---.-.----
 -vii-

In the aftermath of the Lushan debate, which seems to

have extended from the economic into military areas, P'eng
was censured and removed from office, Party dominance was
reaffirmed, and the remaining leaders closed ranks and
proceeded to mitigate the unworkably rigid features of the
economic system, restoring some incentives in agriculture
and even limited private ownership. This relaxation was
accompanied by greater intellectual tolerance, which, in
the early 1960s, resulted in a markedly freer expression
of ideas in literature and the press.
The Tenth Plenum, in September 1962, marked the end
of that liberai period. Mao resumed his acLive leadership
role, condemned "bourgeois" trends in art, literature, and
the economy, and railed for a nationwide campaign of
"socialist education" and "class struggle," with intensive
political indoctrination of youth, to maintain the purity
of the Revolution. Though it brought about no radical
shift in policy, the Tenth Plenum ushered in a period of
renewed emphasis on ideology and on the thought and person-
ality of Mao. Lin Piao as the new Minister of Defense
plunged into highly successful efforts to strengthen polit-
ical and ideological work in the People's Liberation Army
(PLA), setting a trend away from military professionalism.
It is possible that a less enthusiastically responsive
Party and government may have suggested to Mao and his
coterie the danger of another secular trend, causing them
to launch, in 1963-64, a further ideological purification
campaign, which brought tightened intellectual and cultural
controls and denunciations of prominent philosophers,
writers, and artists. Disappointed by the lack of fervor
the campaign was able to arouse, and by China's inability to

i _ ____,i___ ___ __ __
r

-viii-

f regain the momentum of the 1950s, they shifted still further

leftward in mid-1964, with a violent attack on those with
allegedly "capitalist" and "revisionist" leanings, in tones
that anticipated the Cultural Revolution. "Work teams"
were dispatched from the center to "clean up" deficiencies
in the rural situation as needed and to indoctrinate local
people and institute reforms. In the economic agencies, a
network of political departments modeled on the PLA supple-
mented the propaganda apparatus.
In 1965, as external and internal problems mounted, a
perceptible decline in the theretofore increasingly mili-

tant, heavily ideological orientation reflected a prudent

disposition in some quarters to meet the country's need
for greater productivity and, in view of the threatening
involvement in Vietnam, national unity. Nothing in the
measures taken by exponents of this conciliatory. prag-
matic approach, however, suggested the "bourgeois reaction-
ary," counterrevolutionary, "Soviet revisionist" tendencies
of which Liu, Teng, and others have since been accused
(accusations for which the evidence has ccme only from
the Prosecution).
Toward the end of 1965, when Mao appealed for renewal

of the ideological struggle (his reaction, perhaps, Lo an

internal debate and criticism of his person or leadership),
singling out for public pillory a famous author and one of
his plays, the relative power of top leaders seemed to be
shifting, with Lin emerging more and more as a major theo-
retician and Liu losing ground. Whatever differences
existed in the fall and winter of 1965/66 over aspects of
economic and military policy did not apparently result in
simple alignments of opposing opinions and personalities,
 -ix-

and division occurred within, rather than b-t.ýcen, the

various institutions. ,ut, as time went on, dissension

came to revolve less around such substantive issues than

around the person and thought of Mao. In 1967, revolutionary

wallposters were to make the sensational charge that sev-
eral of the top leaders had planned a military coup for
February 1966 in which to oust Mao. While apparently sorne

efforts were going on behind the scenes in early 1966 to

keep the growing campaign of socialist education within

the limits of academic discussion, there is no indication

that those who feared the excesses of Maoist purification

were aiming for more than protection of the status quo.

Yet the growing factional antagonisms were to erupt into

open conflict that spring, when the Party, in a Central

Committee circul]ar cf May 16, endorsed Mao's attack on

Peng and other counterrevolutionaries, dissolved and re-
placed the group theretofore in charge of the Cultural

Revolution, and threatened to remove or transfer all dis-

loyal "bourgeois" elements in Party, government, army, and
cultural life.

Changes in the Party's leadership and a purge of its

central propaganda apparatus reflected the new Maoist mili-

tancy, as did the tone of the Party organ Jen-min Jih-pao.

In May, June, and July of 1.966, the Cultural Revolution

spread from Peking to the provinces, directed against edu-
cators, writers, and artists as well as their supervisors

in the propaganda organs. Initially, the Party's main

instruments of enforcement at the local level were the

"work teams"; though vieocnc.e and terror were used, they

apparently were applied selectively, as the Party sought

to maintain some order and discipline. Ultimately, however,

I
r --

Party authority clashed with the impatient revolutionary

left over the unauthorized publication of a wallposter by
a Peking university instructor: Mao himself ordered it
distributed throughout China, a portent of the future
direction of the Cultural Revolution and testimony to Mao's
power and his determination to go "to the masses."
In retrospect, all efforts to preserve a measure of
control in the face of near-anarchy were construed as sub-
versive. The role of the work teams, sent to keep order
and ensure Party dominance, led to allegations that they
had been part of a plot to sabotage the Revolution. Liu's
"socialist institute," where 500 persons prominent in
cultural life who were under attack were to be sent for
criticism and reform and thus be protected from the mob,
likke Liu's and T'ao Chu's proposed reforms of the educa-
tional system that would have reopened the schools closed
by the Cultural Revolution, later became evidence of a wish
to strangle the Revolution. Frustrated by the movement's
failure to keep up with the people's rising expectations,
Mao sought explanations. or rationalizations, in the hidden
i•ooives of those whom he had entrusted with its leadership,
'rjtives that he gleaned through the arbitrary, sometimes
i paranoid, scrutiny of their previously accepted statements
and actions.

In July 1966, Mao returned to active leadership, and

the Parcy recalled the controversial work teams and con-
vened a Central Work Conference. In August, under Mao's
personal direction, the Eleventh Plenum of the Central Com-
mittee adopted a program of historical importance and, in
the most far-reaching reorganization since 1949, changed
the order of the top leadership, putting Lin in second and

I_

__ ___-i.~--
!A
 -xi-

Chou En-lai in third place after Mao. The Plenum's final

communiqu& (August 12, 1966) dealt with the whole range
of China's foreign and domestic problems, and stressed the
central place of Mao's thought in the development of
Marxism-Leninism.
In the author's opinion, the evidence does not point
to a classic power struggle as the main cajse of these
developments, for the redistribution of offices and the
new line of succession instituted by the Eleventh rlenum
do not suggest the clash of organized factions, or the
drastic purge of the losers, characteristic of the struggle
for power and succession in totaliLarian regimes. The
final communique re" jcted no new departures, no break
with the past, on major political and economic issues,
lending weight to the author's belief that the Plenum was
called chiefly to resolve the growing ideological conflict.
Mao's increasingly utopian aspirations and fundamental-
ist concepts of the revolutionary mission were further
spelled out as the new leadership was chosen. In the
months following, however, these leaders and groups of the
Cultural Revolutiun -- backed, somewhat uncertainly, by the
PLA and served by the destructive Red Guards -- were to
prove as unsuccessful as their predecessors in resolving
political crises and effecting the ideological transforma-
tion so insistently and unrealistically demanded by Mao.
As to the future, instability seems destined to con-
tinue so long as Mao and those designated by the Cultural.
Revolution to succeed him dominate the scene. Mere changes
in leadership or alterations of particular domestic and
foreign policies will not suffice to realize their revo-
lutionary goals, which aim at a fundamental transformation
 -xii-

of Chinese society and ideology. On the other hand,

disorder is likely to increase, at least in the short
run, if those in opposition are ever able to join forces

for a concerted counterattack.

I;i

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 -xiii-

CONTENTS

PREFACE.............................................iii

SUMMARY. ............................................ v

Section
I. INTRODUCTION .. ................................ I
The Problem of Information ................ 2
The Problem of Interpretation ............. 4

II. THE SEEDS OF CONFLICT: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 9

The Search for a New Path to Socialism .... 9
The Politics of the Great Leap Forward 13
The Lushan Plenum .......................... 23
Liberalization and Its Consequences ....... 43
Frustration and the Maoist Ideological
Revival................................... 54
The Continuing Shift Leftward .............. 64

III. THE APPEARANCE OF CONFLICT: PRECIPITATING

FACTORS . ................................. 73
The Ssu-ch'ing Experience .................. 76
Dissension Rises to the Surface ............ 81
Policy Issues and Their Significance ...... 85
The Ideological Issue ...................... 97
The Rise of the Power Struggle ............ 107

IV. THE FIRST PHASE OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION .. 115

The Purge of P'eng Chen ................... 116
The Widening Stream of the Cultural
Revolution . .............................. 121
The Leadership of Liu Shao-ch'i and the
Party Apparatus .......................... 125
Mao's Entry into Direct Leadership ........ 136
The Eleventh Plenum ....................... 141
Power, Policy, and Ideology at the Eleventh
Plenum . ................................. 147

14
 I. INTRODUCTION

For over two years, Mainland China has been caught

in the grip of an internal struggle which must rank as
Sone of the world's most far-reaching political developments
in this decade. Its official appellation, "the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution," fails to convey ade-

quately either the totality of the struggle or the intense

passion and violence that have characterized it. It marks
a watershed in the history of the Chinese Communist revo-
lution -- a new and uncertain juncture. The leadership
and the policies which finally emerge from the present
chaos will determine China's power, direction, and pace of
development for many years to come. In so doing, they
will exercise a profound influence on the course of world
history.
Despite its manifest importance, our knowledge of
China's Cultural Revolution remains remarkably superficial.
To be sure, the gross features and the more dramatic mani-
festations, such as the purge of government leaders and
the rampages of the Red Guards, are well known. However,
they do not tell us much about the underlying causes and
the essential nature of the issues and contending forces.
Without a clear understanding of these it is difficult to
proceed to any confident -- let alone a definitive --

assessment of either the current trends and future pros-

pects of the upheaval or its implications for Chinese
policy.

____ ____
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_________ ____ ___ ____ ___ __|

1i~~
9i

__________________
______________________________ ___________________
 I

"-2-

THE PROBLEM OF INFORMATION

In part, the persisting confusion and obscurity stem

from the paucity of verifiable data. While much can be
learned from critical examinacion and exegesis of pub-
lished Chinese sources such as official statements and
*f
press and radio comment, these rarely are intended to re-
veal or even to hint at sensitive "inside" information;
far more often, their purpose is to mislead or distort.
SIn consequence, some of the more zealous practitioners of
I "Aesopian" translation have come to diametrically opposed
but equally plausible conclusions as to the principal
protagonists, viewpoints, and issues in the Cultural
Revolution.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that
much of our information on internal political developments
is in the form of unsubstantiated indictments, which often
appear
~~posters"first
that invitalyay"revolutionary"
ta-tzu-pao, the unofficial "large-character
individual o

group can put up. Thus, the sensational charge that a

"black gang" in the Peking Municipal Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was conspiring to restore
"capitalism, and the shocking allegation that for years

IFor example, in February 1967, the spokesman of a

provincial radio station candidly told local critics (per-
haps the previous management, recently ousted by "revolu-
tionary rebels") who thought the broadcasts too one-sided:
"The one-sided reporting is correct. Our fighting force
will grow and the one-sided reporting will grow stronger.
There will always be only one-sided reporting, the voice
of the revolutionaries." (Anhwei People's Broadcasting
Station, February 14, 1967, as quoted in China News Analy-
5 sis, No. 649, February 24, 1967, p. 1.)
 -3-

Mao Tse-tung had been betrayed b- many of his trusted

lieutenants, do not in themselves constitute credible -
evidence but must be verified or modified in the light of
other sources.
Reports from foreign observers in China, as well as
from the trickle of refugees and defectors who come out
of China, could do much to clarify the situation. How-
ever, these sources have thus far been very restricted in
their geographic coverage. Sometimes, as in the case of
some Soviet commentaries, they are tainted by political
bias and exaggeration. Or, they may be severely limited
in substance -- doing little more than repeat the uncon-
firmed, conflicting ta-tzu-pao and Red Guard newspapers.
These remarks are not meant, of course, to gainsay
the very real value of information that can be gleaned
from official statements, ta-tzu-pao, foreign press reports.
and similar sources. The intent, rather, is to suggest
the extraordinary need for caution and critical scrutiny
in interpreting them.
Apart from the problem of evidence, our understanding
of the meaning of the Cultural Revolution and of the forces
underlying it is hampered by the complexity of the struggle
itsclf. Therc have been indications that. at least in its
early stages, some of Peking's highest Party, governmental,
and military leaders -- men presumably "on the inside" --
were thoroughly confused about what was happening. Con-
ceivably, the uncertainties and surprises that have accom-
panied the struggle are part of a devious masterplan drawn
up by Mao in advance and calculated to entrap his unsus-
pecting enemies. If so, its full genius has yet to be
revealed, for the strategy is still far from delivering a

I
 -4-

decisive victory. Moreover, much that has happened has

appeared to be unplanned and unanticipateý -- a series of
spontaneous eruptions and a caprici.ous interaction of
forces as the struggle unfolded.

THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION

Many hypotheses and interpretations have now been

advaiiced, with varying degrees of confidence, to explain
the upheaval in China. They have tended to focus on one
or a combination of three elements: power, policy, and
ideology. Thus, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu-
tion has been viewed variously as essentially a power
struggle, a clash over domestic and foreign policies, and
a conflict over ideology. For example, a well-known aca-
demic specialist has emphasized the factional struggle
2
within the Peking regime; a high U.S. official has
described it as primarily "a debate on policy between
revolutionary romantics and pragmatists";3 and a promi-
nent Hong Kong-based journalist has defined the main issue
as "whether the approach to China's problems shall be
spiritual or material."'4 A former Chinese Communist trade
official who sought political asylum in the United States
in 1966 has described the Cultural Revolution as a power

2 Chalmers
Johnson,
"Communist China's Political
Turmoil," SAIS Review, Winter 1968, pp. 5-24.
3 Walt
W. Rostow, Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs, speaking at the University of
Leeds, as quoted in The New York Times, February 24, 1967.
4 Stanley Karnow, The Washington Post, December 20,
1966.
 "-5-

struggle of ambitious men competing for the succession to

Mao, and, at the same time, a policy conflict between
moderates and extremists, with heavy ideological overtones.
Interpretations of actual events will vary, then,
according to the interpreter's emphasis on one or another
of the three basic elements. Furthermore, these diverse
analyses of the nature of the struggle can lead to even
wider and more significant differences when it comes to
assessing the implications of the Cult-ral Revolution for
the future of China. Some analysts, stressing the primacy
of the succession problem, view it as having precipitated
a polarization of the leadership along policy lines and
heightened the inevitable tension between revolutionary
aspirations and practical limitations. Others maintain
that it was deep-rooted policy differences in the first
instance which triggered the power struggle. Still others
trace the origin to a widespread loss of ideological com-
mitment. And, as will be suggested in this study, it is
possible to see in it an attempt by Mao to push China
toward new and unprecedented heights of faith and fervor.
These hypotheses need not, of course, be mutually
exclusive. Indeed, any rigidly monocausal explanation
would, on the face of it, be suspect. There is unques-
tionably a close interconnection and interaction between
the power struggle, the policy debate, and the ideological
conflict. For an understanding of the Cultural Revolution,

5
Miao Chen-pai,
as quoted in The Washington Post,
September 4, 1966, and U.S. News and World Report, November
7, 1966. As a member of the Chinese Communist Party, Miao
was privy to internal Party directives and explanations of
the Cultural Revolution until the time of his defection,
in July 1966.

4
 "-6-

however, it would seem useful and perhaps even necessary

to try to clarify their separate roles, sequential and
causal relationships, and relative importance.
Thus, one properly takes note of Peking's official
claim that the "main aim" of the Cultural Revolution is
"to overthrow the handful of Party people in authority

taking the capitalist road, especially the handful of top

Party persons" doing so. 6 But to understand what this
really means one must inquire more specifically into the
"who" and "why." Is what is happening primarily the ri-

valry of ambitious or embittered leaders bent on reorder-

ing the succession, avenging old wrongs, or satistying
personal drives for prestige and influence? Or, if the
struggle is a dispute over principles, what issues of
policy or ideological cleaves divide the contending forces?
The present study seeks to arrive at more complete
and discriminating answers to these questions through an
analysis of the origins and early development of the
Cultural RevoLution. In the attempt to identify major
trends and to elucidate the role of underlying factors,
the treatment of events will be selective rather than ex-
haustive. Though its main focus is on the background and
the beginnings of the Cultural Revolution, the study will
I also consider and evaluate relevant evidence
phases of the struggle. It
from later
will draw attention to available

6
.ro,
the commentary entitled "Take Hold of the
Principal uontradiction, Keep to the General Orientation
of the Struggle," Hung Ch'i, No. 7, May 1967.

I
 -7-

7
analyses of the subject in order both to avoid duplic, -
tion and to indicate significant similarities or differ-
ences of interpretation.

7 For
example,
Harry Geluian. "Mao and the Permanent
Purge," Problems of Communism, November-December 1966;
Philip Bridgham, "Mao's 'Cultural Revolution': Origin
and Development," The China Quarterly. No. 29, January-
March 1967; Gene T. Hsiao, "The Background and Develop-
ment of 'The Proletarian Cultural Revolution'," Asian
Survey, June 1967; L. La Dany, "Mao's China: The
Decline of a Dynasty," Foreign Affairs. July 1967.

I
 -9-

II. TRE SEEDS OF OONFLICT:

HI STORICAL BACKGROUND

The origins of the Cultural Revolution can be traced

back at least a decade. IL is possible, in retrospect,
to detect ominous strains within the Peking leadership as
early as 1956. By that time, the unifying revolutionary
vision and program, shared so long and so successfully by
Mao and his lieutenants -- from the Long March, through
the fighting against Japan and the Kuomintang, and during
the establishment and early years of the Communist regime
-- had begun to face new and unprecedentedly serious
challenges.

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW PATH TO SOCIALISM

In response to a combination of disappointments and

persistent diificulties associated with modernization,
economic development, and -he administering of a huge and
complex government, the Chinese leaders now began to grope
for a new path, with all the uncertainty and potential
disagreement that this entailed. Surging nationalist
pride and rising expectations informed their mood, in
tandem with a darkening, doctrinaire suspicion of incipient
"revisionist" trends in the USSR. Despite their continued

self-confidence and basic unity of outlook and goals,

members of the inner circle in Peking felt frustrated by
their inability to accelerate the pace of modernization
and were divided over methods for increasing agricultural
production and speeding industrialization. Many resented
Moscow's parsimonious and patronizing attitude, and par-
ticularly Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and its

4
 -10-

potential meaning for Mao. Looking abroad, they were

bewildered by the Hungarian revolt; at home, they were
shocked by the outpouring of criticism from intellectuals
during the "Hundred Flowers" campaign. Under the impact
of these pressures and emotions, Peking began to modify
and even to abandon major elements of the Soviet model
that had shaped the organization and policies of the gov-
ernment, the economy, and the army of Mainland China during
the early 1950s.
Despite the inner tensions that accompanied the search
for new solutions and the move toward greater independence,
it is important to note that the Chinese leaders remained
essentially united in outlook. Their general orientation
led them to temper revolutionary aspirations and doctrinal
demands with consideration for the practical requirements
of modernization. Thus, official policies reflected their
tolerance of a modicum of personal incen.tives, the accep-
tance (under careful supervision) of economic, scientific,
and managerial participation in society by "bourgeois"
elements, and the encouragement of specialized education
and professional development alo..: .h rigorous political
indoctrination. This balanced orivntation allowed the new
regime to make rapid progress toward both modernization
and socialization. Moreover, it enabled the leadership
to weather, first, an apparent power struggle, which
culminated in the purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih in
1954, and, in 1955-1956, a sharp debate over the speed of
agricultural collectivization.
In the next two years, a series of important policy
decisions reflected a significant weakening -- though no
more than that -- in the balance that had characterized

VA! - - _
the regime's orientation. The "Anti-Rightist" campaign
of 1957 resulted in the purge of thousands of "counter-
revolutionary" dissidents, especially intellectuals, and
marked a general tightening of Party control over society.
Prior to it, Mao had delivered his celebrated speech "On
the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,"
in which he declared that most conflicts in Communist-
ruled societies were "nonantagonistic" differences among
"the people" and, hence, could be resolved by discussion
and persuasion. However, in this speech, as in an address
delivered to a National Conference on Propaganda Work in
March 1957, M&o stressed the necessity of a protracted
ideological struggle tc uproot "all erroneous ideas, all
poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters" and to combat
"revisionism," which he branded as more dangerous than
8
dogmatism. 8
It is possible, in retrospect, to construe these and
other statements of that period as indicating that Mao

8
It is
worth noting, however, that in the concluding
section of his speech on contradictions Mao still urged
solidarity with the USSR and declared: "' . we should
learn from the good experience of all countries, socialist
or capitalist, but the main thing is still to learn from
the Soviet Union" -- albeit in a selective manner. In
the present Cultural Revolution these exhortations have
been ignored, although the incongruous passages still
appear in republications of the speech (e.g., the re-
vised Foreign Languages Press version published by China
Pictorial in 1967, p. 31).
Mao's address to the National Conference on Propaganda
Work was one of his four works published for the first
time in Selected Readings of Mao Tse-tung's Writings (Mao
Tse-tung Chu Tso Hsuan Tu), 1964. Salient extracts were
quoted in the "Circular" of the CCP's Central Committee
dated May 16, 1966, and published by the New China News
Agency (NCNA) exactly one year later, on May 16, 1967.
 -12-

was more deeply concerned than were other top leaders over
the threat posed to the regime by ideological impurities
and, concomitantly, appreciated more keenly the need for
9
the ideological and class struggle. Yet such a conclusion
as to differences in degree of solicitude would still be
far from establishing the existence of the kind of basic
cleavage between Mao and his chief lieutenants, notably
Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, that has recently been
described in the unofficial Red Guard press.lO

9
This has been a recurrent propaganda theme in the
Cultural Revolution, particularly in 1967. In a letter
dated October 16, 1954, but released by NCNA only as re-
cently as May 26, 1967, Mao appears to have taken a re-
markably keen interest at that early date in supporting
two youthful critics who had accused a "bourgeois" literary
figure of "poisoning" the minds of young people with his
studies of classical works such as "The Dream of the Red
Chamber." Mao evidently thought their efforts (and ini-
tial difficulty in getting a hearing), as well as his own
criticism of two then current films, worthy of a letter
to his colleagues on the Politburo.
10Red Guard newspapers have quoted alleged statemr'nts
by Liu before local Party meetings in 1957 which, among
other things, denied the possibility of contradictions in
a socialist society and advanced a whole series of "rightist"
economic views such as the advocacy of limited free markets
and material incentives. It should be noted, however, that
these statements cannot be authenticated on the basis of
available credible evidence; even if they proved to be
literally true, their truncated appearance, out of context,
could easily distort the original meaning. Certainly, the
Red Cuard accusations and innuendoes to the effect that Liu
and Teng were taking a rightist and anti-Party tack, besides
implying that the two men were indulging an unlikely politi-
cal death wish, are not substantiated either by their pub-
lished statements at the time or by the line taken in offi-
cial publications for which they would have had responsi-
bility during the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist
campaigns.

,--.- -- L --
 -13-

THE POLITICS OF THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

The launching of the Great Leap Forward and the com-

munes, in 1958, gave positive content to the leaders'
shared determination to follow a new and uniquely Chinese
path to socialism. While it reflected a general shift
leftward in the regime's orientation and involved a commit-
ment to rapid development through mass mobilization and
ideological motivation, the move was made with such remark-
able facility and such widespread, unstinting enthusiasm
as to suggest a broad consensus among the top leadership.
To be sure, given the magnitude of the change, it is
reasonable to suppose that some elements harbored silent
11
doubts or reservations. But the important thing to note

llThus, articles by Ch'en Po-ta and "Commentator" in

Huns Ch'i (NoM. 4 and 11, 1958, respectively) attacked
dissident views on economic policy. Although they did not
accuse any top leaders by name or clearly indicate the level
to which the alleged dissent had reached, it was at about
this time that Ch'en YUn, one of the regime's foremost
economic leaders -- he was first Vice-Premier of the State
Council as well as a member of the Politburo Standing Com-
mittee -- went into political eclipse. It remains diffi-
cult to document the precise reasons for Ch'en YUn's dis-
appearance, but they probably were related to his prominent
identification with the First Five-Year Plan and the rela-
tively balanced, gradual Soviet model of economic develop-
ment. (See relevant discussions in Franz Schurmann,
Ideology and Organization in Communist China, University
of California Press, Berkeley, 1966, pp. 76, 204-205, 208;
Werner Klatt led.], The Chinese Model, Hong Kong University
Press, Hong Kong, 1965, pp. 181, 202; and Howard Boorman
[ed.1, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1967, p. 266.) One of the
ironies of the first phase of the Cultural Revolution was
the reappearance -- albeit with questionable powers -- of
this "rightist" economic planner in the most unlikely
company of Mao and the Red Guard ralliers in the fall of
1966.

___ __ __
__ ____
_____
 -14-

here is that these were not serious enough to impel public

expression, or to polarize opinion within the leadership.
In launching the Great Leap at the Second Session of the
Eighth CCP Congress, in May 1958, Liu Shao-ch'i enthusi-
astically endorsed the leftward course and the economic
12
speedup, lavishing praise on its author, Mao Tse-tung.
Although adjustments were made in subsequent months, as
aspects of the radical new scheme proved functionally un-
sound (particularly in the commune system), Liu grandly
portrayed it in the World Marxist Review as a model for
the entire Communist world as late as October 1959, seven
months after Khrushchev's stinging, if implicit, criticism
of the commune idea at the Twenty-first Congress of the
CPSU.
While the foregoing tends to focus on domestic fac-
tors in Peking's decision to shift to the utopian policy
of the Leap Forward, it is not intended to minimize the
influence of the growing Sino-Soviet tension and rivalry.
Already generally Jisenchanted with the Soviet model for
China, the Chinese were becoming increasingly disappointed

12
1ndeed,
Liu's statements and actions were so posi-
tive as to prompt at least one scholar to advance the
thesis that it was "Liu rather than Mao who must be re-
garded as the main sponsor of the Great Leap Forward."
(Harold Hinton, "Intra-Party Politics and Economic Policy
in Communist China," World Politics, July 1960, p. 515.)
The decision to launch the commune system was made in
August 1958 at an enlarged Politburo meeting held at
Peitaiho; it was announced in Jen-min Jih-pao on September
1, 1958. Pilot "people's communes, notably the Wei-hsing
(Sputnik) Commune in Honan, had begun to appear the previous
April.

'Ii
 -15-

as the Soviet Union failed to fulfill their expectations

of large military and economic aid. In pushing arrogantly
ahead with the communes and radical economic measures of
the Leap Forward in the face of Soviet warnings, they not
only were giving vent to an overweening nationalism but
appeared to be brazenly claiming the role of Moscow's ri-
val for leadership of the world Communist movement, touting
their own as an alternate and more rapid path to communism
13
that threatened to shorten the lead of the Soviets.
As in the matter of economic policy, there may well
have been marginal differences of opinion within the
Peking leadership over the tactics to be used or the
severity of the challenge that should be hurled at Moscow.
But the fact to be noted here is that all leaders -- in-
cluding those later denounced as the "Chinese Khrushchev"
(Liu Shao-ch'i), his "chief accomplice" (Teng Hsiao-p'ing).
and the Peking "black gang" chieftain (P'eng Chen) -- dis-
played a strongly nationalist and anti-Soviet bias. De-
spite later Red Guard accusations and innuendoes to the
contrary, there simply is no credible evidence that any
one of the top leaders of the regime was less genuinely
patriotic or significantly more pro-Soviet than Mao Tse-tung.
Nor is there any reason why the subsequent collapse of the
Leap Forward -- and, concomitantly, the failure of Peking's
bid for world Communist leadership -- should necessarily
have undermined Mao's position more than that of Liu, Teng,

13
Franz Michael, "Who Is Ahead on the Way to Communism?"
Communist Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 6, November-December 1965.
 -16-

P'er.g, or others who were in the top echelon in 1958-59.

All of them had firmly espoused the policies that failed
(except perhaps P'eng Teh-huai, who, however, voiced his
dissent only in mid-1959); though the boat might be
sinking, they were all in it together. The writer cannot
agree with the contention of Professor Franz Michael that
the two disasters failure of the Leap Forward and the
--

Sino-Soviet rift -- thoroughly and singularly discredited

Mao and resulted in his removal from power, while leaving
A
Liu Shao-ch'i politically unscathed and determined "to
dismantle Mao's radical program" in favor of "a more ra-
tional economic development" plan. Without belittling
the impact of the Sino-Soviet dispute on the Peking regime
as a whole, this author believes that one must look else-
where for the decisive factors that gave rise to the
Cultural Revolution and the split among the Chinese leaders.
Perhaps a word should be said here about Mao's alleged I
complaint, as reported in Red Guard sources, that he was
pushed aside and "pigeonholed" in 1958 by the ambitious
15
and erring Liu and his chief accomplice, Teng Hsiao-p'ing.
Unquestionably, Mao did relinquish his post as Chairman of
the Republic -- but not his more powerful position as

14
Franz Michael,
"Moscow and the Current Chinese
Crisis," Current History, Vol. 53, No. 313, September 1967,
p. 142.
15
These charges were contained in accounts of an angry
speech said to have been delivered by Mao to a work confer-
ence of the CCP Central Committee on October 26, 1966.
Purported texts of the speech were published in Red Guard
newspapers -- one, an eight-page pamphlet entitled "Criti-
cism by the Central Chairman Against Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng
Hsiao-p'ing" -- which were posted on walls in Peking on
January 4 and 6, 1967, and subsequently reported by corre-
spondents of Mainichi and Yomiuri.
 -17-

Chairman of the Party -- at the time of the Sixth Plenum

of the CCP Central Committee, in December 1958. His pro-
posal not to stand for reelection as State Chairman seemed
plausible and amicable at the time, and Liu Shao-ch'i's
16
subsequent election to that office was entirely logical.
Overt preparations for the succession had been under way
for at least two years, and Liu had been the heir apparent
since 1945. Even the Red Guard posters quote Mao as having
himself decided in 1956 to divide the Politburo Standing
Committee into a "first" and a "second line" in order to
prepare for an orderly succession and avoid problems such
as had arisen after Stalin's death. According to the
posters, however, Mao withdrew to the less active "second
line" (following the Eighth CCP Congress, presumably) and
then alleged that serious "decentralism" and other errors
had occurred under the "frontline" leadership of Liu Shao-
ch'i, who had been given important policy powers as first
Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, and Teng Hsiao-p'ing,

16
Commenting on the significance of Liu's elevation,
Howard Boorman later observed: "Mao thus made his closest
'comrade in arms' in Party leadership his successor as
chief of state during his lifetime, a probable attempt to
raise Liu above all possible rivals and thus to insure his
later succession to the truly decisive position of chairman
of the Party." ("Liu Shao-ch'i: A Political Profile,"
The China Quarterly. No. 10, April-June 1962, p. 17.) This
view was not untypical of those expressed by Western ob-
servers before the onset of the Cultural Revolution. How-
ever, the veteran Yugoslav journalist Branku Bogunovic re-
cently recalled that there was considerable uncertainty
among foreign correspondents in Peking in 1959 as to whether
the man chosen to succeed Mao as President of the Republic
would be Liu Shao-ch'i or Chou En-lai. (See Bogunovic's
analysis, as translated from the Belgrade newspaper Borba,
in Atlas, December 1967, p. 17.)

i1
 -18-

who managed the Party's daily work in the newly-created

post of General Secretary.
The Eighth Party Congress (September 1956) also
created the post of Honorary Chairman of the CCP, pre-
, sumably as a niche for Mao after his retirement. Moreover,
it adopted a new Party Constitution, the preamble of which,
in contrast to the preamble of the Constitution of 1945
that it replaced, failed to include "the thought of Mao
Tse-tung" among basic guidelines for action. These mea-
sures were in accord with the CCP's then accepted opposi-
tion to the "cult of the individ,'l," in limited deference
to the policy initiated by the Soviets in February 1956
at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. Thus, it is not
surprising that Teng Hsiao-p'ing, in his report to the
"Eighth CCP Congress,lent general support to criticism of
the "cult of the individual" (but not specifically to the
de-Stalinization campaign), or that Liu Shao-ch'i, without
i actually raising that theme, failed to voice explicit
praise of Mao's thought -- an omission that his Red Guard
accusers were to recall a decade later.
It is possible to view these developments in 1956 as
a deliberate derogation of Mao's stature and power by
others in the top leadership, and even, with Gene T. Hsiao,
17
as the "seed" of the Cultural Revolution, but the evidence
thus far available does not warrant such conclujions. For

example, Ch'en I, replying to Liu Shao-ch'i's accusers

(and his own), has stoutly maintained that Mao himself

17
Asian Survey, June 1967, p. 392.
 -19-

and the Politburo approved Liu's report to the Eighth

Congress. 18 Presumably, this was the case with Teng
Hsiao-p'ing's report as well. Moreover, a high-ranking
Japanese Communist Party official, long resident in China.
has pointed out that the 1956 revision of the CCP consti-
tution, which was intended among other things to prevent
the growth of any "cult of the individual," was written
with Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung's "guidance and approval."'19
Although the preamble of the revised constitution failed
to mention Mao's thought, Franz Schurmann has observed
that in practice, "since the latter part of the 1950's,
the dualism originally stated in the 1945 Party Rules has
been revived" in even stronger form: "Marxism-Leninism
,,20
and the thought of Mao Tse-tung. Finally, in assessing
the impact of events in 1956 on Mao's position, one should
bear in mind that even the Red Guard poster accounts of
Mao's remarks indicate that Mao was not coerced or over-
powered; he voluntarily stood aside in 1956 to groom his
chief lieutenants for the succession. Whether or not they
later misused their power, it had been Mao's decision to
delegate it to them.
Two years after Mao had taken the step that he appar-
ently came to regret, the mistake was compounded, according

18"1 was there all the time," Ch'en averred. Quoted

in the Red Guard newspaper, Hung Wei Chln Pao, of April 8,
1967.
19
1chiro Sunama, "Return from Peking," Part 2, Akahata,
November 4, 1967.
20
Ideology and Organization in Communist Chi.na, p. 21.

____________________
.I
 -20-

to the reports, when he was forced to step down as Chairman

of the Republic. From then on, Liu and Teng are said to
have treated him like "their dead )arent at a funeral."
After 1959, according to one Red Guard accounit, Teng went
so far as to refuse to brief him on the work of the Secre-
tariat. Yet the charge that Mao was forced aside by Liu
and Teng around 1958 and thereafter suffered a decisive
loss of power to these disloyal lieutenants must be regarded
21
as greatly exaggerated if not completely untrue. Although
Mao voluntarily and temporarily relinquished control over
many day-to-day decisions, this does not prove that he was
forced to gi-h up the supreme leadership or even that his
position was seriously jeopardized. If Liu and Teng had
usurped power in the way that Red Guard sources have sug-
gested, how could Mao have retained the Party chairmanship,
leaving conspicuously open the post of Honorary Chairman
that had been created in 1956 in evident anticipation of
his retirement? As Party Chairman he could hardly have
been denied briefings on the work of the Secretariat, if

he had insisted upon them. Moreover, it would seem rash

to discount entirely the explanation proffered by the
I Central Committee in 1958 that it was Mao himself who had
proposc- not seeking reelection as State Chairman (though
with the proviso that he could be nominated for another
term if "special circumstances" arose) in order to be free
to do theoretical work, an activity whose effects were

21Indeed,
the indictment still lacks official con-
firmation; no authenticated text of Mao's October 1966
speech, in which the allegations reportedly were made,
has yet been published.

IY
.- 2 X 7 77 J 7373
 -21-

subsequently demonstrated in Peking's posture and polemics

22
vis-4 -vis Moscow. 22

A possible explanation of developments after 1958 is

that an aging and somewhat embittered Mao., perplexed at
the failure of his Great Leap and commune schemes to usher
in the millennium, voluntarily withdrew into the background
and, for the next few years, concentrated largely on find-
ing theoretical formulas that would Justify his practical
failures and meet the threat of Soviet "revisionism." He
may have left to his chief lieutenants the more unpleasant
and difficult decisions aimed at China's "recovery" and
even, on occasion, have yielded on some matters of policy
to those in opposition, be it as a result of his own un-
certainty or as a way of effecting a tactical accommoda-
tion. Whatever may have been his active role or true
feelings during the disastrous years 1959-1961, a time of
economic collapse and the alienation of Peking's erstwhile
Soviet allies, Mao continued to enjoy a position of
2 2 The Sixth Plenum (November/December 1958). while

calling for modifications in the commune system, categori-

cally declared it to be the form of organization best de-
signed to speed socialist construction and effect the
transition from collective to "whole-people's ownership,"1
that is, from socialist to Communist society. There is no
evidence that Mao opposed either the modifications called
for or the general approval of the concept reiterated by
the plenary session. He may have been disappointed later
over the -mpromises on economic policy adopted by the
Seventh Plenum (April 1959) and popularized in the phrases
"walking on two legs" and "taking the whole country as a
coordinated chess game." But the trend toward moderation
discernible in those compromises was soon reversed, as the
Ninth Plenum, in August 1959, launched its attack against a
"rightist-inclined conservatism."
 -22-
23
unrivaled stature and ultimate authority in China. This
was reflected in the military establishment, where his
faithful comrade-in-arms Lin Piao rapidly rose to unchal-
lenged control, maintaining discipline and morale when
hard times threatened disorder and greatly raising the
army's place in society, all the while emphasizing the
24
primacy of politics and the thought of Mao Tse-tung.

23
Thus, in the winter of 1959-1960, at the height of
the crisis precipitated by the collapse of the Leap Forward,
Li Fu-ch'un felt it necessary -- and, presumably, conclu-
sive -- to declare that the new policy of "agriculture as
the foundation" was based on Mao's own instructions.
(Hung Ch'i, No. 1, January 1960.) The fact that Mao re-
tained ultimate authority during this period has more re-
cently been underscored in the confe.ssion of Liu Shao-ch'i,
alleged to have been made at a Party cinference in October
1966 (perhaps the same meeting at which Mao delivered the
accusations noted above), in which Liu admitted (if we may
trust the ta-tzu-pao text) having had his "rightist devi-
ations" overruled by Mao in both 1962 and 1964. On at
least one occasion, possibly in 1962, he had found it nec-
essary to make a special trip to report to Mao, who was
temporarily not in Peking. (The text of Liu's purported
self-criticism was published in Mainichi, January 28 and 29,
1967.)
24
1n May 1958, Lin Piao was elevated to the Politburo
Standing Committee (as one of five newly-appointed vice-
chairmen of the Central Committee), thereby coming to out-
rank the Minister of Defense, P'eng Teh-huai, who was also
a Politburo member. Almost immediately thereafter, in his
other capacity of Vice-Chairman of the CCP's Military Af-
fairs Committee, Lin led a cheng feng rectification move-
ment in the top echelon of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA). This campaign, which lasted from May 27 to July 22,
in effect put an end to the influence of the Russian mili-
tary model in the PLA. It apparently capped one of the
Communist regime's three major internal struggles alluded
to in an Army Day editorial that appeared on August 1, 1966,
in Chieh-fang ChUn Pao (Liberation Army Daily). It also
prepared the way for issuance of a revised set of basic
 -23-

Mao's continuing power and his ability to preserve unity

of outlook and orientation among the top leadership de-
spite the buffeting storms of economic setbacks were
graphically demonstrated in the late summer of 1959, al-
though his prestige did not emerge from that process
unscathed.

THE LUSHAN PLENUM

Details of the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee,

25
convened by Mao at Lushan in August 1959, remain obscure,
but there is little doubt that it witnessed a major crisis
within the leadership. The final communique condemned the
"emergence of right opportunists" who criticized the Leap

Forward, and it enjoined Party committees at all levels to

overcome such tendencies. Subsequently, Minister of Defense

principles on Party-army relations, which emphasized the

CCP's control over the PLA and "politics in command."
These developments, incidentally, grew out of Moscow's
agreement, in October 1957, to provide China with techni-
cal and other assistance needed toward the acquisition of
a Chinese nuclear capability. According to Peking's later
polemics on the subject, the Soviets failed to deliver on
schedule, and finally abrogated the agreement unilaterally
in June 1959. (See "Statement by the Spokesman of the
Chinese Government," August 15, 1963, in Peking Review,
No. 33, August 16, 1963, p. 14.) Soviet sources have con-
firmed that the Chinese never forgave the USSR for failing
to provide China with "samples of atomic weapons." (See a
1963 study by A. I. torysh and M. I. Lazarev, as quoted in
Soviet Space Programs, 1962-1965. Staff Report, Committee
on Aeronautical and Space Science, U.S. Senate, 89th Congress,
2nd Session, December 30, 1966, Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C., 1966, p. 522.)
2 5 According
to Red Guard sources, Chairman Mao "per-
sonally convened" the Lushan Plenum, another indication of
his continued hold on the top leadership. See Chiao-yu
 -24-

P'eng Teh-huai and other important military and political

figures disappeared from public life. 2 6
Notwithstanding this circumstantial evidence, the
tendentious explanations that followed (mainly it the form
of indictments), and even the fuller documentation pub-
lished more recently, our knowledge of the issues debated
at Lushan and of the alignments of protagonists in the
debates remains sketchy and one-sided. What, actually,
happened? Did P'eng, as some analysts contend, attack
"the whole range of Mao's radical domestic and foreign
policies," thereby establishing the preconditions for a
"crisis of confidence in Mao's leadership" when these
policies continued to fail in later years?27 Or does the
evidence indicate that "the main dispute was over military

Ko-ming (Educational Revolution), a booklet published by

the Peking Educational Revolution Liaison Committee on
May 6, 1967, as translated in Joint Publications Research
Service (JPRS), No. 41,932, July 21, 1967, p. 32.
2 6 Amongthose who left were Huang K'o-ch'eng (PLA
Chief of Staff), T'an Cheng (Director of the General Politi-
cal Department of the PLA), Hung Hsueh-chih (Rear Services
Director), and, on the civilian side, Vice-Minister of
Foreign Affairs Chang Wen-t'ien (a former Ambassador to the
USSR) and Hunan First Party Secretary Chou Hsiao-chou.
Earlier opponents of the leftward course in economic policy,
such as Ch'en YUn, remained in political oblivion.
27
This interpretation has been advanced by Philip
Bridgham (The China Quarterly, January-March 1967, p. 2),
who also suggests that P'eng proposed policies rivaling
Mao's and "featuring Soviet military, economic and techni-
cal assistance." More recently, an almost identical inter-
pretation has been offered by the British scholar Brian Hook
in "China's Cultural Revolution: The Preconditions in
Historical Perspective," The World Today, November 1967,
p. 463.

- -U
 -25-

policies," as others have suggested? 2 8 Can we "assert with

confidence that P'eng was the leader of an 'anti-Party'
group in the Politburo," which had made clandestine con-
tact with Soviet leaders in an effort to zecure their sup-
29
port for an attack on the Maoist leadership at Lushan?
These interpretations would seem to bear careful
reexamination.
Recently published documents charge that P'eng Teh-
huai, in a letter to Mao on July 14, 1959, and in subse-
quent speeches at the Eighth Plenum, painted a maliciously
black picture of economic conditions, disparaging the
"victory" of the Leap Forward, exaggerating the current
"transient and partial shortcomings," and opposing the
people's communes and the policy of high-speed development,
as well as the mass movements for economic construction,
high yields in agriculture, and "backyard furnace" pro-
duction of iron and steel. These charges against P'eng
appear in excerpts of the purported text of a censure reso-
lution passed at the conclusion of the Eighth Plenum, on
30
August 16, 1959, but published only eight years later.
Secondary sources available during the Cultural Revolution,
which may tend to embellish the allegations contained in
the censure resolution, depict P'eng as an outspoken critic
of economic policy, who caustically referred to the Leap

28
John Gittings, The Role of the Chinese Army, Oxford
University Press, London, 1967, p. 226.
29Dei
9 David A. Charles (pseud.), "The Dismissal of Marshal
P'eng Teh-huai," The China Quarterly, No. 8, October-
December 1961, p. 64 end passim.
30
Hung Ch'i, No. 13, August 17, 1967, pp. 18-20.

.t
 I
!
-26-
I

Forward as "a rush of blood to the brain," regarded the

mass movements (for "backyard" steel, etc.) as so much
"petty-bourgeois fanaticism," and thought the people's
ti having been "set up too early." ,31
communes "a mess" for
Various Red Guard versionr ýf the 1959 "letter of opinion"
(i-chien-shu) from P'eng to Mao quote P'eng as bluntly
complaining about "leftist" tendencies ("always wanting
to enter communism at one bound," obsession with being
"the first"), and "failure to seek truth from facts," all
of which hoad led to "hasty and excessive plans" in 1958
and resulted in failure to readjust imbalances in produc-
tion and to "slow down a bit" so as to bring the frenzied,
32
disorganized economy under control.
Not only, as suggested above, may recent secondary
sources exaggerate the extent of P'eng's guilt as accepted
at the time, but the literal authenticity of newly pub-
lished texts of P'eng's "letter of opinion" and even of the
Central Committee's resolution of censure is not betyond
question. Given the eight-year delay in publication and
the heavy bias of the sources, it would seem entirely
possible that the primary documents have been altered or
distorted to add support to more recent, Maoist -
interpretations. 3
31
31See "From the Defeat of P'eng Teh-huai to the Bank-
ruptcy of China's Khrushchev," ibid., pp. 21-24.
32
one version of P'eng's letter, as taken down by
Japanese correspondents in Peking, was published in Mainichi
on August 22, 1967; another text appeared in a Red Guard
newspaper, Exchange of Revolutionary Experience, on August
24, 1967.
33
Thus,the author shares M. La Dany's suspicions as
to the literal accuracy of the Eighth Plenum censure
 I#

-27-

Actually, P'eng's criticisms may have been more re-

strained and balanced than the later charges against him
would indicate. In the July 14 "letter of opinion" to
Mao, for example (if we assume the authenticity of avail-
able texts), P'eng called for greater accuracy and realism
in production figures -- a sentiment seemingly shared by
the majority of his colleagues, to Judge by the decision
passed at Lushan to improve statistical reporting. While
advocating changes in the communes to bring distribution
more closely in line with labor, P'eng praised the commune
system as having lifted the peasantry out of poverty and
speeded the advance from socialism to communism. His warn-
ings against "leftist" fanaticism were coupled with appeals
to uphold the "mass line" and avoid rightist tendencies.
Similarly, his criticisms of economic defects -- some of
which he attributed simply to lack of experience -- were
matched by expressions of confidence in the Leap Forward,
as in the statement that "conditions for continued Leap
Forward are present." lHe agreed with Mao that "the achieve-
ments are trenrndou., the problems are numerous, the ex-
perience is rich and the future is bright." Indeed, he
averred that, if present defects could be overcome -- by

resolution (China News Analysis, No. 685, November 17, 1967).

He is not, however, persuaded by La Dany's argument that the
reference in the resolution (as now published) to the dis-
missal of P'eng and others from various posts is contra-
dicted by more credible evidence that those men actually
were removed only after the Lushan Plenum -- at a meeting
of the CCP Military Affairs Committee. The resolution as
published in Hung Ch'i in August 1967 merely says that it
is "essential to transfer P'eng" and the others from their
responsible positions (except for membership in the Central
Committee and Politburo), leaving the act of dismissal to
other organs.

I _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 -28-

furthering the corrective action already taken in confer-

ences at Wuchang, Chengchow, and Shanghai -- it would be
possible to overtake the British level of production in
only four years' time instead of the target of fifteen
years originally set it%the Leap Forward. H
Subsequent commentaries by Cultural Revolutionaries
have ripped P'eng's colorful phrases out of context and
greatly distorted the position actually taken in his
letter. For example, his advocacy of "balance" and "simul-
taneous attention" to both economic measures and "putting
politics in command" (as well as his warning not to dis-
regard scientific and economic laws) is now attacked as
"eclecticism," denial of the primacy of politics, and a
bourgeois effort to "put money in command"; his proposal
to alter economic policies is described as a dark plot to
34
completely abandon the communes and the Leap Forward.
P'eng's remarks, however, were not entirely at odds
with the prevailing orientation at Lushan. It is some-
times forgotten that the most notable actions taken by the
plenary session, aside from the censure of P'eng, were a
drastic revision downward of production claims for 1958

and goals for 1959, and a further retreat from the communes
as collective ownership and accounting were shifted

3 4 See "From the Defeat of P'eng Teh-huai," HunR Ch'i,

August 17, 1967; see also "Principal Crimes of P'eng
Teh-huai, Big Ambitionist and Schemer," from the Canton
Red Guard tabloids Chingkangshan and Kuanx-tuna Wen-i
Chan-pao, translated in Survey of the China Mainland Press
(..MP), No. 4047, October 25, 1967.
 -29-

downward to the production brigades at the next-lower

level 35
Since even his attackers admit that P'eng made "out-
ward pretensions of support" for Mao and the Party's
general line, we are left to ponder why the Eighth Plenum
felt it necessary, not merely to overrule him, but to
condemn his criticisms as constituting a "right opportunist
line" that challenged "Party leadership in Socialist con-
struction," and to accuse him of leading an "anti-Party
clique" -- where "viewpoint" might have been the more
accurate term -- a continuation of the 1954 Kao Kang/Jao
Shu-shih plot. If P'eng had been seriously implicated in
the "Kao/Jao anti-Party alliance," as is charged, it is
difficult to understand why he should have been rewarded
with an appointment as Minister of Defense in November 1954
-- just after the wholesale purge of Kao/Jao subordinates

3 5 As Harold C. Hinton has pointed out, the revised

production claims for 1958 -- while still not necessarily
accurate -- reflected "an admitted overestimate of 50 per
cent" in agriculture and represented a complete "writing-
off of the output of the 'native' [backyard] furnaces
as unusable in modern industry." ("Intra-Party Politics
and Economic Policy in Communist China," World Politics,
July 1960, p. 522; see also Schurmann, Ideology and
Organization in Communist China, p. 491.) Although there
was a brief, partial return to the earlier mass mobiliza-
tion policies in the fall of 1959 -- in the wake of the
"anti-rightist" campaign -- the general retreat from the
communes and from the manic economic policies of the Leap
Forward continued after mid-1960. Unfortunately, from
November 1959 on, the regime's ban on the export of local
and regional newspapers hindered the flow of information
on economic trends.

•r-=-... . ...-.--.-
_ --- --.--------- -
 -30-

in the Northeast and East China regional administrations

in June, and after Liu Shao-ch'i had given intimations of
the coming intra-Party purge at the CCP Fourth Plenum (of
the Seventh Congress) in February. If P'eng actually made
a self-criticism during the struggle against Vao/Jao in
1954, as is claimed in the newly published Lushan Pler t-i

resolution, it would more likely have been the result of

his association with Kao in 1953 as a member of the State
Planning Commission (chaired by Kao, with Jao a member)
than any serious charge that P'eng had participated in or
led an anti-Party clique. In retrospect, P'eng's greater
crime -- and the one implicating him in the 1954 factional
struggle -- may have been his alleged deletion of a passage
payin,. homage to the guidance of Mao's thoughts from a
36
1953 draft of regulations for PLA Party committees.
Even allowing for a high degree of exaggeration in
the charges raised against him (especially his implication
with the Kao/Jao plot) -- an exaggeration probably thought
necessary to help shake P'eng's blameless reputation and
wide followix• -- it is possible to discern several reasons
why his colleagues in the Central Committee decided on the
drastic action of censure and dismissal. P'eng's candid
exposure of "defects" in the regime's Leap Forward and
commune policies reflected on most of the Party leaders;
and, accordingly, not only Mao but also Liu Shao-ch'i and
Teng Hsiao-p'ing would seem to have had an interest in
silencing if not discrediting him. But P'eng would not be

36See "Settle Accounts with P'eng Teh-huai," Jen-min

Jhsao, August 17, 1967.

-- j
 -31-

silenced. His arguments apparently struck a responsive

chord among other leaders at Lushan -- not to mention
their potential appeal to the Chinese masses straining
under the burden of frenetic Leap Forward campaigns and
economic setbacks.
In his "letter of opinion" of July 14, according to
some accounts, P'eng pointedly rebuked those responsible
for domestic programs when he charged that "We have not
handled the problems of economic construction as success-
fully as we dealt with the problem of shelling Quemoy and
quelling the revolt in Tibet." Moreover, he called atten-
tion to the worsening shortages of food and clothing with
the warning that "the people urgently demand a change of
the present conditions." The Eighth Plenum censure reso-
lution of August 16 complained that P'eng had, time and
again, asserted: "If the Chinese workers and peasants were
not as good as they are, a Hungarian incident would have
occurred in China and it would have been necessary to in-
vite Soviet troops in.'
The effect of these arguments apparently had begun to
tell. The resolution declared that because of his influ-
ential position in the Party and the military establish-
ment and his pretention of candor and frugality, P'eng
"could and did mislead a number of people" at Lushan. In
addition to his "handful" of accomplices (the resolution
named Huang K'o-ch'eng, Chang Wen-t'ien, and Chou Hsiao-chou)
and perhaps also to the rightists, there were presumed to
have been "political speculators and alien class elements"
and those with a personal grudge who had "sneaked into the
Party," all of whom rose up at Lushan to launch a "fierce
onslaught" against the Maoist leadership and general line.
 SII
-32-

Worst perhaps in the eyes of his colleagues was the

fact that P'eng was as stubborn and uncompromising as he
was outspoken. Not only did he refuse to recant when
overruled, but he apparently declined even to meet halfway
those willing to restore to the regime's policies a lim-
ited measure of realism. In his letter of July 14, for
example, while noting that the greatly exaggerated reports
of increased agricultural output had been revised downward
(from the original claim of a twofold increase to one of
35 per cent), P'eng refused to accept even the new figures
and complained that they still contained inaccuracies.
Though hn probably was r Sht, this statement may well have
alienated potential allies t4ho were leaning toward piecemeal
reform. In the end, P'eng's die-hard style of aggressive,
unyielding dissent -- which may have culminated in a direct,
heated confrontation with Mao -- probably contributed as
much to his undoing as the substance of his complaint.
37
According to the account of David Charles, based
upon reports of tendentious, confidential briefings given
to CCP members soon after P'eng's dismissal, the Party
leaders at Lushan were taken aback by his Ild initiative
and -- either from surprise or in an attempt to smoke out
the opposition -- allowed a protracted debate to proceed.
In it P'eng was supported by Huang K'o-ch'eng, Chang
Wen-t'ien, and others, including the venerable Lin Po-ch'U
(who died in May 1960). Ultimately, however, all wavering
and dissent were smothered, as the leadership united behind
a resolutinn (presumably that of August 16) which reaffirmed

3 7 "The Dismissal of Marshal P'eng Teh-huai," The China

Quarterly, October-December 1961, pp. 67-68.
 -33-

the absolute correctness of the Party line, rejected

P'eng's criticisms without compromise, and condemned him
for factional activity -- specifically, for going beyond
permissible expression of dissent in the Politburo to
lobby within the Central Committee. (This last distinc-
tion, mentioned by Charles, does not appear in later
documentation.) At one point in the debate it was sug-
gested that any attempt to disgrace P'eng might trigger
a revolt in the PIA, whereupon Mao "declared with tears
in his eyes that, if this happened, he would go back to
the villages and recruit ancther army. The generals
present then got up in turn and pledged their loyalty to
Mao and to the Central Committee.' 38

Although the evidence now available indicates that

the main theme of P'eng Teh-huai's dissent at Lushan was
opposition to certain aspects of the Leap Forward and -
39
couLmune policies, the military implications of his
criticism very likely were also a significant issue in
the dispute, whether or not they figured prominently in
the debate. The fact that serious dissent of any kind

3 8 Ibid,., p. 68.
39
This, essentially,
is also the conclusion reached
earlier by David Charles on the basis of the reported
briefings to Party members soon after P'eng's dismissal
in 1959. "The shortcomings of the Great Leap Forward,"
says Charles, were the "main theme" of P'eng's memorandum |
(or "letter of opinion") presented at the Eighth Plenum.
In general, he "preferred to concentrate his attack on the
political and economic policies of the Party rather than
air his professional [military] grievances. Vroughout,
P'eng acted as a senior member of the Politi;'.xc rather
than as a dissatisfied Minister of Defer...." (Ibid.,
pp. 67, 65.)
 -34-

should have come from high in the military establishment

must have been extremely disturbing to most Party leaders;
and P'eng's insistent stress on restoring economic realism
carried obvious implications for the allocation of mili-
tary resources and for political-military relations.
Given the nature of P'eng's criticisms at Lushan, the sub-
sequent removal of top military officers -- and the fact
that their removal was not paralleled by a purge of
civilian planners and administrators -- makes it appear
that the conflict was less a dispute between exponents of
contending general economic policies than a dissent by
the military (with scattered civilian support) over cer-
tain aspects of the prevailing policy, notably the ad-
verse impact of Leap Forward measures on military capabili-
ties and the Party's growing domination over all facets of
army life.
Although the Cultural Revolution has provided much
new information as to the chief culprits at Lushan and
their crimes, the result has not been to lighten the onus
of guilt or to shift it from the military officers associ-
ated with P'eng Teh-huai. The "economists," who have been
so roundly criticized during thE ýultural Revolution, have
never been identified as the enemies who launched the
"fierce onslaught on the Party's general line, the Great
Leap Forward, and the people's communes" at Lushan.
While David Charles' article may have been lacking
in documentary support, the charges against P'eng Teh-huai
made public during the Cultural Revolution tend to con-
firm those portions of Charles' account which were based
on reports of the fir~t round of confidential briefings
to CCP members after P'eng's dismissal. In other words,

i=- - =~
 -35-

the newly published documentation indicates that, in

general, these were indeed the charges that constituted
the grounds for the dismissal. (Whether or not the in-
dictment accurately described P'eng's behavior and the
debate at Lushan is another matter.) As we shall see,
however, a second category of reports used by Charles,
which told of later briefings to "selected cadres" begin-
ning in the summer of 1960 -- after a revival of interest
in the P'eng Teh-huai affair coinciding with a dramatic
worsening of Sino-Soviet relations -- provides a much
less credible basis of evidence as to the charges (true
40
or not) which brought P'eng' s removal.
Whether at Lushan or earlier, P'eng and his fellow
dissidents evidently opposed the Party's assignment of
ever-heavier economic and other nonmilitary tasks to the
army and resisted further political encroachments that
41
threatened to undermine military training and organization.

40
For a discussion of the two categories of reports
used by Charles see his bibliographic note, ibid., p. 65.
41On August 1, 1966, Chieh-fang ChUn Pao printed a
description of the second major struggle in the PLA after
the establishment of the People's Republic, which reported
that in 1959 an "anti-Party clique" took advantage of im-
portant posts it had acquired in the army to attempt to
abolish political worn and Party leadership, as well as
the army's assigned tasks in socialist construction, mass
work, and militia organization. While no minutes of Zhe
Lushan discussions are available, the speeches of P'eng
Teh-huai and TVan Cheng at the Eighth Party Congress two
years earlier revealed the two men's concern that Party
control not be allowed to impair "individual responsibility"
in command and that "guerrilla habits" not undermine disci-
pline and impede modernization. However, they also warned
against uncritical borrowing of "foreign military experi-
ence" and urged a uniquely Chinese approach to military
 -36-

However, this opposition is not to be equated with the

recent, sweeping charge that P'eng was all along a "career-
ist" who had "usurped" his position in the army to advance
a full-fledged revisionist and "bourgeois military line,"
calling for "modernization at the expense of revolution-
ization," regarding the role of man in modern warfare as
secondary to that of "technique, steel, and machines,"
and "nullifying political work in the army."' 4 2 Although
there may be an element of truth in some of these charges
(for example, that P'eng sought to maintain a balance be-
tween political and military requirements, that he wished
to modernize PLA organization and capabilities, that he
valued Soviet assistance), it is only by gross distortion
of the evidence that P'eng is made to appear, in retro-
spect, a thoroughly deceitful and disloyal lieutenant,
bent on abandoning the PLA's revolutionary traditions,
Party leadership, and Maoist doctrines and on turning the
army into "a tool for bringing about the restoration of
capitalism."
Perhaps the best evidence of P'eng's dissent in the
area of military affairs is to be found in issues of the
secret army periodical KunRa-tso T'ung-hsUn (Work Bulletin)

development. See Eighth National Congress of the Commu-

nist Party of China, Vol. 2, _Speeches, Foreign Languages
Press, Peking, 1956, pp. 32-37, 41-43, and 259-278.
42
See, for example, the following articles: "Let Us
Go Forward Triumphantly Along Chairman Mao's Proletarian
Line of Army Building," Hung Ch'i, No. 12, August 1, 1967;
"Principal Crimes of P'eng Teh-huai," ibid., August 17,
1967; and "Settle Accounts with P'eng Teh-huai," Jen-min
Jih-pan, August 17, 1967.

* in :-
 -37-
43
covering the first half of 1961. Individual numbers of
this journal, which was published by the PLA's General
Political Department, charge that F'eng Teh-huai, 1-,tang
K'o-ch'eng, Hung Hsueh-chih, and other, unnamed officers
(notably, "XX") advocated a "bourgeois military line"
(nowhere fully defined), violated Mao's principles of army-
building and combat, took a "simple military viewpoint,"
instituted "warlordism" (maltreating troops and straining
relations between officers and men), and practiced "dog-
matism" (in particular, by fostering "superstitious belief
in everything foreign and free transplantation of raw
foreign things"). More specifically, one or another of
them was accused of neglecting the study of Mao's thoughts
(the General Political Department, for example, was said
to have failed to give adequate support to the army's
Political Academy), delaying the compilation of native
Chinese military manuals for two years after Mao (at an
enlarged meeting of the Military Affairs Committee in 1958)
had ordered them, and slighting Party organization in the
army (especially at the company level), thereby creating
a "general atmosphere of perfunctory service and
indifference." 44
It is extremely difficult to evaluate the accuracy of
these accusations as they applied to P'eng and others who
were dismissed after Lushan. For the most part, the charges

43Translated and edited in J. Chester Cheng, The

Politics of the Chinese Red ArmX, Hoover Institution,
Stanford, 1966.
44See Kung-tso T'unit-hsUn, Nos. 2, 3, 8, 24, 26, and
29, ibid.
 -38-

in the 1961 periodical appear as fragmentary and tenden-

tious remarks without specificity and concreteness. They
may well exaggerate the degree of guilt, deliberately
using P'eng and the other dissidents as scapegoats for
the PLA's manifest defects and weaknesses -- particularly
in political organization, training, and discipline --

in the wake of the disastrous Leap Forward. Still, they

present a much less sweeping indictment than has appeared
in commentaries published subsequently during the Cultural
Revolution.
It is hard to believe, however, that P'eng should have
been an exponent of a thorough-going bourgeois "military
professionalism" and at the same time have adopted -- in
opposition to Mao, allegedly -- a "completely passive
attitude" towards military planning and preparedness (the

negation of the Maoist "active defense"). paid little or

no attention to the building of air, naval, and even ground
forces, and neglected both the manufacture of conventional
arms and the advancement of science and technology.
Conceivably, one so desirous of "regularization and
modernization" could have become overly dependent on Soviet
techniques and arms assistance. But it is at least ques-
tionable that a person of P'eng's nationalist pride and
professional judgment would, as is now charged, have op-
posed the creation of "an independent and complete network
of modern national defense industries" and refused to en-
dorse the development of a Chinese advanced weapons program
(including atomic and hydrogen bombs and intercontinental
missiles). particularly as Sino-Soviet relations worsened
after 1958. (He may, however, have objected to the exces-
sive pace of the efforts to develop these indigenous

7f!-
 -39-

capabilities.) Still more improbable is it that P'eng and

his supporters were engaged in a plot with Khrushchev to
overthrow CCP leadership and set up a "revisionist" regime
in Chin?. This charge, baseo on inferences that go far
beyond ne facts adduced, is incompatible with P'eng's
long record of loyal service to Mao and the Party.
Recent attacks against P'eng have made vague and unsub-
stantiated references to his "illicit relations with foreign
countries.'45 This allegation, however, did not appear in
the indictment -- a remarkably detailed one -- of the
censure resolution passed by the Eighth Plenum on August 16,
1959 (as published eight years later). Indeed, the closest
the resolution came to identifying P'eng's attitude toward
the USSR was to quote his aforementioned observation that,
considering the economic consequences of the Leap Forward
"if the Chinese workers and peasants were not as good as
they are, a Hungarian incident would have occurred in
China, and it would have been necessary to invite Soviet
troops in." The statement, if authentic, would seem to
reveal P'eng as delivering a warning to prevent Soviet
intervention rather than suggest that he was secretly con-
spiring to foster such intervention. Moreover, available
issues of the secret military journal Kung-tso T'ung hsUn,
though critical of the PLA's excessive imitation of "foreign
4 6
countries" (presumably the USSR) during P'eng's leadership,

4
See, for example, "From the Defeat of P'eng Teh-huai,"
Hung Ch'i, August 17, 1967.
46See No. 26 (July 13, 1961) and No. 29 (August 1,
1961).
I
 -40-

nowhere suggest that lie or any of the other condemned gen-

erals conspired with Khrushchev or had improper contacts
with Soviet officials. Nor have similar innuendoes of
conspiracy been substantiated by Peking's quotation, in
anti-Soviet polemics of 1963 and 1964, of statements
attributed to Khrushchev which expressed friendship and
sympathy for unnamed dissident Chinese leaders ("anti-
Party elements," in Peking's terminology) who had coura-
geously criticized the Leap Forward policies.
Probably the most important source of evidence re-
maining to support the notion of P'eng's culpability in
his contacts with Soviet officials is the celebrated arti-
cle by David Charles that appeared in The China Quarterly
of October-December 1961. As has been pointed out, Charles'
account is based largely on reports of two rounds of confi-
dential briefings given to CCP members and "selected
cadres" after P'eng's dismissal. Subsequent evidence has
tended to support the authenticity of charges contained in
the first round. Yet Charles admits that it was only in
the later briefings, "which coincided with the exacerba-
tion of Sino-Soviet relations in the summer of 1960," that
"selected cadres were told about P'eng Teh-huai's contacts
with the Soviet leadership -- an aspect of the case which
had been concealed [if it existed] in the earlier general
4 7
briefing." The coincidence between the dramatically
widening Sino-Soviet rift in mid-1961 and the sudden revela-
tion of P'eng's "illicit relations," seen against the fact
that no such allegation was raised in either the Lushan

4 7
"The Dismissal of Marshal P'eng Teh-huai," p. 65.
 -41-

censure resolution (even in its present form) or Kung-tso

T'ung-hsln, suggests the possibility that this charge was
invented ex post facto, or greatly exaggerated on the basis
of very tenuous evidence, to bolster Peking's case against
Moscow and ensure a firm base of cadre support for it in
China.
The hypothesis that P'eng conspired with Khrushchev
to overthrow Mao has also been argued from a rather strained
interpretation of some of his public statements prior to
1959 and from circumstantial evidence of contacts with
Soviet officials in the course of official journeys abroad.
Thus, P'eng's praise of the Soviet armed forces in 1957 as
a model for the modernization of the PLA is sometimes cited
as evidence of his anti-Maoist bias (his objection, for
instance, to Mao's stress on the importance of men over
weapons). However, P'eng's words seem perfectly appropri-
ate and anything but disloyal when one recalls that they
were uttered in the context of the Sino-Soviet agreement
on assistance in nuclear and military technology, concluded
in 1957, which Ma. presumably also favored at the time.
Besides, as pointed out earlier, Mao was still willing to
sing the praise of the Soviet Union as late as 1957.
P'eng Teh-huai's seven-week "military goodwill
mission" to the Warsaw Pact nations in the spring of 1959
inevitably put him in contact with Soviet leaders, but no
evidence has been adduced that he conspired with them
against Mao. In the absence of hard evidence one can, of
course, speculate endlessly about the possibility of
"illicit relations." Such charges, however, have often
been grossly exaggerated by the Chinese Communists, as in
the case of spy charges against American missionaries and,
I
_
 -42-

more recently. Indian diplomats. Moreover, not only would

treasonable activity have been out of character for P'eng.
but he also was probably realistic enough to calculate
accurately the limitations and dangers of disloyal conniv-
ance with Soviet officials. Without wishing to rule out
once and for all the possibility of P'eng Teh-huai's in-
volvement with the Soviets, this wrli'er believes that,
until we have better evidence to support such an hypothesis,

there are good reasons for preferring a less sweeping and

fanciful interpretation of the affair.
Whatever may have been the true nature of P'eng Teh-
huai's dissent at Lushan, and whatever the cause of the
subsequent purge, the incident created a severe test of
the regime's cohesion and resiliency. It was as much in
the spirit of prophecy as of admonition, as it turns out..fI
that a contemporary Jen-min Jih-pao editorial, drawing
upon the lessons of great heresieG of the past (notably
those of Kautsky, Plekanov, and Ch'en Tu-hsiu), warned
that proletarian revolutionaries could always "degenerate"
48
into bourgeois revolutionaries. The top leaders, though
profoundly shaken, quickly closed ranks and retained their
essential unity; affirming the correctness of the regime's

4 8 jen-min
Jih-pao, September 1, 1959. This theme may
have been a reflection of Kao's thinking at Lushan. Recent
accounts of the session quote him as saying: "This strug•]e
at Lushan is a class struggle, a continuation of the life-
and-death struggle between the two major antagonistic
classes -- the bourgeoisie and the proletariat," Observing
that it had raged thruughout the last decade of "socialist
revolution," he predicted that it would continue in Party
and nation for another twenty to fifty years. "In short,"
he concluded, "the struggle will cease only when classes
die out completely." ("From the Defeat of Peng Teh-huai,"
Hung Ch'i, August 17, 1967.)
 -43-

general policy orientation, they continued to alter its

more radical and unworkable features.

LIBERALIZATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

During 1960 and 1961, as economic conditions worsened,

the regime was forced to retreat further from the Leap
Forward program and to relax controls over society. Suc-
cessive years of bad harvests and inept management had
wiped out earlier agricultural surpluses earmarked for
investment and left severe food shortages and the thrcce.
of widespread famine. Plans for rapid industrialization
were shattered in mid-1960 as Soviet technical assistance
was precipitously withdrawn and scarce hard currency went
into wheat imports for tood-deficit areas.
In the fivst half ef t.ie year, there had been a mo-
mentary res:zrce of the Leap Forward, with the renewal
of mass labor campaigns and, in some areas, the recollecti-
vization of private plots and the reopening of communal
mess hails. In March 1960 -- according to charges recently
aired in the Cultural Revolution -- Mao Tse-tung drafted a
document known as the "Anshan Steel Constitution" (An-kang
iHsien-fa). It laid down "five fundamental principles for
Socialist industry," stressing such things as political
leadership, reinforcement of Party guidance, and the pro-
motion of mass movements in the operation of factories and
mines. By the fall of 1960, however, this revival of the
Leap Forward had again proved extremely disappointing, the
early harvests having been even poorer than those of 1959.
In January 1961, the Ninth Plenum of the Central Com-
mittee, while continuing to mouth the empty cliches of a
 -44-
I
vanished utopia', confidence, adopted a sober and realistic
policy aimed at recovery and consolidation. AgricL11ture
was given priority over industry; primary _-sponsibility
for management was shifted d• ,ward from the commune to
the production brigade and finally to the production team;
and material incentives such as private plots and free
markets were increasingly etiployed to stimulate output.
In September 1961, according to recent accusations,
"the handful of top capitalist authorities in the Party"
illegally published erroneous new directives for industry
known as the "70 Articles of Industry" (literally, the
draft of a "Work Regulation for State-Operated Industrial

Enterprises"). The new draft allegedly ignored the thought

of Mao, contravened the principles of his "Anshan Steel
Constitution," and deemphasized the class struggle, treat-
ing industrial enterprises as primarily "economic organi-
zations," and advocating such concepts as "production first,"
technology, material incentives, worker safety, and "plant
management by experts" (excluding ordinary workers).
This condemnation, like other criticisms of its kind,
entirely ignored the policy changes wrought by the Ninth
Plenum, to whose decisions Mao and even members of his
present coterie have not specifically taken exception;
it judged guilt or innocence by Party c -teria that were
valid (and accepted by the "top capitalist-roaders") in
earlier or later periods. The "70 Articles" (to which only
fragmentary and probably distorted references appear in
the recent indictments) would seem to have been squarely
in line with the orientation announced by the Ninth Plenum,
just as Mao's "Anshan Steel Constitution" was consonant
with the Party line prevailing in March 1960. The same
 -45-

kind . f rebuttal can be applied to the more familiar

charge that, after 1961. Liu Shao-ch'i and others advo-
cated the "three-self, one guarantee" system (san tzu i
pao). favoring the extension of private plots and free
markets as well as an increase in the number of small
enterprises exercising sole responsibility for their own
profit and loss, and fixing or guaranteeing the fulfill-
ment of production quotas based on the individual house-
hold. Not only does this charge distort Liu's position
to make it appear that he favored an out and out "restora-
tion of capitalism" (rather than a few limited and tempo-
rary tactical concessions to stave off imminent economic
disaster), but it completely ignores two facts: that at
the time of the Ninth Plenum Mao was, after all, Chairman
of the Central Committee and that even subsequently he
4 9
actions.
never condemned that session or its
Despite the economic reverses of 1960-1961, there
was no discernible disposition in the top leadership to
seek salvation through a return to the Soviet model or a

4 9
The above-mentioned charges in regard to Mao's
"Anshan Steel Constitution" and the "70 Articles of In-
dustry" appeared in a series of articles published in
Pei-ching Jih-pao (Peking Daily) of July 15 and 16, 1967.
OLLue-k piaces, in an article in Hung Ch'i, No. 13, August
17, 1967, and in the fourth instalment of a series attack-
ing Liu that was published by Chieh-fangChUn Pao and ex-
cerpted by NCNA October 25, 1967. For a discussion of the
brief resurgence of the Leap Forward in 1960 and the re-
treat from it in 1961, see Marion Larsen, "China's Agri-
culture Under Communism," in An Economic Profile of Main-
land China, Studies Prepared for the Joint Economic Com-
mittee, U.S. Congress, Vol. 1, Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C., 1967, pp. 220-221.

----- -A
 -4t-

rapprochement Uith Moscow. As in the mid-1950s, China

would find her own way, building anew through dogged self-
reliance.
Relaxation cf economic controls was accompanied by a
more tolerant attitude toward intellectuals. In August
1961, Ch'en I told graduates of Pciýi- ' nstitutes of
higher learning that in ordinary s.hcols (,as opposed to
political academies) demands fo;r in-.vctrination and mar.ual
labor should not be allowed to interfere unduly with spe-
cialized studies, needed for their contribution to social-
ist construction. If one wanted to ride in an airplane,
the skill of the pilot would count for more than his
political purity. (One wonders what Ch'en's fate might

have been today had he used thc metaphor of the helmsn..n,

so closely identified wiLh Mao -- '-our Creat Helmsman" --
in the Cultural Revolution.) Not surprisingly, many

intellectuals took advantage of this atmosphere of greater

freedom to engage in subtle, sophisticated sniping at the
leaders and policies they held responsible for China's
economic catastrophe and international isolation. It is

50
Chun&-kuo Ch'ing-nien (China Youth), No. 17, Sep-
tember 1, 1961. Another, related theme that began to be
sounded at that time was the importance of restoring some
balance between demands for physical and mental labor, on
the one hand, and the human body's need for rest, on the
other -- an idea largely ignored during the frenetic activ-
ity of the Leap Forward, to the detriment of health and
productivity. As Fu Lien-chang (once Mao's trusted per-
sonal physician) pointed out in an article to youth, "the
alternaticn of studying and work with recreation and rest
is the necessary law governing human life." (Chung-kuo
Ch'ing nien, No. 19/20, October 1961.)
 -4 /

difficult even now to be completely sure about the extent

of this criticism, for most of the incriminating evidencc
has been furnished, belatedly. by the prosectution in the
Cultural Revolution and consists only in incomplete quo-
tations alleged to contain offensive dz'"Ic meanings, many
3L
of these hidden in historical allegory.
The criticism appears to have been most acute in
Peking, ;here prominent writers, like the historian Wu Har;
(who was also deputy mayor), and Party propaganda officials
such as Teng T'o, Liao Mo-sha, and Li Chi employed periodi-
cals and newspapers controlled by the Municipal Party Com-
mittee to launch their veiled attacks. Thus, Wu Han's
series of essays and plays published between 1959 and 1962
on the heroic but much-abused Ming dynasty officials
Hai Jui and Yu Chien were later interpreted by the arbi-
ters of the Cultural Revolution as a defense of P'eng
Teh-huai, an attack on Mao, and a demand that unfairly
5 2
dismissed officials be reinstated.

5 1
1n the present atmosphere of paranoid reexamination
of former writings and statements, it is sometimes forgot-
ten that, on the key issue of attitudes toward the position
and thought of Mao, the "liberal" period of 1959-1962 ex-
hibiced a rising tide of public adulation. Thus, the Hong
Kong cor-.:spondent of The Econ-..ist, writing in the fall of
1960, noted a dramatic rise in "the cult of Mao" that had
begun early the preceding year: "As the ideological dispute
with Moscow waxed," he observed, "so did the deification of
the omniscient Mao gather weight and momentum. And so pre-
sumably will it ,.ontinuc to do." (October 1, 1960, p. 53.)
52
1In mid-August 1967, during a renewed Maoist
attack
on Liu Shao-ch'i, the charge was raised that in 1962 "the
Khrushchev of China" had encouraged P'eng Teh-huai to write
an 80,000-word statement aimed at effecting a reversal of
his Lushan censure and dismissal. kccording to an article
in Hung Ch'i (No. 13, August 17, 1967), Liu "openly tried
 ra

-48-

Similarly, essays and newspaper columns authored or

co-authored by Teng T'o during this period were viewed in

to reverse the verdict" at an enlgrged work conference of

the Central Coriittee held in January 1962, at which he
defended P'eng's dissent, observing that much of it was in
accord with the facts, and deplored the struggle against
P'eng and his associates as one that had overstepped its
limits. Still more recent Maoist sources maintain that,
in the course of the "vigorous struggle," Liu launched a
"frantic attack" against Mao, declaring that "to oppose
Chairman Mao is only to oppope vne individual" and advo-
cating the principle of open opposition within the Party
as well as among the people. He allegedly was immediately
supported by Lu Ting-i, wh0 xecalled that even -he ancipnt
emperors bad tolerated opposition, as was shown by the
case of Wei Cheng, a dissident statesman of the T'ang dy-
nasty whose biography Lu had recently ordered to be pub-
lished. Afterward Liu was said to have mobilized his
supporters and intensified his schemes to usurp Party and
state leadership, assisted in this effort by P'eng Chen,
who spread the suggestion that Chairman Mao be asked "to
make his exit." (Jen-min Jih-pao, November 9, 1967.)
If these charges are true, and if Liu's motive in
urging P'eng Teh-huai's reinstatement was actually to chal-
lenge Mao's authority -- as opposed to honoring the Lushan
censure resolution by heeding its admonition to manifest
."an attitude of great sincerity and warmth" toward P'eng to
"help him recognize and rectify his mistake," which would
have been good Maoist doctrine -- there might have been
good cause for Mao's alarm. The plays and operea nn the
theme of Hai Jui's unjust dismissal from office, for ex-
ample, could then be seen as part of a deliberate plot to
prepare public opinion for P'eng Teh-huai's restoration.
Similarly, Lhe Central Committee's relaxation of economic
controls in the early 1960s -- permitting free rural mar-
kets, private garden plots, and other incentives through
which to raise production -- could be construed as evidence
of a conspiracy to restore capitalism.
The recent accusations also indicate, however, that
Liu did not succeed in promoting P'eng Teh-huai's exonera-
tion and restoration of power. If Mao and his followers
were thus strong enough to thwart Liv,'s alleged bid, one
wonders why they did not at the time make any move to

- Z___• • _j - , _ - - . .. . . " . . . ... :

 -49-

1966 as having slyly satirized the Leap Forward for its

boasts and illusions, praised the unyielding spirit of
righteous officials unjustly dismissed, deprecated before
all the world the "empty talk" of "East Wind Prevailing
over West," and, worst of all, parodied Mao as a victim of
"amnesia," a man who monopolized decisions, rejected good
advice, and needed a "complete rest," or cure, by a blow
to the head from "a specially made club."'53
From the viewpoint of those whose suspicions were
aroused, the covert, esoteric criticisms of the intellec-
tuals may well have seemed less serious than the tolera-
tion -- even protection -- of those critics by the Peking
CCP's first secretary, P'eng Chen, and the Party's central
propaganda apparatus under Lu Ting-i and his deputy, Chou
Yang. Although these men remained unexceptionably hard-
line and pro-Mao in their public statements and behavior,
they were ultimately accountable for the misdeeds of those
over whom they held authority. Indeed, Chou Yang, for one,

expose the conspiracy and curb Liu's powet. Instead, Liu

enjoyed a role of increasing prominence and responsibility,
with Mao's acquiescence if not his blessing. If Liu did
attempt in some way (perhaps now exaggerated) to rehabili-
tate P'eng Teh-huai or to encourage greater freedom of c-p-
position (brut not "excessive struggle") within the Party in
1962, his actions evidently were not regarded by Mao and
his supporters as so seriously offensive or threatening to
their authority as to require any overt response.
Excerpts from Teng T'o's writings singled out for
condemnation may be found in Yao Wen-yuan, "On the 'Three-
Family Village' ," and in Lin Chieh et al. (comp.), "Teng
T'o's 'Evening Chats at Yenshan' Is Anti-Party and Anti-
Socialist Double-Talk," originally published in May 1966
and reprinted in The Great S cialist Cultural Revolution in
China, Vols. 1 and 2, Foreign Languages Press, Peking,
1966.
 -50-

was accused during the Cultural Revolution of having acted

hypocritically, in remaining publicly upright while pri-
vately condemning the "subjective idealIi -" of the Great
Leap, defending "revisionist" writers, and camping down
54
the rising adulation of Mao.
As regards the liberal phase c,. the early lcbOs, iL
sý-uld 6e noted that the accused c,.'cs have stoutly pro-
tested their innocence of deliberate- -.,L'ongdoing. Innocent
or guilty, the subtle criticisms for which they are being
blamed were not likely at that time to find a very wide
audience, since considerable sophistication would have been
required to translate their hidden meanings. Though much

5
4K. S. Karol, who had had a lengthy interview with
him in the spring of 1965, believes that this indictment
against Chou Yang contains "puzzling polemical falsifica-
tions." He reports that in their interview Chou had
"sharply sttscked" many of the very ideas that are now
being imputed to him: "He is accused, for example," writes
Karol, "of having considered the 'bourgeois realism of the
nineteenth century' as the summit of the arts, while in
fact he told [Karol] exactly the opposite. It is claimed
that he was in agreement with Ting Ling during the Yenan
controversies of 1942 and that he was her protector during
the 'hundred flowers' crisis of 1957, although in fact he
was her main opponent. He is presented to the world as an
admir.•r .- Vhrushchev, although in fact he talked to [Karol]
abu.. Soviet premier with complete con.empt."
Indoed, Chou, in talking with Karol, seemed to anticipate
themes of the Cultural Revolution when he condemned the
rigidity of the Soviet regime for having stifled the growth
of proletarian culture in Russia. He criticized the CPSU.
much as Mao might have, for entertaining the "absurd theory"
that the class struggle and contradictions had ended with
nationalization of the means of production. Such an analy-
sis, he contended, had led the Soviets to an art that was
"neither realistic nor socialistic -- [butl simply a ver-
sion of bourgeois art." K. S. Karol, China: The Other
Communism, Hill & Wang, New York, 1966, pp. 276-277, 284-285.
 -51--

is made of them now, they did not then occasion either

acknowledgment or rebuttal from those supposedly atta.ked.
More important, they had no perceptible effect on the
orientation or policies of the regime, whatever may have
been their influence on individuals.
Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that Mao --

alerted perhaps by his censorious political secretary,

Ch'en Po-ta, and his termagant wife, Chiang Ch'ing --
suspected the critics and, grievously wounded by their
personal barbs, became obsessed with what he believed to
be their potential threat to his own power and place in
history and to the orientation of the regime itself.
Such an obsession would have coincided with the conviction
of other leaders, around mid-1962, that a general collapse
had been averted and some progress was being made toward
recovery -- a prospect which presented an opening for the
gradual reimpoeition of tight social controls. Many of
the top leaders besides Mao probably thought such a move
desirable, alarmed as they were by the "spontaneous ten-
dencies to capitalism" they detected among the peasantry
in the course of the decentralization of collective farm-
ing and the acquisition of Drivate plots and sideline
production, and found reflected also in a rash of articles
by urban economists advocating price and profit mechanisms
55
as a basis for industrial planning and management.

55Probably the most notable of these articles was en-

titled "A Tentative Discussion on Economic Accounting of
Industrial Enterprises," and signed by two obscure econo-
mists, Yang Jun-jui and Li Hsun. Published in Jen-min
Jih-pao, July 19, 1962, and translated in SCM.P, No. 2817,
September 12, 1962.

SI
 -52-

A lamentable paucity of reliable data makes it im-

possible to de:ermiiiL the exLent of sympathy, if any, amo-ng
individual leaders for the relatively liberal economic views
aired in the first part of 196Z The noticeable cessation
thereafter of any free discussion of this kind, howevcr,
and the firm action taken by the Tenth Plenum in September
to tighten controls and restrict "capitalist tendencies,"

suggest the absence of any serious deviation within the

top leadership from the basic goals and principles of Com-
munist economic management. Although most of the limited
economic freedoms of the earlier period were to be retained,
the leadership appeared determined to curb any further re-
laxation of controls over collectivized agriculture or
small-scale industry and commerce. True, one of the charges
recently heard during the Cultural Revolution was that
Liu Shao-ch'i, Teng Hsiao-p'ing (referred to as "the other
top capitalist-roader"), and others were doing everything
in their power in 1962 to restore capitalist agricultural
and industrial policies; indeed, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, speak-
ing in July 1962 at a meeting of the Communist Youth League's
Central Committee that was also attended by P'eng Chen,
Lu Ting-i, and Yang Shang-k'un, was said to have advocated
a return to an individual peasant economy, declaring that
"black or white, if cats can catch mice, they are all
right." But when Mao criticized these views (which may
actually have gone little beyond a reiteration of certain
"compromise" features of the economic policy then in ef-

fect, Teng reportedly was "scared out of his wits,"

ordered the offending remarks deleted fro'm the minutes of
the meeting, urged his hearers not to spread false informa-
tion, and confessed: "I forgot to stress the question of
 -53.-

cole-iLIve economy. I did not mean to invent some theory

,,5b
to reject collective economy.

At the Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee. in

September 1962. Mao, who ib said to have .onvened that
r,.eeting, resumed a mole actibe leadership role. He con-
demned "bourgeois" Irends rot only in literatute and art
but also in thi cconomy, s;.eaking out especially against,
the restoration of limited private ownership and incentives J

in agriculture, and he ,irged more inret,,ivc poliLical edu-

caciun for youth to maintain the purity of the revolution.
To counter the objectionable trends ,nd ensure the desired
influence among the masses, Mao called for a nationwide
campaign of "class struggle" and "socialist education,"
and he subsequently gave instructions for the launchiný;
of a mass movement for socialist education in the rural
57
areas.
According to sources associated with the Cultural
Revolution -- though these may border on the apocryphal -

Mao also used the Tenth Plenum to let it be known (pri-

vately, at least) that he considered himself the target of
subtle literary attacks. H,- allegedly said that "The use
of fiction for carrying out anti-Party activities is a
great invention" and intimated that P'eng Tch-h:ai -- or
whoever was writing in his behalf -- was one of the great

56
Radio Peking (Domestic Service) December 3, 1967;
Jen-min Jih-pao, February 10, 1968.
57
"Struggle Between the Two Roads in China's Country-
side," Hung Ch'i, No. 16, November 23, 1967.

- - .-...-~-..--'------.-----.---.--~--.-----
__________________ .. -- ~ --
-~-.--.---- - ________________________
._______________ . - -.- ~ <
1 -54-

,,58
"inventors. Mao must have been gratified by the ses-
sion's final communique. which acknowledged the need to
continue the class struggle throughout the long period of
transition to communism, decried such persistent bourgeois
influences in society as the force of old habits and spon-
taneous tendencies toward capitalism, and urged vigilance
r against attempts by reactionary elements to restore
I capitalism.
In addition to the communique, the Central Committee
k promulgated a resolution in September 1962 designed to
strengthen the collective economy through the communes and
to further agricultural production, and to these ends
issued a revision of the "60 Regulations" governing rural
work, which had been adopted in the more liberal atmos-
I phere of 1961. A text of the revised draft was published
in Taiwan in May 1965 by the National Security Bureau,
S~59
Republic of China.

FRUSTRATION AND THE MAOIST IDEOLOGICAL REVIVAL

Although thf: Tenth Plenum marked the end of the lib-

eral period brought on by the failure of the Leap Forward,
the tightening of controls in the years following was not
accompanied by radical shifts in the regime's policies.
From 1963 onward, the most remarkable change, at a more

5 See Wen Hung-ch.n et al., "Pao-wei Yenan," Jen-min

Jih-pao, November 12, 1967.
59
"Nung-ts'un Jen-min Kung-she Kung-tso T'iao-li
Hsin-cheng Ts'ao-an" (Revised Draft of Work Regulations
for Rural People's Communes).

I
!
 -55-

basic level, was the rapidly rising emphasis on ideology,

particularly as personified in Mao and crystallized in
his thought. Ideology was used both as an instrument of
social rectification and as a way of stimulating the masses
to greater efforts toward the attainment of revolutionary
goals. Beyond this, in the face of continuing intractable
problems in the objective situation, and in the absence of
any new and promising solutions, the great ideological re-
vival came more and more to serve as a kind of cosmic
panacea. If carried to its logical, conclusion, such an
approach became a threat to the tenuous balance between
ideal and practical components in the regime's orientation
-- a balance Lhat had been restored in the early 1960s
after it had been affected by the disastrous course of the
60
m.inic Leap Forward. Leaders who had been able to unite
in approving the unprecedented shift leftward in 1958 did
not necessarily feel disposed, after their brush with
disaster, to seek national salvation through a new campaign
aimed at reviving the class struggle and getting the masses
to give their hearts to Chairman Mao. Even the more
chastened and realistic among them, however, probably were
willing to support the revival in its early stages, be it

60
An
indication of the attempt to restore the balance
during the liberal "recovery" period was the action of the
Ninth Plenum, which moderated the radical economic poli-
cies of the Leap Forward and at the same time called for a
major rectification campaign. (See Jen-min Jih-pao, Janu-
ary 21, 1961.) This campaign, however, which in somewhat
vague terms was ordered to proceed "stage by stage and
area by area" throughout the nation, did not prove to have
the impact of the later "socialist education movement."
 -56-

because of their abiding faith in indoctrination and an

inability to suggest anything better, or be it, simply,
because Mao demanded it and because concessions in the
S1 "cultural" area appeared to them as a way of limiting
interference elsewhere.
Moreover, Lin Piao, upon assuming P'eng Teh-huai's
position as Minister of Defense, had plunged immediately
into efforts to strengthen political and ideological work
in the PLA, advancing slogans such as the "Four Firsts,"

which emphasized the human element, politics, ideology,

and the living of ideology. Although intensive work
toward the achievement of a nuclear capability conti,,ued,

I it was a distinctly separate effort with little, if any,

I impact on the general trend away from military profession-
alisa. Lin repeatedly called on members of the armed
forces to study and live by the thoughts of Mao. In 1961
he had a small volume of the Chairman's sayings compiled
and printed for use in the army -- the precursor of the
I little red-covered book later waved by millions of chant-
ing Red Guards. 61 In the controlled military enviroriment,
the emphasis on Maoiqt faith and works was rapidly intensi-
fied, although it is fair to assume that skepticism, even

61
Ironically, the later volume included a statement
I in which Mao spoke favorably of Liu Shao-ch'i, a passage
that was deleted only in the second, revised edition of
the book, in May 1967, over a year after the Cultural Revo-
lution had publicly erupted. In looking back to the ori-
gins of the Cultural Revolution, it is also interesting
to note that a call for the posting of ta-tzu-pao and for
a course of "unity-criticism-unity" was issued in the PLA
at the same time that Lin Piao launched the army's cam-
paign to "study the thought of Mao Tse-tung." That cam-
paign was based on a resolution of October 20, 1960 (for
 -57-

if suppressed, continued to be felt in some quarters of

so vast and varied an institution as the military. After
a brief relaxation of controls during the darkest period
of the economic slump, the army rapidly put "politics in
command" and, beginning in December 1963, was held up as
a model for the entire nation to emulate. Soon afterward,
a program was launched to create PLA-style political de-
partments in all industrial, finan.ial, and commercial
units of the government, from the national ministries
down to local enterprises, and to have a parallel structure
of departments for economic affairs at all levels of the
62
Party. The army under Lin Piao thus became the most
powerful institutional convert to the new. revivalist
ideological approach.
Party and government were less positive in their re-
sponse. Besides enjoying more freedom of expression than
did soldier? under military discipline, the civilian person-
nel represented a higher level of educational attainment
and, by and large, a greater degree of spiritual independ-
ence. While reiterating dutifully the outworn slogans of
the Great Leap, administrative spokesmen began to hint that
"policy" errors, as well as bad weather and the perfidioua

the "Strengthening of Political and Ideological Work in

the Army"), which Lin had guided through an enlarged meet-
ing of the Military Affairs Committee. (See Kuna-tso
T'una-h@Un, No. 3, January 7, 1966, in Cheng, The Politics
of the Chinese Red Army, pp. 66, 74, 77.)
62See discussion in Chalmers Johnson, "Lin Piao's Army
and Its Role in Chinese Society," Part II, Current Scene,
Vol. 4, No. 14, July 15, 1966, pp. 4-6.

- - ------
- --
 -58-

63
Soviets, had contributed to its failure. In the country-
side the "class struggle" campaign lagged, and, despite
sporadic and sometimes intensive rectification drives --
directed particularly against the hapless rural cadres who
were charged with corruption and inefficiency -- there
seemed little disposition tc, abolish the earlier conces-
sions to private incentives. In some areas, the ambitious
attempt to politicize the nation's economic and commercial
organs apparently ran into difficulties, as ministers and
managers refused to accept the new cadres (often soldiers)
sent out to create the PLA-type political departments and,
instead, installed their own trusted personnel in these
posts. It is conceivable that Mao and some of his most
devoted disciples (for example, Lin Piao and Chiang Ch'ing)
may also have been disturbed -- and personally resentful
-- over another "secular" trend, represented by the rising
prestige of Liu Shao-ch'i, his upgrading of the chairman-
ship of the Republic, and the more prominent role assumed
65
by his wife, Wang Kuang-mei, as "first lady."

63
This
admission appeared publicly in a Jen-min Jih-pao
editorial of December 4, 1963. Individual exhaustion, dis-
illusionment, and self-interest were added to an already
growing process of bureaucratization and routinization in
the civilian organs, rendering them less keenly responsive
to Maoist revolutionary goals.
6 4 Red
Guard sources have leveled this charge at, among
others, the venerable T'an Chen-lin (Minister of Agriculture)
and the conspicuously successful YU Ch'iu-lU (Minister of
Petroleum).
GoLiu's position as heir apparent to Mao was greatly
enhanced by the republication, in 1962, of "How To Be a
Good Communist" (perhaps better translated "On the Culti-
vation of Comriunist Party Members"), which Liu had origi-
nally written ot Yenan in 1939. The unprecedented
 -59-

In the winter of 1963/64, the regime, spurred by an

insistent Mao, responded to all the frustrations and

prominence and wide dissemination accorded this work in

1962 suggested an attempt to put Liu almost on a par with
Mao as a leading theoretician of the Chinese revolution,
with Liu the architect of victory in the cities, and Mao
the guiding genius in the countryside. While criticisms
of Liu in the Cultural Revolution have since charged that
the republication of this book (especially in the light of
certain revisions incorporated in it) was deliberately de-
signed to denigrate Mao, this is an extremely arbitrary
interpretation and the very opposite of the impression
left by Peking's official media at the time. To be sure,
aspects of the work -- such ar the relatively moderate tone
of the 1962 version, the soft-pedaling of "struggle," the
condemnation of "dogmatism," and the exhortation to '"self"-
cultivation -- can now be faulted on the basis of changed
criteria. However, Liu's continuing veneration of Mao
seems unquestionable, as two American specialists pointed
out at the time, when they wrote that the revised work
"showed signs of increased deference to Mao, suggesting a
deliberate intent on the author's part to profess his per-
sonal subordination to Mao's authority. Thus, Liu inserted
many quotations from Mao -- some of them in poor context
-- which had not been in the original Yenan lectures, and
he also left out a statement he had made in the earlier
text to the effect that in the CCP 'we . . . do not idolize
anybody.'" (A. A. Cohen and C. F. Steffins, "Disillusion-
ment Within the Ranks," Problems of Communism, May-June
1963, pp. 12-13m)
In a recently published self-criticism, Liu himself
allegedly said that the 1962 reprint of his revised trea-
tise was undertaken "because some people had it carried
forward and because a certair person had revised the book
on [Liu's] behalf." The text of Liu's confession was con-
tained in a Peking ta-tzu-pao of August 2, a r~sume of
which was published in Mainichi, August 3, 1967. Still
later, Red Guard sources declared that Liu had falsely
identified the "certain person" responsible for the second
edition of his book as K'ang Sheng. They pronounced this
a malicious lie since, in January 1962, K'ang allegedly
dissolved a special "compilation committee" which the
Party's Central Secretariat (at Teng Hsiao-p'ing's instiga-
tion) had established a year earlier specifically to edit

fa - - - _ __ . - . . . ..
 -60-

pressures that had arisen in the objective situation with

a marked renewal of emphasis on ideological education and
purification. A nationwide "socialist education" campaign
was aimed at reeducating the entire population in social-
ist ideology, which, in addition to stressing the "class
struggle," was increasingly identified with the thought of
Mao Tse-tung. The masses were exhorted to study and apply
Mao's thought in the manner of the PLA's "ordini-..a .xtra-
66
ordinary" hero, Lei Feng. The lessons learned were to
be applied in "three great revolutionary movements" -- the
class struggle and the struggles for production and scien-
67
tific experimentation. Mao had warned that only through
these struggles could China guard against the evils of

the "Selected Works of Liu Shao-ch'i." This last charge,

which cannot 1.. verified, appeared in the Canton Wen-ko
T'ung-hsUn (Cultural Revolution Bulletin) of December 11,
1967, translated in SCMP, No. 4097, January 11, 1968,
pp. 5-7.
66
For example, see the editorial "Endeavor To Learn
Well the Thought of Mao Tse-tung," Jen-min Jih-pao,
March 26, 1964. During the next two years a nationwide
campaFign unfolded for the study of Mao's thought, which
catie to be presented as a panacea for all human problems.
In the course of the Cultural Revolution it has now been
charged, however, that Liu Shao-ch'i and others were
critical of the resumption of Mao study. Liu is said to
have declared in 1964 that "formalism" and "oversimplifi-
cation" were infecting the program. (See the third of
seven articles in Chieh-fang ChLn Pao attacking Liu, as
excerpted by NCNA, Peking, October 12, 1967.) If authen-
tic, these "slanderous" remarks of Liu -- undocumented
phrases taken uut of context -- did not appreciably affect
the rising adulation of Mao.
6 7
Jen-min Jih-pao, January 1, 1964.
 I.i

-61- _7

68
bureaucratism, revisionism, and dogmatism. In his view,
there was a very real danger of a counterrevolutionary
restoration that would ultimately lead to China's "changing
color. ,,69
The renewed emphasis on indoctrination was accompanied
by a seveLe tightening of controls in the intellectual and
cultural sphere. In the autumn of 1963, Chou Yang. deputy
head of the CCP Propaganda Department, called upon intel-
lectuals to struggle relentlessly against all expressions
of dialectical unity, revisionism, and humanism. Under
such admonitions a campaign of surprising intensity was
unleashed against prominent philosophers, writers, and
artists. In mid-1964, what had started as an apparent
philosophical debate over differing interpretations of the
concept of "contradictions" resulted in the furious con-
demnation of Yang Hsien-chen, a well-known Party

68
See his draft of a "Resolution of the Central Com-
mittee of the Chinese Communist Party on Some Problems in
Current Rural Work," May 20, 1963, as published in Issues
and Studies (Taiwan), Vol. 2, No. 8, May 1966, pp. 58-59.
Tte passage containing that warning also was quoted in an
article by Jen Li-hsin in Jen-min Jih-pao, May 21, 1967.
It is interesting to observe that, although the above draft
resolution -- also known as the "ten-point decision" --
was primarily designed to deal with concrete economic and
cadre problems, it stressed the importance of ideological
regeneration, containing this statement by Mao: "The cor-
rect thinking that is representative of the ideologically
advanced class will develop into a material force to reform
the society as well as the world once it comes into the
grasp of the masses.
69See excerpt from Mpo's "The Seven Well-written Docu-
ments of Chekiang Province Concerning the Cadres' Partici-
pation in Physical Labor," as quoted in "Khrushchev's
Phoney Commuuism and Its Historical Lessons for the World,"
Peking Review, No. 29, July 17, 1964, p. 26.

K777;717
 -62-

theoretician, member of the Central Committee, and former

head of the Higher Party School. Yang was censured for
his notion that "two combine into one" (instead of "one
divides into two"), a concept said to neglect the proper
Maoist emphasis on struggle and to leave the way open for
reconciliation with class enemies and revisionists. The
attack on Yang served at once to help define the philo-
sophical basis for the new revolutionary struggle to en-
sure China's eternal "redness," and to underline the
serious importance of the new drive -- from which not even
members of the Central Committee were to be immune. Sub-

sequent campaigns cut down soch prominent thinkers and

essayists as Chou Ku-ch'eng, who had argued that art should
transcend classes and reflect the entire "spirit of the
age," and Feng Ting, who had deprecated the "cult of the
personality" and stressed the values of human happiness
and tranquility, and they attacked among other celebrated
literary figures Ouyang Shan, Hsia Yen, Shao Chuan-lin,
Fan Hsing, and, ultimately, even the Minister of Culture,
Shen Yen-ping (Mao Tun), who was not reappointed in 1965.
At the same time, measures were being taken to "reform"
the substance of literiature, art, and music. Although
these efforts were not always well publicized at the time,
we have recently been informed that

In 1963, under the guidance of Chairman Mao

himself, the revolution in literature and
art was launched in China, marked mainly by
the reform of the dramatic arts; that was,
in fact, the beginning of the Great Prole-
tarian Cultural Revolution. 7 0 (Emphasis
added.)

70
Jen-min Jih-pao, January 1, 1967.
 -63-

Western music was banned outright. At the urging of Mao's

wife, Chiang Ch'ing, a former Shanghai movie actress, the
traditional Peking opera was rewritten in an effort to cut
out "feudal" vestiges and highlight revolutionary mores
and themes, an attempt that has recently been termed "a
clarion call" of the Cultural Revolution and even "the
great beginning" of it. 71 Ironically, one of the most vig-
orous and outspoken champions of th- Chinese opera "reform"
in 1964 was P'eng Chen, head of the CCP's Peking Municipal
Committee. His political star rose rapidly thereafter, and
in September he received the supreme accolade, official
recognition as a "close comrade in arms" of Chairman Mao.
Progress in implementing the new Maoist ideology was
evident in many areas. On June 30, 1964, Hung Ch'i spoke
of "a big revolution on the cultural front." At the same
time, there was talk of eliminating entirely the tradition-
al intellectual, whose specialized knowledge was a product
of book-learning and who was divorced from physical labor.
In August the Central Committee issued a directive on "Two
Educational Systems and Two Systems of Labor," which called
for the resumption of the work-study schools that had thrived
early duiing the Leap Forward but had disappeared in 1959.
In September a booklet entitled "A Great Revolution on the
72
Cultural Front" went on sale throughout the country.

71
See
article in Hung Ch'i, No. 6, February 1967, which
also printed the text of a speech delivered the previous
July by Chiang Ch'ing before a forum of artists and officials
who were connected with a festival of the new opera in Peking.
7 2 Radio
Peking (Domestic Service), September 5, 1964.
In addition to editorials from Hung Ch'i and Jen-min Jih-pao.
the booklet contained speeches by Ko Ch'ing-shih, P'eng Chen,
and Lu Ting-i regarding cultural reforms in drama and the
Peking opera.

- -~-!
 -64-

THE CONTINUING SHIFT LEFTWARD

Mao nevertheless remained dissatisfied with the pace

of change and the less-than-universal fervor inspired by
his revivalist approach to China's problems. HQ was
troubled by reports of flagging enthusiasm, capitalist
tendencies, and corruption among the rural population and
cadres. He was pa'ticularly concerned about the revolu-
tionary commitment and the stamina of the younger genera-
tion, inexperienced and untested in combat, to whom the
present aging leadership would soon have to entrust the
regime. 73 Indeed, he had begun to have doubts about the
effectiveness, if not the reliability, of some elements
within the Party and governmental leadership, especially
in the propaganda apparatus.74

Interestingly, the swelling tide of concern over

1"revolutionary successors" in 1964 followed an important
statement by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roger
Hilsman, on December 13, 1963, which forecast a profound
erosion of ideology in "the more sophisticated second
echelon of leadership" in China. (Department of State
Bulletin, January 6, 1964.) In January 1965, Mao frankly
voiced his doubts and anxiety about the younger generation
in an interview with the American journalist Edgar Snow.
(See The New Reaublic, February 27, 1965, p. 23.) Recent
comment in the Cultural Revolution has reiterated Peking's
extreme sensitivity to U.S. expressions of hope, at about
the time of Hilsman's speech, that "new elements" would
emerge in China to "promote liberalization from inside the
regime." (See, for example, an article attacking Lu Ting-i
in Jen-min Jih-_ao, November 9, 1967.)
7 4 1n
September 1963, on the basis of four months' ex-
perience in the new phase of the "socialist education move-
ment" inaugurated by Mao's "ten-point decision" of May 20
(see fn. 68 above), the Party's Central Committee issued
a revised draft of that resolution, entitled "Some Concrete
Policy Decisions on the Rural Socialist Education Movement."
(For the text see Issues and Studies, Vol. 2, No. 9,
 -65-

Already in December 1963, if wc may believe newly-

published sources, Mao had warned that a "handful" in the

June 1966.) The new draft referred to the May 20 resolu-

tion as a "great document" which still possessed "guiding
authority"; it praised Mao's "analyses and instructions"
on the continuing class struggle in socialist society,
and explained the present redision as motivated solely by
the desire to deal with concrete problems of policy that
had been revealed by the experience of the intervening
months. Accounts published in the Cultural Revolution,
however, have since charged that the new draft was concocted
by "the other top capitalist-roader" (Teng Hsiao-p'ing) in
direct opposition to Mao's "ten-point decision." By em-
ploying "counterrevolutionary two-faced tactics" (as in
adopting the approved slogans), Teng allegedly "negated the
essential content" of Mao's concept of the class struggle,
protecting capitalist elements while obstructing or attack-
ing the masses, especially the poor and lower-mLddle-class
peasants. He was accused of thus promoting a "bourgeois
reactionary line which was 'Left' in form but 'Right' in
essence" in order to "stamp out the flames of the socialist
education movement" previously lit by Mao. (See "Struggle
Between the Two Roads in China's Countryside," Hung Ch'i,
No. 16, November 23, 1967.) Presumably, the same or simi-
lar charges would apply to a second revised draft of the
"ten-point decision," bearing the same title as the first,
which was adopted by the Central Committee in September
1964. (Text in Issues and Studies, Vol. 1, No. 10, July
1965.)
Although a full evaluation of these charges will re-
quire further study and more information, these preliminary
observations are possible: A comparison of the three drafts
(May 1963, September 1963, and September 1964) does not in
itself reveal any basic contradictions; it is possible to
account for the differences in emphasis as well as for addi-
tions and changes in the later texts without accepting the
present Maoist allegation that they were intonded to scuttle
the "socialist education movement" and promote the restora-
tion of capitalism. Since even the latter-day Maoist critics
admit that Teng and his associates employed a line which,
though "Right" in essence, was "Left" in form, any confident
judgment of the issue probably must await more and better
evidence. In the meantime, it is worth noting that, whatever

I
 -66-

CCP were continuing to promote feudal art forms. Six

months later he told the Chinese Federation of Literary
and Art Circles that, ever since 1949, literary workers,
in their associations and in "most of their publications,"
had failed to carry out the policies of the Party, "acted
as high and mighty bureaucrats," and been divorced from
the people and from the revolution; he added that "in
recent years" they had even "slid to the verge of revision-
ism," threatening, in the absence of thorough reform, "at
some future date to become groups like the Hungarian Petofi
Club.''75 Mao's emphasis on deviations and threats in the
cultural area -- which, in view of the other pressing is-
sues then confronting the regime, would seem to have been
an inordinate preoccupation with a secondary problem --
provides an important clue to his assessment of China's
real ills and his ordering of priorities in prescribing
the remedies. Just as the Petofi Club provided the ideo-
logical spark for the Hungarian revolution in 1956, Mao
feared that the existing ideological superstructure in
China ("ideological" here connoting "political," "cultural,"
qfrj "psychological"), unless brought into line with the
rrevolutionary base of the socialist economy and society,
would become the means for a resto ation of capitalism.
These thoughts were reflected in the important anti-Soviet
polemic "On Khrushchev's Phoney Communism and Its Historical

actual differences existed between Mao and other top leaders

at the time as regards the rural socialist education move-
ment, they concerned matters of cadre policy and ideology
rather than economic issues.
7 5 Excerpts
quoted in "Fight To Safeguard the Dictator-
ship of the Prol'tariat," n hi, No. 8, May 1967.
 -67-

Lessons for the World," published in July 1964. This

treatise, believed to have been penned by Mao himself,
pointed to the alleged embourgeoisement of Soviet society
in recent years as the path of degeneration into which
China would also be drawn unless the people, profiting by
the "negative example" of "Khrushchevite revisionism,"
prepared for a long and bitter struggle between socialism
and capitalism and trained millions of successors to carry
the revolution forward "from our highest organizations
76
down to the grass roots."'
Although these doubts and anxieties were felt most
acutely perhaps by Mat, ind his immediate circle, they
probably were shared by those in the top leadership who
were deeply disturbed by China's drifting and her inability
to regain the rapid momentum of the 1950s. The result was
a further shift toward the one-sided Maoist emphasis on
indoctrination and purification. At the same time, despite
the resistance noted above, the establishment of PLA-style
political departments in the nation's economic and com-
mercial offices continued and increasingly assumed the

76
Peking Review,No. 29, July 17, 1964, p. 26. ("On
Khrushchev's Phoney Cormmunism," originally appeared in
Hung Ch'i, No. 13, and Jen-min Jih-pao of July 14, 1964 --
the two periodicals' ninth and final editorial comment on
an Open Letter published by the CPSU a year earlier.) In
addition to the prevailing general emphasis on purity of
doctrine and the primacy of politics, the issue of politi-
cal reliability and effectiveness within the leadership --
as distinct from the masses -- was becoming an increasingly
prominent theme, as in this statement from a Jen-min Jih-pao
editorial of August 3: "It is the nucleus of leadership
that decides the direction for the advance of the revolution-
ary cause. ;qht!Lher the nucleus of leadership of our Party
and state at all levels consists of real proletarian revo-
lutionaries or not is a decisive matter for the success and
failure of our entire revolutionary cause."
 -68-

nature of a supplementary network paralleling the existing

propaganda apparatus.
From mid-1964 onward, the regime carried on an inten-
sive campaign to "cultivate revolutionary successors,"
focusing on the criteria for selecting worthy heirs and
on their training and tempering through struggle and hard-
ship. One of the most authoritative statements on the
nature of this campaign came from An Tzu-wen, then the
Director of the Central Committee's Organization Department.
In language anticipating that of the Cultural Revolution
(which, ironically, he did not politically survive to see),
An charged that even in the Party there were individuals
who pretended to serve Marxism-Leninism but in reality
opposed it, tolerating the notion of class compromise,
undermining socialist literature. and hindering the social-

I ization of agriculture. He concluded that the real test of

a worthy successor was a person's attitude toward the pro-

[ letariat and toward socialism in the struggle between two

classes and two lines; it determined whether he was de-
voted to socialism or was in effect working for the
"restoration of capitalism."'77

77
n Tzu-wen, "Cultivating Successors to the Revolu-
tionary Cause -- A Strategic Task for Our Party," Hung Ch'i,
No. 17/18, September 1964. The suspicions and fears of
Mao and other leaders concerned about ideological trends
must have been further aroused by the discovery in December
1964 of a scandalous hoax: A celebrated painting of young
commune laborers harvesting grain, which was reproduced in
full color on the back cover of the Communist Youth League
monthly, was found to contain several cleverly hidden
ideographs and symbols ridiculing Mao and his Great Leap
and repudiating communism. (See Charles Taylor, Reporter
in Red China, Random House, New York, 1966, pp. 15-16.)

I%
 -69-

In the summer of 1964, a decision apparently was

reached to transform the "socialist education campaign"
into a movement of unprecedented force that would permeate
society. During the spring, several high Party officials
had conducted personal inspection tours in the countryside,
and had discovered in many communes alarming evidence of
gross 5nefficiency and corrupt "capitalist" and "revision-
ist" practices among the local cadres in charge of "social-
ist education." To rectify the situation, a greatly in-
tensified "Four Clearanced' (Ssu-ch'ini) campaign was launched
to screen and reindoctrinate lower-level cadres, tighten
rural Party organizations, and clean up the financial op-
erations and management of the communes.
The focus of the attack was the basic level of cadres
in charge of the rural production brigades and teams. They
w-.re accused of failing to check the growth of "spontaneous
capitalist tendencies" among the peasantry, by permitting,
for example, the expansion of private-sideline production
at the expense of collective work, and of engaging in
personal extravagance, bribery, and the misappropriation
of funds (e.g., by awarding themselves excessive subsidies
when calculating work points). In accordance with a CCP
Central Committee directive of September 1964, the masses
of poor and middle peasants were mobilized and urged to
probe into sucn abuses, and to speak out boldly against
any wrongdoing of the cadres, particularly in the four
"unclean" areas of account books, warehouses, state proper-

ties, and work points of communes and production brigades.

An important organizational feature of the Ssu-ch'ing cam-
paign was the use of special "work teams," composed of
outsiders (often urban university students) and led by

~
K
- - -

__ _
 -70-

higher-level officials, which were dispatched to investi-

gate conditions and carry out indoctrination and reform
measures.
As a result, a storm of criticism and abuse broke over
the rural cadres at the basic level toward the end of 1964,
reducing their effectiveness and severely undermining their
prestige and authority. As Chou En-lai described it in
December 1964, the "historic" movement was to achieve a
thorough "cleaning up and 'capital construction' in the
political, economic, ideological, and organizational
fields . . so as to promote proletarian ideology and
78
eradicate bourgeois ideology."'

78See his "Report on the Work of the Government"

(Summary), December kl-22, 1964, in Main Documents of the
First Session of the Third National People's Congress,
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965, p. 28.
While the Ssu-ch'inB campaign undoubtedly involved
severe and demoralizing attacks against basic-level rural
cadres in the latter part of 1964, there is no persuasive
evidence to support the charge later raised in the Cultural
Revolution that these attacks were the product of a "bour-
geois reactionary" cadre policy -- "'Left' in form but
'Right' in essence" -- which was allegedly authored by Liu
Shao-ch'i and designed to "hit hard at the many in order
to protect the few." Even assuming that Liu did write the
September 1964 draft of the CCP Central Committee's "Some
Concrete Policy Decisions in Regard to the Rural Socialist
Education Movement" (the second revised draft of the "ten-
point decision" mentioned in fn. 74, pp. 64-65 above), it
should be noted that this document, though more hard-hitting
and harsh than the earlier drafts, was not directed solely
against the basic-level rural cadres; it called also for
an exposure and criticism of "certain cidres of higher-level
organizations" who had "instigated, supported, and protected"
the erring basic-level cadres. Thus, it would not seem to
have been designed to "hit hard at the many in order ta
protect the few." In the opinion of Richard Baum and
Frederick L. Teiwes, "if Liu committed mistakes in 1964,
these mis.akes were probably confined to encouraging

----
----
--.---
~ -.-~
-. -~- ---- -- -__ ___
 -71-

widespread investigation and criticism of basic level

cadres; they were unlikely to have been conceived as part
of a systematic effort to protect higher level 'power-
holders' ." Baum and Teiwes also point out that Liu did
not become politically culpable of such mistakes until
after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, with its
radically altered political criteria and reordered power
structure. ("Liu Shao-ch'i and the Cadre Question,"
Asian Survey, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 1968; for a contempo-
rary view, see Harald Munthe-Kaas, "China's 'Four Clean-
ups'," Far Eastern Economic Review, June 9, 1966, p. 480.)
 -73-

III. THE APPEARANCE OF CONFLICT:

PRECIPITATING FACTORS

At Mao's impatient urging the regime continued on

course after 1964 toward a more militant, heavily ideologi-
cal orientation. As before, this appeared to enjoy the
united support of the nation's leaders -- whether from un-
questioning deference to Mao's wishes or from an inability
to suggest more attractive alternatives. In practical
terms, moreover, the general trend seemed to be not so
much toward radical policy changes as toward an intensi-
•fied application of "more of the same" in the ideological
and cultural sphere. During 1965, however, with China's
mounting internal and Pxternal problems, which included
her own failure to gain economic momentum and the United
States' growing military involvement in Vietnam, there were
indications in some quarters of a disposition to pull back
and not to pin all hopes of salvation on Maoist ideology.
Yet this reluctance was clearly a matter of elementary
prudence; it was not dictated by any desire to break with
the cardinal policies of the past and go into active op-
position. Contrary to later allegations, it was not tanta-
mount to embracing a renascent "capitalist line" or "Soviet
revisionism." How far removed the advocates of a modified
course were from a "Soviet revisionist" policy was dramati-
cally demonstrated, for example, by the behavior of Liu
Shao-ch'i, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and P'eng Chen -- the three
men who now are being condemned as the top "capitalist-
roaders" -- at the Soviet Embassy's National Day celebra-
tions in Peking on November 7, 1964. Far from relaxing
in the satisfaction of Khrushchev's recent downfall or the i

w=
 -74-

pride of China's first nuclear detonation, "'eng Chen went

out of his way to deliver a scathing attack on the entire
Soviet "revisionist leadership," implying that Khrushchev's
fate awaited them all (including his host, Ambassador
Chervonenko) and suggesting that the class enemy of the
Chinese revolution was to be found right there, in the
Soviet Embassy. After witnessing the incident, Yugoslav
correspondent Branku Bogunovic made the following entry in
his diary:

Liu Shao-ch'i, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and P'eng

Chen . . came tonight to the Soviet
Embassy, firmly determined to humiliate
the enemy and bring him to his knees. I
think they left the embassy believing they
had succeeded. While Ambassador Chervo-
nenko . tried to maintain a polite
attitude . . ., they answered him with
provocation and insults. . .. What happened
this evening in the Soviet Embassy in Peking
demonstrated the highest triumph of dogmatic
79
forces in the C.C.P.

Although Chou En-lai, in his major report to the Third

National People's Congress at the end of 1964, emphasized
the necessity of the class struggle and warned against
complacency,B0 there was a perceptible decline in the

79
See Bogunovic's account, as translated from
the
Belgrade newspaper Borba., in Atlas, December 1967, p. 16.
80
See Main Documents of the First Session, especially
pp. 25-39. Many of the observations made by Chou in this
report were to be repeated -- phrase by phrase -- in the
Cultural Revolution. However, the "top capitalist-roaders,"
who in 1964 were very much in authority, gave no hint of
dissent at that time from such notions as the following:
"From 1959 to 1962, when China's economy experienced tenpo-
rary difficulties . . . the class enemies at home launched
renewed attacks on socialism. . . . In the domestic field,
 -75-

militancy of the struggle during the first half of 1965.

That summer, in contrast to the earlier stress on frugal
living and personal sacrifice for the revolution, the re-
gime's propaganda media carried a spate of demands for
greater attention to the health and material welfare of
the people and published directives designed to effect a
better balance between work (including political training)
81
and rest. Such conciliatory and pragmatic measures,
which constituted no more than a minimal tactical response

to the immediate need to spur production and .ement national

quite a few people accively advocated the extension of

plots for private use and of free markets .... [etc.,
and] 'reversing previous correct decisions.' . . . in the
international field they advocated the liquidation of
struggle in our relations with imperialism, the reaction-
aries and modern revisionism, and reduction of assistance
and support to the revolutionary struggle of other peoples."
It is highly unlikely that Liu Shao-ch'i (who was reelected
Chairman of the Republic at the 1964 NPC session), Teng
Hsiao-p'ing, P'eng Chen, or other leaders later condemned
in the Cultural Revolution could have taken those charges
as relating to themselves at the time. Even if others had
entertained such suspicions they would have been reassured
by Chou's confident assertion that "the nucleus of leader-
ship of our Party and state is guided by Mao Tse-tung's
thinking." (Ibid., pp. 26-27.) It is also worth noting
that Chou was joined in his class-struggle appeal by Lo
Jui-ch'ing, who, moreover, went out of his way to praise
Lin Piao for applying the thought of Mao Tse-tung and to
attack P'eng Teh-huai. Both Lo and the venerable Ho Lung
used the NPC platform not only to laud Mao's military
thought but to denounce "the bourgeois military line" and
"the revisionist military line" -- the very positions which
they were later accused of having espoused and for which
they were purged in the Cultural Revolution. (For reports
of their speeches at the National People's Congress
see Peking Review, No. 2, January 8, 1965, pp. 10, 12.)
8 1 See
articles and editorials in Jen-min Jih-pao,
June 21 and August 10, 1965; Ta Kung Pao, November 10,
1965; Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien, August 14, 1965.

I:
 -76-

unity in preparation for possible warfare in Vietnam, did

not contravene the regime's general trend toward a Mao-
centered, spiritual-revivalist orientation. In retrospect,
however, it appears that the aging, suspicious Mao and
his most intimate, supersensitive followers piaced Just
the opposite interpretation on them.

THE SSU-CH'ING EXPERIENCE

By the end of 1964, differences of serious potential

import had apparently be3un to arise among some of the
leadership over the implementation of the "Four Clearances"
movement. If we may believe the charges belatedly raised
against prominent Party leaders such as Liu Shao-ch'i,
Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and P'eng Chen, they and others were
guilty of withholding support from the effort and even of
sabotaging it. Thus, Ltu and his wife, Wang Kuang-mei,
who personally took charge of the campaign in a rural
Hopei production brigade (the T'aoyuan Brigade), have re-
cently been accused of carrying out a "bourgeois reaction-
ary line" there and of attempting to have their experience
emulated throughout the nation. 8 2 Similarly, P'eng Chen
has been charged with having tried (unsuccessfully) to
overturn verdicts against several "class enemies" identi-
83
fied in f -4 1 .l*ge
struggle near Peking. There have also
been deprc•.. .ng references to a "false rectification cam-
paign" said to have taken place in the cultural departments

8 2 See,
for example,
"Sham Four Clearances, Real
j Restoration," Jen-min Jih-pao, September 6, 1967.
83
jen-min Jih-pao, April 25, 1967, p. 4.

.......... ___
 -77-

under the Party's Peking Municipal Conmnittee in 1964. 84

Early the following year, according to Red Guard newspapers

and posters, P'eng Chen and Teng Hsiao-p'ing intervened at
Peking University to suppress revolutionary activists who
were criticizing President Lu P'ing, and to promote counter-
revolutionary elements to the "work team" charged with in-
vestigating the situation.
Unfortunately, the only available evidence for these
accusations is ex post facto and comes exclusively from the
side of the prosecution. In the absence of information
that can be authenticated, it is impossible to determine
either the truth of the charges or the degree to which Mao
and his present associates actually distrusted P'eng Chen
and other leaders at the time.
There is little doubt, however, that Mao was dissatis-
fied with the progress that was being made in the "Four
Clearances" movement. From a sifting of information and
misinformation presented in the Cultural Revolution it
would appear that, by the latter part of 1964, he had be-
come seriously disappointed with the "spiritless" prosecu-
tion of the campaign and its inability to achieve any deep
or dramatic results. Attributing this to failure fully to
unleash the class struggle in the countryside, he is said
to have blamed those in charge of the movement for being
overly concerned with purging the corrupt and ineffectual
low-level cadres instead of giving full rein to the poor
and lower-middle peasants' struggle against the last
vestiges of capitalist influence. In January 1965 he
apparently gave vent to this di-satisfaction at a

84 See article
criticizing T'ien Han in Ten-min Jih-pao,
December 6, 1966.
r

-78-

Politburo-sponsored National Work Conference, where he

proposed a new draft of guidelines for the "socialist edu-
cation movement," the now-famous "Twenty-three Articles.' 8 5

The new document, without renouncing the previous

guidelines of the campaign (incorporated in the September
1963 and September 1964 revisions of Mao's "Ten-Point
Decision"), stressed the necessity of unfettered mass
mobilization and "struggle." Also, perhaps to ensure the
requisite local leadership for this intensified effort, it
shifted the focus of attack away from Lhe hapless basic-
level cadres, suggesting that the vast majority were essen-
tially good, and that their mistakes could be corrected
through persuasion and education. Accordingly, the ex-
tremist measu.res of the investigating "work teams" of out-
siders were to be curbed, and the teams reduced in size.
Although the "Twenty-three Articles" did not shrink from
recommending harsh measures against the few incorrigible
cadres, their thrust was to encourage greater solidarity
between the cadres and the masses. At the same time, the
new document set as a basic objective of the campaign the
rectification cf "those Puthorities within the Party who
are taking the capitalist road."
On the basis of these changes in emphasis, Cultural

Revolutionary sources have recently claimed that as early

I85

85
The "Twenty-three Articles" were set down in a sum-
mary of the conference discussion (dated January 14, 1965)
entitled "Some Problems Currently Raised in the Rural So-
cialist Education Movement" (Nung-ts'un She-hui Chu-i Chiao-
yd Ydn-tung Chung Mu-ch'ien T'i-ch'u Ti I-hsieh Wen-t'i).
A text, printed by the CCP's Fukien Provincial Committee on
January 18. was .nade available in Taiwan by the Intelli-
F gence Bureau of tt , Ministry of National Defense (Republic
of China) the fulJLowing year, on February 2, 1966.

L!
 -79-

as January 1965 Mao had used the "Twenty-three %rticles"

to launch a severe criticism against Liu Shao-ch'i, Teng
Hsiao-p'ing, and other Party figures for their leadership
of the "Four Clearances" movement. Red Guard sources have
even quoted Chou En-lai as recalling that Mao by then had
86 Available evi-
"nearly lost all hope in Liu Shao-ch'i."
dence, however, does not bear this out. Already the afore-
mentioned Party directive of September 1964, which has been
attributed to Liu, had suggested that cadre errors should
be traced to their roots in the higher organs of the Party.
Although the "Twenty-three Articles" did mark an easing
of the struggle against local cadres, they did not cause
a major shift in the "Four Clearances" campaign toward a
87
high-level Pjrty purge. A comparison with the Party
directives of September 1963 and 1964 -- themselves re-
visions of Mao's original "Ten-Point Decision" -- fails to
show that the Articles constituted a basic political attack
on the Party directives or that they laid down entirely
new "proletarian revolutionary" guidelines for the "Four
Clearances" designed to help the campaign stren-then so-
cialism in the rural communes. Moreover, the textual differ-
ences between the various documents do not point to a dis-
pute within the leadership over substantive economic poli-
cies; rather, they suggest variations in emphasis as to
methods for carrying out the socialist education movement.

86
See text of an address attributed to Chou that was
published in the Canton Revolutionary Rebel newspaper hyna
Chan Pao, No. 15, November 29, 1967, and translated in JPRS,
"Translations on Communist China," No. 1, March 4, 1968,
p. 31.
8 7 See
the excellent analysis on this point by Richard
Baum and Frederick C. Teiwes in Asian Survey, April 1968,
pp. 336-338.

- ~- . a
 -80-

Nevertheless, the efforts of Party authorities to

keep the campaign in bounds -- which in some cases may have
involved condemning as "counterrevolutionary" some particu-
larly vengeful and unruly poor-peasant elements -- were
later construed by the more militant Maoists as proof of a
deliberate attempt to suppress the class struggle. (In-
deed, some may have felt so at the time.) More and more,
the ultrasuspicious came to regard the whole emphasis on
reeducation and reform as a way of turning "socialist edu-
cation" into an exercise in formal learning and of relying,
like the Kuomintang, on "tutelage." Similarly, the wide-
spread purge of local cadres in 1964 came to be viewed, in
retrospect, by some as an unfair and indiscriminate attack
on "the many good and comparatively good" lower-level
functionaries, designed to shield their superiors from
blame in the rural situation. In Mao's increasingly dis-
torted perspective, the stress placed on cleansing the
"Four Uncleans" eventually appeared as only a means of
avoiding genuine socialist revolution in the countryside
and as ignoring the basic contrac Lon of the ideological
88
struggle between socialism and capitalism.
Thus, by mid-1965 if not earlier, Mao and his closest
disciples were obsessed with the idea of national salvation
through ideological struggle. In the atmosphere of rising
tension and utopian expectation, any action that tended to
slow or divert the process was interpreted as a deliberate

88
For a r~sum6 of the Maoist interpretation --
at
least, as it has been revealed in the hindsight of the
Cultural Revolution -- see "Struggle Between the Two Roads
in China's Countryside," Hung Chhi, No. 16, November 23,
1967.
 -81-

counterrevolutionary threat. Any person who showed less

than single-minded devotion to Mao and enthusiasm for his
increasingly one-sided ideological approach to China's
problems was suspected of disloyalty. More and more, ob-
jective difficulties were attributed to willful opposition
to Mao and his thought. Not only were present differences
mdgnified in efforts to substantiate a given charge, but
the root causes were sought in the alleged dissident's
past criticisms and slights, real or imagined, particularly
as these were discovered through the often highly arbitrary
reexamination of his writings.

DISSENSION RISES TO THE SURFACE

Things came to a head in September/October 1965, after

Mao, either during a Central Committee work conference or
at one of related meetings held in Peking at about the same
time, called for a general renewal of the struggle against
"reactionary bourgeois ideology" and, in particular, for
criticism of Wu Han and his play Hai Jui Dismissed from
89
Office. Unfortunately, no text of Mao's speeches or
instructions is available, and we can only guess at their
content and tone from a few bits of indirect evidence.

89
According to evidence presented in 1967, Mao made
these demands at an enlarged session of the Politburo Stand-
ing Committee that included "leading comrades of all the
regional bureaus" of the CCP. This meeting ran from Sep-
tember on into October 1965.
lar" of May 16, 1967.)
(See "Central Committee Circu-
Although this would seem to point
to a series of discussions, or debates, lasting days or
I
possibly even weeks, a Peking wallposter speaking of Mao's
participation in the conference gave the date of September
10. (Mainichi, April 27, 1967.)

________ _____________ .. __ ... _.. . . - b

I

-82-

Judging from subsequent claims that the Great Proletarian

Cultural Revolution began here and was "initiated and led"
by Mao from this time forward, one can speculate that he
used the conference in the fall of 1965 as a forum in which
to voice his deepening dissatisfaction with the pace of
the ideological revival, to reiterate and perhaps elaborate
his increasingly utopian and self-cenzered vision of na-
tional salvation, and to demand an all-out effort to propa-
gate the faith and wipe out all traces of "bourgtois"
90
or "revisionist" sentiment.

I Mao was evidently determined now to force the issue,

and to compel his colleagues to make a clear choice between
his new vision and the orientation of the past, which,
though increasingly "red," still contained important bal-
ancing elements of flexibility, "expertness," tolerance of
imperfection, and a general willingness to make concessions
to reality while pursuing Communist revolutionary goals.
It was not a case of Liu Shao-ch'i, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, P'eng
I Chen, or others' proposing to launch the regime on a
I rightist course toward the restoration of capitalism; it
was, rather, a case of Mao's insisting on a radical depart-
ure from the status quo with its more moderate leftward
momentum.
In all probability, the meetings of top Party leaders
in the early autumn of 1965 were the occasion of searching
discussions and even perhaps of sharp debates. Resistance

90
Some Red Guard sources have quoted Mao as asking
his colleagues point-blank what they would do if revisionism
appeared in the Central Committee, and then suggesting that
there was great danger that this would happen.

|t
I!
 -83-

to Mao's demands and to his leadership apparently did not

approach the point of outright opposition reached by P'eng
Teh-huai at Lushan six years earlier. According to secret
Party documents, however, P'eng Chen did go so far as to
suggest, at a national. conference of propaganda officials
in September, that, since everyone had a right to speak
and all were equal before the truth, even Mao should submit
to criticism if he were wrong. And, at the same meeting,
Lu Ting-i reportedly made a speech attacking Stalin which
91
Mao interpreted as a challenge to his own position.
Ironically, however, P'eng Chen was named one of the
"group of five" (perhaps the principal member) that was

created in the wake of the autumn meetings to lead the

first stage of the cultural purification -- the investiga-
tion and criticism of Wu Han. K'ang Sheng, a stalwart Mao
supporter and veteran intelligence specialist, was also
named to the group. This mixed composition suggests that
the selection was made by a shaky consensus of disturbed
and divided leaders. Thus, P'eng Chen's prominent assign-
ment may have been sought by the more moderate elements to
balance the likes of K'ang Sheng -- or vice versa -- and
to avoid a completely one-sided investigation. It is also
possible that Mao insisted on placing P'eng in the fore-
front so as to be able to test his loyalty and, indirectly,
that of other powerful Party leaders, such as Liu Shao-ch'i

9 1
Reports of the criticisms by P'eng and Lu were con-
tained in secret Party documents seen by a former Chinese
trade official, Miao Chen-pai, who defected to the United
States in July 1966. (The Washington Star, August 31, 1966.)
The phrase "everyone is equal before the truth" was publicly
condemned as a "bourgeois slogan" in an article by Ch'in
Chung-ssu in Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien, June 16, 1966.
I=

1
 -84-

and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, whose position might be adversely

92
affected by the conviction of Wu Han and his defenders.
Although the situation harbored potential threats to
Wu Han's friends and superiors, notably ir.the Peking
Municipal CCP Committee (a potential thit may seem even
greater in hindsight), there was as yet no necessary indi-
cator that Mao was bent on a major high-level purge of
the Party. Campaigns had been launched before against
prominent literary figures -- some of whom had connections
in the hierarchy of the regime -- without touching off a
major power struggle. Even if the Cultural Revolution was
indeed essentially a power struggle at this point, there
was still time for those whom Mao had not directly con-
demned to prove their loyalty and salvage their positions
assuming they did not aspire to challenge him. To

92According to Miao Chen-pai, P'eng Chen was specifi-

cally designated by Mao to lead the Cultural Revolution.
(The Washington Post, September 4, 1966.) A Russian
commentary names Lu Ting-i, Chou Yang, and Wu Leng-hsi as
members of the group besides Yang
Sheng, suggesting
thereby that the group was weighted heavily against Mao,
to judge by the subsequent fate of those men. (See Yakovlev
Ivanovich, "The Tragedy of China," Za Rubezhom (Abroad),
Moscow, No. 40, September-October 1967, as translated in
JPRS, No. 43,132, October 27, 1967, p. 10.) It should be
noted, however, that Lu Ting-i and Chou Yang were likely
candidates for such a group simply by virtue of their
official positions in cultural and propaganda affairs.
93it has been said that leaders such as Veng Chen,
Lu Ting-i, and Chou Yang were already too compromised by
the similarity of some of their previous statements to
those of the condemned to avoid prosecution by the wrathfu!.
Mao. This interpretation seems to overinok the charac-
teristic ambiguity of the statements in question, which
would provide considerable latitude for those not directly
implicated to dissociate themselves from the condemned in

a - - •J_ _ - - ~- ----- - - -
 -85-

be sure, hints of shifts in the relative power of a few

of the top leaders were perceptible in August and September
1965 -- most notably in the fizzling of an attempt to build
up the stature of Liu Shao-ch'i and in the sudden emergence
of Lin Piao as an eminent theoretician (with the publica-
tion of his "Long Live the Victory of the People's War").
Nevertheless, no major change seemed to be in prospect that
threatened to upset the existing power rankings or to re-
order the succession to Mao, all of which had apparently
been settled for several years.

POLICY ISSUES AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

Perhaps it would be well to consider at this point

the theory, sometimes advanced, that the conflict which
arose in the fall of 1965 and precipitated the subsequent
Cultural Revolution was basically a dispute over economic
or military policies. It would seem reasonable to suppose
that the Chinese leaders were discouraged by continuing
economic difficulties, shocked by conspicuous reverses in
foreign policy (in Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere), and
anxious over the growing risks of a military confrontation
with the United States in Vietnam. In the absence of hard
evidence, we may hypothesize further that opinions in the
leadership differed on how to respond to these problems.
Indeed, such differences may have reflected two distinct
policy positions: the relatively practical-minded, con-
servative, pragmatic, and "secular" outlook presumably

forthright contrition, and it fails to take account also

of the familiar Maoist exhortation to redeem the offender
rather than seek retribution.
 -86-

found most often among administrators, economists, and pro-

fessional soldiers, and the more revolutionary, radical,
utopian, and doctrinaire position loosely associated with
the Party apparatchiks and political commissars.
It has been theorized that the leadership, in trying
to decide on the major goals and allocations for the Third
Five-Year Plan (scheduled to begin in 1966), became seriously
split over whether to continue the previous line of moderate
economic advance, which meant tolerating certain small con-
cessions to private incentive, or to launch another Great
94
Leap Forward. In the course of the Cultural Revolution
numerous accusations have been raised against the "handful"
in authority in the Party who were following the "capitalist
road"; they include charges of economic policy deviations
before the Tenth Plenum (1962) and of errors in cadre
policy thereafter. There is no direct evidence, however,
that any high-level debate on basic economic strategy took
place in the fall of 1965. A few professional economists,
such as Sun Yeh-fang, have been criticized for sniping at
the Leap Forward or advocating (especially in the "liberal"
early 1960s) "revisionist" price and profit theories at
variance with the Party line -- albeit ideas which did not
result in any important shift in the regime's economic

94
See Chu-yuan Cheng,
"The Cultural Revolution and
China's Economy," Current History, September 1967, p. 150.
Unfortunately, Dr. Cheng offers no documentation for this
hypothesis, but argues mainly from circumstantial inference
and intuition that "debates on the line of economic devel-
opment" toward the end of 1965 helped lead to a "titanic
power struggle."
 -87-

95
policies. In addition, the "handful" of accused Party
leaders have been censured for either espousing or imple-
menting policies that, although sanctioned at the time by
the Central Committee (including, presumably, Chairman
MIao), have since been modified or abandoned in accordance
with #he central leadership's changes in the economic line.
While one can challenge the fairness of these indict-
ments and question whether the ideas so condemned were
influential enough t cause major policy changes, it is
nevertheless reasonable to suppose that differences existed
within the leadership that were related at least indirectly
to economic issues. No doubt, Mao's demands for heavy
emphasis on political indoctrination and mass mobilization
were deeply disturbing to the economic realists, who fore-
saw another huge diversion of physical and mental energy
from both current production and future scientific and
technological development. But the available evidence
does not show that these general grounds for disagreement
actually precipitated a clash over economic policy in the
fall of 1965. It neither identifies protagonists and
factions nor reveals conflicting positions on concrete
questions of economic policy. Whatever economic debate
may have taken place on the eve of the Cultural Revolution,
it was not so profound as to account for the later Maoist

95
See Meng Kuei and Hsiao Lin, "On Sun Yeh-fang's
Reactionary Political Stand and Economic Programme,"
Peking Review, Nos. 43 and 44, October 2 and 28, 1966,
an article originally published in Hung Ch'i, No. 10,
1966.
 -88-

condemnation or for major changes in economic policy de-

,,96
signed to rectify previous "errors.
Some have argued that the internal dispute which came
to a head in the fall of 1965 sprang from a deep disagree-
ment over military strategy and doctrine. As to strategy,
the large-scale intervention of U.S. combat forces in
Vietnam that year undoubtedly heightened Peking's anxieties
and internal tensions. There certainly would appear to
have been much room for disagreement, whether in the course
I of assessing the American "threat" to Vietnam and ultimately
to China, or of redefining China's goals and priorities
(such as the "fraternal" commitment to the Vietnamese "war
of national liberation" as against the requirements for

defense of the Chinese homeland). On the likely premise

of increased tension and disagreement in Peking one can
hypothesize that a bitter debate over policy was splitting
the leadership iato two or more factions -- "hawks," "doves,"

I in the fall of 1965 the mo t notable change bearing

on economic policy occurred in the socialist education
campaign, where the main focus shifted from basic-level
cadres to their hsien-level superiors. The latter were
forced to confess to "bureaucratism," "commandism," "re-
visionism," and other sins. In a new emulation campaign
that began in February 1966, they were exhorted to follow
the example of Chiao YU-lu, a selfless, courageous rural
Party secretary who bad dedicated himself to the service
of the masses. At the same time, the Party leadership
continued, as it had done since 1963 or earlier, to empha-
size the goal of collectivized agriculture, calling for
the reduction of "excessive" private cultivation and for-
bidding the division of land among individual peasant
households. Neither before nor aft3r the onset of the
Cultural Revolution, however, was there any major move to
eliminate all private incentive measures, to reverse the
rising investment in the production of chemical fertilizer
for agriculture, or to return precipitously to a system in
which the commune was the basic unit of agricultural
management.

& _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 -89-

97
and possibly intermediate groupings. Unfortunately,
evidence for divergent positions on strategy must be mar-
shaled almost entirely from interpretations of the public
statements of various leaders, especially from the debatable
kind of inference based on the belief that departures from
standard phraseology and differences in nuance reveal
hidden meanings.
Extrapolating from such evidence, one can argue that
Chief of Staff Lo Jui-ch'ing, in an address he gave on
the anniversary of V-E Day in May 1965, forecast the danger
of an early confrontation with the United States, emphasized
the need for intensive conventional military preparations
to meet this threat, and even urged "united action" with
the USSR in order to facilitate this preparation, regain
the protection of the Soviet nuclear deterrent, and make
possible the "active defense" of Vietnam (including, per-
haps, an armed invasion), thus ensuring a favorable out-
come there. One may go on to say that this strategic line
of the "professionals" was emphatically rejected by Lin
Piao (representing Mao and, some believe, P'eng Chen) in
his V-J Day ar~niversary article on People's Wars, which

97
The
well-known analyst of Communist affairs Victor
Zorza wrote in November 1966: "It was the dissatisfaction
of the professional military leaders with the policy which
the ruling group was trying to impose on them that brought
the struggle to a head. . .. The real struggle began a
year ago (i.c., in the fall of 1965], with Lin Piao's
attempt to suppress the military opposition in the person
of Lo Jui-ch'ing, the Chief of Staff." The Manchester
Guardian, Ncvemhe r 3, 1966.

____
1 -90-

seemed to stress the efficacy of China's involvement in

Vietnam and the low risk it entailed, the unacceptability
of even a partial reconciliation with the Soviet "re-
visionists," and the desirability of defen'ýirg China
against possible invasion by having the masses withdraw
- 98
to the interior and mobilize for guerrilla warfare.

98 an article entitled "China's Cautious American

Policy" (Current Histor, September 1967) Ishwer C Ojha,
an exponent of this general line of interpretation, main-
tains that the U.S. intervention in Vietnam after February
1965 led to a polarization of strategic views within the
Chinese leadersh'p and the formation of "two well-defined
factions." The "interventionists," led by Lo Jui-ch'ing
and P'eng Chen (who were joined by Liu Shao-ch'i in early
1966), expected U.S. operations in Vietnam to lead to war
with China and were detezmined to render "unconditional
help" to the Vietnamese Communists even though this might
necessitate cooperation with the USSR. The "noninter-
ventionists," led by Lin Piao and supported by Mao -- and,
with lesser emphasis, Chou En-lai -- did not believe the
war would spill over into North Vietnam and China and
"offered only .cnditional assistance to Vietnam." By
August 1966, Ojha says, the debate was resolved in favor
of the noninterventionists.
Unfortunately, Ojha's case is built almost entirely
on very debatable interpretations of selected published
statements of the Chinese leaders. One wonders, for ex-
ample, whether Lo Jui-ch'ing's fear that U.S. escalation
wkI4ld lea' to war with China was not shared by many Maoists
at the tiuýL. (Certainly, Wang Jen-chung, a power in Peking
for several months after August 1966, had candidly expressed
his fear of an inevitable war from his base in Hankow in the
autumn of 1965.) According to Ojha, Lo Jui-ch'Ing favored
a strategy of "active defense." Yet it was precisely for
not accepting the "active defense" strategy that his suc-
cessor as Acting Chief of Staff, Yang Ch'eng-wu, was to
f condemn him in 1967. (Peking Review, No. 46, November 10,
1967.) Actually, the one credited with having devised the
concept of "active defense" is Mao, whereas P'eng Teh-huai
and Lo have been faulted -- perhaps unjustly -- for failing
to subscribe to it. Ojha cont,'.nds that Lo Jui-ch'ing's

I
 -91-

Between these two positions some analysts hypothesize, on

rather less evidence, the existence of a third faction,
led by Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, which was mainly
interested in China's internal developmeut but aligned it-
self with the "hawks" on the issue of more active Chinese
intervention in Vietnam in order to justify a rapprochement
with the USSR, its true purpose being the restoration of
99
Soviet economic and techIiLdl assistance.
For several reasons, this line of argument is difficult
to accept. First, it lacks adequate foundation in evidence,
for it relies almost exclusively on esoteric messages in
the public statements of certain leaders, rather than on
any clear and unequivocal expression -- in word or deed --

of dissent or deviation. The interpretations derived from

this "Aesopian translation" are strained if not downright
arbitrary. Thus, respected analysts viewing the same evi-
dence and relying on much the same method of textual
exegesis have reached very different conclusions as to the
00
'ature of the dispute and the alignments of personalities.1

strategy, which presupposed "some form of Soviet coopera-

tion," was supported by P'eng Chen. Yet the Russians have
regarded P'eng Chen as perhaps the most rabidly anti-Soviet
leader in Peking at the time. At times, Ojha's use of evi-
dence is questionable, as when he cites as representative
of Mao's anj Lin's position an article of July 1965 by Ho
Lung -- the man who is now in disgrace for allegedly having
undermined that very position at t*.e time.
9 9 An
interpretation along these lines, but positing a
subsequent split of the Mao/Lin faction with Pleng Chen, has
been advanced by Uri Ra'anan. ("Rooting for Mao," The New
Leader, March 13, 1967.)
1 0 0 For example, compare Ra'anan ("Rooting for Mao") with
the following: (1) Franz Schurmann ("What Is Happening in
China?" The New York Review of Books, October 20, 1966),

A%

- *9
 -92-

More important, exegetical interpretations that find in

the strategic debates the chief source of the Cultural
Revolution often fail to acknowledge that these debates
or similar sources ai.so afford evidence to the contrary.
Thus, they do not take account of Lo Jui-ch'ing's enthusi-
astic endorsement of Lin Piao's famous article following
its publication in September, of the consistently "hard-
line" anti-Soviet stance adopted by Liu Shao-ch'i and
Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and of P'eng Chen's violent condemnation
of "revisionist" cowardice and his militant call for revo-
lutionary warfare during a visit to Indonesia in May 1965.
as seen against the puzzling allegations by Hsieh k'u-chih
and K'ang Sheng, later on, that P'eng had glorified Soviet
"1"revisionism" and advocated capitulation with imperialism.
Such contrary evidence may, of course, demonstrate only
that Communist spokesmen reserve their disagreements for
private debate, but to say this would be to cast doubt on
any interpretation arrived at largely by textual exegesis.

The fact that Peking's strategy and commitments with

respect to the war in Vietnam appear to have remained

emphasizes Lo Jui-ch'ing's uncompromising hostility to

the Soviet "revisionists." He aligns P'eng Chen with Lo
among the "hardliners" on national liberation strategy,
and locates Liu Shao-ch'i "to the 'Left' of Mao," whom he
describes as "the man of the middle course, avoiding both
the extremes of the right and the left." (2) Morton
Halperin and John Lewis ("New Tensions in Army-Party Rela-
tions in China, 1965-66," The China Quarterly, April-June
1966) recall the "Party position" taken by Lo Jui-zh'ing
in December 1964, which contrasted with that of such mili-
tary "professionals" as Yang Yung (who, ironically, sur-
vived the purges of the Cultural Revolution until 1967 --
longer, that is, than "Party" men like Wang Jen-chung).
 -93-

unchanged and to have suffered no criticism from either

the Maoists or their adversaries (although the latter have
been accused of opposition on many other points) strongly
suggests that whatever disagreements may have developed
on that issue in the fall of 1965 were not divisive enough
to have precipitated the Cultural Revolution.
The difficulty of substantiating the existence of a
regime-splitting debate over Vietnam strategy should not,
however, obscure the likelihood that the military estab-
lishment was divided on other issues. We know that some-
time in late 1965 or early 1966 Lo Jui-ch'ing was removed
as Chief of Staff, to be replaced by the "acting" Yang
Ch'eng-wu. Moreover, on August 1, 1966, an important edi-
torial in the PIA newspaper Chieh-fang ChUn Pao revealed
that a "big struggle" had taken place in the armed forces
not long ago, the third major internal conflict since 1949.
According to the editorial, it had been a struggle against
important officers who "had given first consideration to
military affairs, techniques, and specialized work."
This suggests -- and subsequent indictments have made
clear -- that Lo Jui-ch'ing and others associated with, him
in the military establishment were believed to have sought
by various means to lessen the disruption of military
training, professional specialization, and combat prepared-
ness that Mao's increasingly unbalanced, utopian vision of
101
the PIA threatened to bring about. This is not to say

s sins were catalogued in a surge of vitriolic

articles published in the late summer and fall of 1967 and

culminating in a sweeping condemnation of Lo by his suc-
cessor, Yang Ch'eng-wu. (See Peking Review, No. 46, No-
vember 10, 1967.) In addition to the familiar pattern by
vebrddtont
0 16.)I
tefmiir atenb
A
 -94-

that they wished to reverse the trend entirely and to im-

10 2
pose a "bourgeois military line," as has been charged.

which his deviations were traced back to Wang Ming in

World War II and Lo was accused of complicity in the
Kao-Jao/P'eng Teh-huai "anti-Party intrigue" -- a remark-
able allegation in view of his promotion to Chief of Staff
after Lushan and the high commendation for loyal service
he received from Mao and Lin Piao (Kung-tso T'ung hsUn of
March 2, 1961) -- the most serious charges against Lo were
centered on his resistance to the excessive pursuit of
Mao-study in the army and on his modest interest in de-
veloping military skills. Lo, apparently in an effort to
maintain a balance in the PLA's training activities, had
supported army-wide tournaments for competition in mili-
tary skills during 1964, and the Maoists interpreted this
as a diversion from political activities and opposition
to Mao's thoughts on army-building. (Jen-min Jih-pao,
August 28, 1967.) Also, Lo's attempt to promote the study

of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism was later branded a deni-

gration of Mao-study, and his entirely natural conduct in
transmitting the reports of Liu Shao-ch'i (his superior
as Chief of State) and publicizing Liu's second edition
of "Self-Cultivation" was construed as having been designed
to vitiate Mao's position of absolute authority in the
army. When an exasperated Lo condemned ritual Mao-study
as "dogmatism," this was duly noted, especially by Lin
Piao, who seems increasingly to have regarded Lo as a
rival to be watched. When Lo allegedly questioned the
appropriateness of Mao's thought as guidance in state af-
fairs and challenged Lin Piao's claim that it was the acme
of Marxism-Leninism, the trap was effectively baited.
102See "Basic Differences Between the Proletarian
and
Bourgeois Military Lines," Peking Review, No. 48, November
24, 1967. Aside from the charge that its exponents (Lo
Jui-ch'ing, P'eng Teh-huai, and others) overvalued weapons
and technique and undervalued politics and Mao-study, the
authors of this article -- "proletarian revolutionaries"
in offices of the PTA General Staff headquarters -- seem
to have defined the most serious manifestations of the
"bourgeois military line" as opposition to the buildup of
J militia and regional forces (as distinguished from main
F forces) and resistance to the Maoist policy of "active de-
fense." The latter concept is far from clear, but, as

_ _ _ _ _

S. . . . 1
 -95-

Had they not, while continuing modest efforts to modernize

the armed forces in preceding years, led in implementing
a steady stream of measures to abandon the Soviet military
model, "put politics in command," emphasize the importance
of men over weapons, and "democratize" the armed forces
through measures that included the abolition of ranks?
To Mao in his radical and utopian mood, however, any ad-
monitions to "go slow," and even feeble resistance to the
growing demands for political indoctrination, as well as
any questioning of the use of troops for nonmilitary eco-
nomic and mass mobilization tasks or the ultimate goal of
a worker-peasant army of nonspecialists, were indications
of flagging enthusiasm that aroused serious doubts of re-
liability and furnished grounds for dismissal.
This is not to discount the likelihood that Mao's
increasingly immoderate emphasis and the priority he ac-
corded to "army building" gave rise to real and substantial
opposition in many quarters. But it is entirely possible
that the hapless Lo Jui-ch'ing was purged not so much for
his particularly advanced "professional" viewpoint or for

contrasted with the alleged "passive defense" of Mao's

adversaries (which would build up widespread defensive
works and deploy main forces around the country to man
them), it would appear to emphasize thE mobilization of
local forces and the old guerrilla strategy of "luring
the enemy to penetrate deep" into Chinese territory, fol-
lowed at propitious times by a concentration of superior
defending forces for battles of annihilation against the
invader. If this is, in fact, what the Maoists mean by
"active defense," it has not resulted in any major shifts
in recruitment, organization, or deployment since the
purge of the opposition in the Cultural Revolution. The
PLA shows no signs of reverting to a conglomeration of
guerrilla armies that would fall back to "lure" an invading
force into the interior.
 -96-

any "bourgeois" inclinations (after all, his background

was in Party and secret-police work and he would hardly
have been selected to replace L'eng Teh-huai had he not
been considered politically oriented and reliable) as be-
cause of his vacillating and ineffective leadership. Mao
may have wished to make an example of him before the power-
ful regional commanders -- who were not to be so easily
displaced. The removal of Lo also served to strengthen
Lin Piao's control over the military establishment.
In sum, though differences over aspects of economic
and military policy undoubtedly existed in the fall and
winter of 1965-66, they were extremely complex, and their
precise nature is difficult to establish. 103 Springing

103
Some of those who maintain that the Cultural Revo-
lution sprang primarily from substantive policy differences
have cited as e,,idence ta-tzu-pao allegations that certain
"anti-Party" leaders following a "bourgeois" line had
seized upon the difficulties of China's "three hard years"
(after the failure of the Great Leap) to advance a policy
of "san-ho i-shao" (literally, "three reconciliations and
one less" : reconciliation with reaction, imperialism, and
modern revisionism, and less support to revolutionary
struggles abroad). A recent self-criticism attributed to
Liu Shao-ch'i tends to cast serious doubt on the validity
of this sweeping and inadequately documented accusation --
at least, insofar as any such tendencies influenced the
top leadership. In his alleged self-criticism, which was
contained in a Peking wallposter of August 2, 1967, Liu
declared that, while the san-ho i-shao might have been advo-
cated by individual comrades, it was never brought up at
any meeting of the Central Committee, and that he "did not
even know of the existence of such an opinion." Liu also
denied that he had ever during that period attacked the
"three red flags" (i.e., the policies of the Leap Forward,
the people's communes, and the general line) -- and all his
published statements and actions at the time certainly
would seem to bear this out. (A rhsum& of this self-criti-
cism was published in Mainichi, August 3, 1967.)

IA
 -97-

from a variety of viewpoints, interests, and motivations

that were not always clear or consistent, they did not
result in a simple alignment of opposing opinions and
personalities over the whole range of issues. Thus, it
is difficult even now to categorize the disputants: Pre-
sumed "hard-liners" have since been among those most se-
verely criticized, while "soft-liners" have survived (some
of them having actually been restored from previous dis-
grace). Nor were the divisions along institutional lines
(as, for example, between Party and army); rather, they
occurred within the major institutions. All of this sug-
gests that the growing division among the leaders was not
primarily the result of a split between proponents and
opponents of certain domestic or foreign policy measures.
It was a disagreement not so much over the particular
methods, direction, and speed to be employed in order to
attain commonly-agreed national objectives -- such as
"modernization" or "Great Power status" -- as over che

nature of tho:e bal. c goals themselves and the general

approach to them.

THE IDEOLOGICAL ISSUE

The previous discussion indicates that more was at

issue by the end of 1965 than the economic or military
policies espoused by the different leaders. To be sure,
the mounting problems Peking encountered in both domestic
and foreign policies, and the failures already sustained
in those fields, very likely accentuated and intensified
existing disagreements, but they did not radically alter
the terms of these debates. The factor that now intruded
•r
I
 -98-

to nlace the entire range of policy disputes in a different

perspective was the Maoist drive for ideological revolution.
As attitudes toward the thought and personality of Chairman
Mio became the primary issue, substantive differences over
specific policies lost some of their importance and urgency,
for their solution would be determined by the outcome of
that primary struggle.
For Mao and his closest followers, national policy
goals such as economic development or enhancement of national
power (at least, as measured by the usual indices) were de-
cidedly subordinate to the attainment of an ideologically
pure, revolutionary environment. Their increasingly one-
sided stress on indoctrination and spiritual revival as the
key to all of China's problems and aspirations sprang from
a growing fear, after the Leap Forward debacle, that re-
visionism, as in the USSR, was threatening to take over the
minds of the Chinese people and their leaders. They con-
tended that, even after a Communist regime has come to power
through revolution, there is a continuing danger that this
power may be wrested again from the proletariat -- perhaps

for a prolonged period of time -- by the wiles and treachery

of the remaining bourgeois elements. It was to prevent such
a "capitalist restoration" in China that the Maoists sought
to change the outlook of society by establishing the abso-
lute authority of the thought of Mao Tse-tung. The "great
mental force generated by Mao's thought" would then be
transformed into a "great material force" able to maintain
the dictatorship of the proletariat and to "establish the
ideological foundations for the consolidation of the
 -99-

socialist system and insure the gradual transition to

10 4
communism. "
Other leaders, probably including the vast majority
of the CCP Central Committee, evidently saw in the existing
environment -- already highly politicized and oriented
toward the Left -- no menacing conflict between the re-
quirements of ideology and those of national power, and
no need to embark on a more radically Leftist, ideology-
possessed course in order to subordinate the latter interest
to the former. This was not because they had been greatly
corrupted by latent capitalist influences, as the Maoists
were later to charge. Nor did it necessarily imply (as
some Western observers have suggested) that the dissenting
high-level leaders had become unduly mellowed by the

10 4 This statement of the Maoist position appeared

later in the Cultural Revclution in the course of a seven-
article attack on "China's Khrushchev" (Liu Shao-ch'i)
published in Chieh-fang ChUn Pao between September 17 and
December 4, 1967. The passages quoted above were from the
third article, released by NCNA on October 12. In the
first article of the series (NCNA, September 17, 1967)
Lin Piao was quoted as having stressed the primacy of
ideological regeneration: "It is possible to overthrow
the political power of the bourgeoisie and other exploit-
ing classes within a comparatively short period of time.
It is also possible to overthrow their systems of ownership
within a short time. But it is in no way a simple and
easy matter to sweep them out of their positions on the
ideological front. That will take a very long time. And
if victory is not won on this front, then the victories
gained in the political and economic spheres might all be
lost." In a later article of the series (NCNA, October 25,
1967) Mao himself was quoted as having taught: "Ideologi-
cal education is the key link to be grasped in uniting the
whole Party for great political struggles. Unless this is
done, the Party cannot accomplish any of its political
tasks.'t
 -100-

natural processes of bureaucratization and routinization

resulting from their long tenure in power -- although such
trends had become painfully manifest among lower-echelon
cadres in the Socialist Education and Ssu-ch'ins movemetcs.
Indeed, the overt attitudes of the top dissenters must
have been almost unexceptionable (their behavior certainly
was unorganized and ineffectual), for their Maoist adver-
saries could do little more than condemn them for having
espoused positions which, though sanctioned even by Mao at
the time, were later altered by the Central Committee;
for the rest, their opponents have been largely reduced to
allegations of dissident thoughts and motives and to the
lame indictment that they had "waved the red flag to oppose
the red flag."
The immediate issue in the fall of 1965 that was to
divide the leadership and precipitate che Cultural Revolu-
tion arose over Mao's seemingly insignificant demand for
criticism of Wu Han and his "bourgeois" literary productions.
Dissatisfied with the progress of the campaign to defame
Wu, Mao directed an obscure journalist, Yao Wen-yuan, to
write a critique of Wu's fam us play, Hai Jui Dismissed
from Office. This critique, now said to have been written
"under the direct guidance" of Mao's wife, 105 labeled the

play a "big poisonous weed" that served the interests of

unnamed anti-Party elements and class enemies. Publication
of the article in the Shanghai Wen Hui Pao on November 10,
1965, adparently came as a surprise to P'eng Chen and the
Peking Municipal CCP Committee, one of whose representatives

105On Chiang Ch'ing's role see NCNA dispatch of

May 29, 1967.

- --.--.
 -101-

immediately telephoned the Shanghai Party Conanittee for

an explanation of the article and of the reason that Peking
10 6
had not been told of it in advance of publication.

Reproduction of the article in the Shanghai Party organ j

Chieh-fang Jih-pao and, more significant still, the army
newspaper Chieh-fang ChUn Pao at the end of November indi-
cated Mao's determination to press the attack and un-
doubtedly heightened the anxiety in Peking.
Yet there was no immediate sign of a general eagerness
to join in the assault. The predominant mood was one of
uncertainty and confusion, with hints of resistance in some
quarters. Although zhe national Party daily, Jen-min
Jih-pao, as well as the Peking Committee's Peking Jih-pao
finally reprinted Yao Wen-yuan's article, their accompany-
ing editorials avoided taking sides -- in striking contrast
to the comment of the army editors -- and called for open
debate of the case. For several weeks there was indeed a
relatively free discussion, in which some of Wu Han's
Peking associates, most notably Teng T'o, attempted to con-
duct an active defense. In addition, several powerful Party
leaders -- including, according to later indictments,
P'eng Chen and deputy propaganda chief Chou Yang -- worked
intensively behind the scenes. Despite these efforts, how-
ever, Wu Han's cause was lost, and on December 30, 1965,
Jen-min Jih-pao printed his self-criticism. In it, Wu ad-
mitted that he had "forgotten class struggle" and made
other "serious" mistakes in his writings, but he continued
to defend the purity of his intentions and stopped short

10 6
See article by Ch'i Pen-yU in Hung Ch'i, No. 7,
May 1966.

i~
 of a summary confession of political guilt. Similarly,
his vulnerable defenders began anxiously -- and, as time
would prove, vainly -- to try to make the most of the dis-
tinction between "academic error" and political culpability.
After the attack on Wu, Mao disappeared from the pub-
lic eye, perhaps to plan "cultural" attacks on others with
the help of Chen Po-ta and Chiang Ch'inv. He later inti-
mated that he had left Peking because of the lack of sup-
107
port there for his campaign against Wu Han. If so, one
may speculate on the significance of the rising prominence
of P'eng Chen and Liu Shao-ch'i in the capital at about
108
that time. On the other hand, Chou Yang, who was more
immediately vulnerable than either P'eng or Liu, delivered
a widely publicized address, on November 29, which strongly
endor3ed Mao's demand for renewed class struggle in lit-
erature and art. Besides warning against che danger of a
Hungarian-style Petofi Club's emerging in China, Chou
censured the bourgeois-feudalist tendencies in culture
during 1961-62, praised the reform of the Peking Opera

107 In a speech of October 26, 1966 (published in a

Red Guard newspaper in December), Mao reportedly declared
that, a year earlier, he had felt that his ideas could not
be carried out in Peking, and that this was the reason the
criticism of Wu Han had begun in Shanghai.
10Bp'eng was the featured speaker at the October 1
National Day celebrations; Liu was named chairman of the
Preparatory Committee for the Sun Yat-sen Centennial (to
be observer! in 1966) and, in December 1965, was lionized
as the heru of the "December 9" Student Movement on its
j thirtieth anniversary.

i
1
I
 -103-

(spurred by Chiang Ch'ing), and explicitly lauded Lin

109
Piao and the PLA as models of cultural orthodoxy.
Despite its universally acclaimed example and its
leadership in the criticism of Wu Han, the PLA apparently
was not without internal differences and difficulties. In
late November, about the time of Mao's disappearance, Lo
Jui-ch'ing vanished from public view. It was not to be-
come clear until mid-1966 that Lo had actually been re-
moved as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, and both the
exact time and the reasons for his dismissal remain ob-
scure. One may conjecture that a growing anxiety over
China's unpreparedness for war had lessened his enthusiasm
for Mao's unbalanced notions of "army-building" and the
guerrilla mystique, and that disenchantment had resulted
in uninspired leadership over subordinate military command-
ers and eventually perhaps had led to a break with Lin Piao.
The occasion for such a split (which Mao and Lin might have
forced to permit them to tighten control over the PLA)
could have come around November, when Lin proclaimed a
five-point directive for the work of the army in 1966, an
order that established the "living study and application
of the thought of Mao Tse-tung" as the highest directive
for all army work, the criterion for testing loyalty and
efficiency, and the basis for a more vigorous policy of
110
promotions. (The abolition of ranks in the P'LA, which
___ 'V

1 0 9 The
text of Chou Yang's speech, which \,,. origin-
ally delivered at a national conference of "sp.•e-time'
writers, appeared in Hung Ch'i, No. 1, Jar. .ry 1966.
1 1 0 Jen-min Jih-pao, November 27, 1965. The order also
reiterated the leading role of "politics" over military
concerns. Later, Red Guard sources were to charge that
Lo Jui-ch'ing had "opposed" and "distorted" Lin's
 -104-

had been ordered several months earlier, had already

greatly reduced the independence, mobility, and preroga-
tives of professional officers.)
Whatever the precise timing of his deposition, Lo
evidently was not present at an important twenty-day con-
ference of the PLA's General Political Department in Janu-
ary 1966. The meeting was presided over by Director of
the Political Department Hsiao Hua, who in his main report
suggested the existence of dissension within the armed
forces over the role politics should play, warned that
thenceforth promotions would be closely relatee to one's
ideological rectitude, and pointedly praised Lin Piao for
"creatively applying" the military thcught of Hao Tse-
111
tung. Other prominent leaders identified as addressing

five-point directive, stressing only its principle of

"training hard in difficult skills and in fighting at close
quarters and at night" (while relegating Mao study ýo a
secondary position) and emphasizing -- "with ulterior
C motives" -- that if "the problem of methods" were not
solved, even the best "guideline" oould be of no avail.
This contention appeared in an article entitled "Lo Jui-
ch'ing Desires To Die Ten Thousand Times for His Crimes,"
published in a joint issue of the Canton Red Guard news-
papers Chingkangshan and Kwang-tvi.ig Wei-i Chan-pao, Nos.
7-8, September 5, 1967.
"llNews reports of the conference were published on
January 25, and the text of Hsiao Hue's speech appeared in
Jen-min Jih-pao that same day. The main themes of the
speech were reiterated on February 6 in an article in
Jen-min Jih-pao, which put senior PLA cadres on notice
that military achievements in the first half of life did
not necessarily assure the correctness of political views
in the second half. Other articles and statements about
this time criticized the stress that allegedly was being
placed on military technique to the neglect of "politics,"
and called for greater emphasis on political indoctrina-
tion.
 -105-

the PLA meeting were Chou En-lai, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, P'eng

Chen, Yeh Chien-ying, and Yang Ch'eng-wu, then Deputy
Chief of Staff. (Yang later replaced Lo Jui-ch'ing as
Acting Chief of Staff, but was himself purged in the
spring of 1958.) The presence of Teng and P'eng, which
seems somewhat ironic in retrospect, indicates that both
were still amcng the top leaders carrying out the ideo-
logical rectification, and suggests that the issues which
led to their downfall were distinct from those immediately
responsible for the purge of Lo Jui-ch'ing.
The new year had begun with another call for a sharp-
ening of the class struggle and greater emphasis on the
study of Mao's thoughts. Succeeding weeks saw the un-
folding of a campaign of unprecedented zeal to glorify
Mao and his works, a swelling chorus of adulation border-
ing on deification. By the end of January the relatively
restrained Jen-min Jih-pao was enthusiastically expounding
on the "worldwide significance" of Mao's thoughts and
noting with approval that army recruits were presented a
copy of Mao's writings before anything else. Propaganda
sources found an ever-widening range of problems that
could be successfully solved through Mao study -- from the
treatment of burn victims to improvement of the PLA's
combat effectiveness. legional bureaus of the CCP joined
loudly in the praise, the Central-South Bureau resolving
on January 16 that the thought of Mao Tse-tung waE "the

nationwide movement for the study of Mao's

thoughts had been gradually gaining force for about two
years, particularly since the publication of an edizorial
in Jen-min Jjh-pao, on March 26, 1964, su moning the
maoses to "learn earnestly the thought of Mao Tse-tung."

__ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ __[
 -106-

apex of contemporary Marxism and the highest and most

lively form of Marxism" (a paean that may help account for
First Secretary T'ao Chu's subsequent meteoric, if short-
113
lived, rise in power). Commentators spoke openly of
Mao as the successor to Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, and some
declared that, in consequence, the center of world commu-
nism had moved from the USSR to China.
Although February and March saw something of a lull
in public attacks against Wu Han, we now know that inten-
siv ideological discussions and politJcal maneuvering
went on behind the scenes. From January 25 to March 5, a
national conference of political workers in industry and
communications met in Peking, following which Lin Piao,
exceeding his authority as PLA commander, addressed a
letter of commendation to the civilian participants, prais-
ing them for placing Mao study first and doubtless raising
suspicions in some quarters that he was trying to move
114 Within the army,
into (ontrol of the labor movement.

113T'ao had probably already ingratiated himself with

the Maoists by taking a strong position of support for re-
form of the traditional Chinese opera (e.g., in a statement
of February 20, 1965, recalled in a Jen-min Jih-pao article
of July 29 that year) and by continuing to exalt the Leap
Forward and denounce critics of the commune system (e.g.,
in an article written for Hung Ch'i, No. 8, July 1965).
lldAlthough dated March ii, 1966, Lin's letter was not
published for some three months, by which time the purge of
the CCP's central propaganda organs was openly under way.
(See Jen-min Jih-pao, June 19, 1966.) If this delay in pub-
lication was actually part of a deliberate attempt by some
Party leaders to throttle Lin's growing power or to ob-
struct the swelling Maoist ideological tide, it would help
explain the subRequent sweeping purge of CCP propaganda
organs. On the basis of the unverified or circumstantial
evidence now at hand, however, this possibility can no more
than be suggested.

- -~~--

- ... . .. . -k
 -107-

Lin glowingly introduced Mao's wife, Chiang Ch'ing, as she

came to preside over a PLA forum on literature and art.
The forum itself, held February 2-20, 1966, arrived at the
sweeping conclusion that China's literature, drama, cinema,
opera, and art all had been politically misguided -- an
echo of Mao's bitter complaint of 1964 that his ideas on
115
culture had been ignored for years.

THE RISE OF THE POWER STRUGGLE

The widening differences within the leadership over

the nature and role of ideology, which precipitated an
increasingly open, if subtle, debate in the fall and winter
of 1965 and early 1966, gradually and almost inexorably
took on the character of a power struggle, as the chief
protagonists were unable either to resolve or to live with
their differences within the existing power structure.
For the Maoists, who had initiated the dispute and con-
tinued on the offensive, the clash of ideas was no academic
matter, although it could be argued in philosophical terms.
While they regarded the persistence of "reactionary ideas"
and wily bourgeois influences as the basic cause of the

feared "capitalist restoration," they saw the ideological

struggle as involving the ultimate question of state power.
This was clearly expressed after the Cultural Revolution had
entered openly upon the struggle for power:

. . .Forgetting about state power means

forgetting about politics, forgetting about
the basic theses of Marxism and switching

115
A summary of the forum's work and conclusions was
printed in Hung Ch'i in May 1967. (See also NCNA, May 28,
1967.) r
_______ __ ____!

K7I
 -108-

to economism, anarchism and utopianism

and becoming muddle-headed. In the last
analysis, the class struggle in the
ideological field between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie is a struggle for
leadership.1 16

In the early part of 1966, however, the relationship be-

tween the ideologicai struggle and the regime's power
structure was only gradually becoming clear to those in
the leadership who were not fully committed to a militant
Maoist position. In Peking, anxious and bewildered Pa-:tv
leaders, while echoing the praise of Mao, calling for
emulation of a loyal rural Party secretary, Chiao Yu-lu,
and joining campaigns of invective against such prominent
literary figures as T'ien Han and Chien Po-tsan, made
desperate behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent the criti-
cism of Wu Han and others from leading to a high-level
purge of the regime.
On February 12, according to recent Maoist sources,
P'eng Chen released to the CCP, in the name of the Central
Committee, an "Outline Report on the Current Academic
Discussion" purportedly made by the Group of Five in charge
of the Cultural Revolution. This report, which evidently
tried to channel the criticism of Wu Han into a politi-
cally innocuous "academic" dispute, allegedly was released
with the backing of Liu Shao-ch'i but without the approval
117
of K'ang Sheng. Mao counterattacked on March 17 with a

116From an editorialentitled "Sweep Away All Monsters,"

Jen-min Jih-pao, June 1, 1966.
11
7See the May 16, 1966, Circular of the Central Com-
mittee. According to this source, P'eng Chen held no dis-
cussions within the Group of Five and exploited his
 -109-

stinging, categorical condemnation of Wu Han, charging

that his likes were no better than followers of Chiang
Kai-shek's Kuomintang and that the Peking Municipal Com-
mittee wo j have to be dissolved if it shielded him
furter.118
further. 1 Three days later he is said to have raged:
"The Central Propaganda Ministry is the palace of the king
of Hades [i.e., Chou Yang] and so we must overthrow the
king and liberate the small devils." 1 1 9 These outbursts
(if we may accept their authenticity) were not even hinted
at in published sources at the time; they probably were
confined either to a small circle in the top leadership
or only to Mao's immediate coterie. It is interesting to
note, moreover, that Mao was not yet ready to single out
P'eng Chen for direct attack even in private -- either
because he still hoped to win P'eng over or, possibly,
because he wanted to bait a bigger trap.
The conflict over ideology and general orientation,
which thus far had been the primary force in the Cultural

position as chairman of the group to rush through a draft

of the "Outline Report" and submit it to the Party in the
name of the Central Committee. Among other errors, the
report was said to have diverted argument from the central
political issues in the Wu Han case, to have raised the
slogan "everyone is equal before the truth," and to iave
stressed "again and again that the struggle must be con-
ducted 'under direction,' 'with prudence,' 'with caution,'
and 'with the approval of the leading bodies concerned.'"
8 is
ll This information, which cannot be verified,
from a ta-tzu-pao posted in Peking on April 25, 1967, and
quoted in MHanichi two days later.
119
This quotation appears in an article entitled
"Chronology of the Two-Road Struggle on the Educational
Front in the Past 17 Years," which was included in Chiao-
yu Ko-ming (Educational Revolution). See JPRS No. 41,932,
July 21, 1967, p. 50.
 -110-

Revolution, was ncw becoming entwined with a struggle for

power. Available evidence does not, however, bear out
the subsequent allegations and innuendoes that ambitious
Party figures such as P'eng Chen cynically moved to seize
power for themselves. It suggests, rather, that successive
leaders who came under Maoist attack (either directly, or
indirectly through their proteges and subordinates) at-
tempted in desperation to preserve the status quo -- the
existing balance of power within the regime, including the
well-defined order of succession. While considerations of
power thus came to play a role, the conflict was still far
from being, at its heart, a classic power struggle. It
was not fundamentally an unprincipled strife arising out
of conflicting personal ambitions and loyalties. Even if
we hypothesize that internal tensions and disagreements
within the leadership led to the emergence of informal
alignments and interest groups, there is still no evidence
that these coalesced into power factions operating with a
distinct and relatively consistent membership and dedicated
primarily to the seizure of power.
To be sure, unofficial wallposters put up by "revolu-
tionary rebels" in 1967 were to make the sensational charge
that several top Party leaders (including Liu Shao-ch'i,

P'eng Chen, and Lo Jui-ch'ing) had plotted to oust Mao and

seize power in a military coup d'6tat scheduled for Febru-
120
ary 1966. If such a coup had been planned, it seems

120A ta-tzu-pao posted in Peking on April 17, 1967,

and signed by "revolutionary employees of the Peking CCP
Committee" declared that information compiled from records
of the Committee showed P'eng Chen and Liu Shao-ch'i to
have plotted for several years to stockpile food, arms,
medicine, and gasoline, independent of central control, in

__-7 -
 -iii-

curious that its discovery and prevention should not have

been revealed for a iaar, and stranger still that in the
interim (even after Mao and Lin Piao consolidated their
control at the Eleventh Plenum) the chief conspirators
could have been entrusted with the highest responsibili-
ties in state and Party, including the prosecution of the
Cultural Revolution. Indeed, later ta-tzu-pao quote Chou
En-lai as denying the alleged February plot, but officially
sanctioned newspapers have continued to speak vaguely of
an attempted coup, though perhaps more in reference to a
suspected general threat over the years than to any con-
1 21
crete, specifically documented conriiracy.

Peking suburbs in preparation for the February 1966 coup.

This and other posters named Lo Jui-ch'ing, Lu Ting-i, and
Yang Shang-k'un among the leaders of the plot and identi-
fied Teng Hsiao-p'ing (along with Liu Shao-ch'i) as an
"archconspirator." Other posters have emphasized Ho Lung's
alleged role in the coup, suggesting that Ho later at-
tempted to use his military connections around the country
(particularly in Szechuan) to prepare for a seizure of
power. Thus far, these charges have not been specifically
documented in official sources and cannot be verified on
the basis of available evidence.
12 'hus, a Jen-min Jih-pao editorial of April 17,
1967, in the course of an attack on Liu Shao-ch'i, referred
in vague generalities to an attempt by P'eng Chen in the
past to engineer a coup in behalf of Liu; it did not
specify when that attempt took place. On April 28, accord-
ing to Peking wallposters of May 7, Chou En-lai explicitly
denied the existence of the rumored plot for a February
1966 coup. Admitting that P'eng Chen had ordered food to
be stored in Peking suburbs to guard against any future
crisis, Chou nevertheless argued that this action had sub-
sequently been misinterpreted by the ultrasuspicious "revo-
lutionary rebels." Chou's denial was indirectly supported
by K'ang Sheng, who, although loath to criticize the sus-
picions of the rumormongers, suggested that P'eng Chen's
stationing of troops near Peking University and the People's

* ~ j.
 -112-

While there is no evidence that the leaders who had

run afoul of Mao's intensifying drive to purify the regime
were aiming for anything more than preserving the status
quo, their position became untenable in late March, when
Liu Shao-ch'i, perhaps now the strongest force for order
ard cohesion in the Politburo, left Peking with his wife
on a state visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan and, later,
Burma. It is interesting, in retrospect, to note that
their departure, on March 26, in company with Ch'en I and
his wife, came just before the last public appearance of
P'eng Chen, 122 and that Lu Ting-i also disappeared from
the scene about this time.

University in February 1966 might have been misunderstood

by the revolutionary students. (Extracts of the quoted
statement by Chou and K'ang appeared in Yomiuri, May 3,
1967.)
On the afternoon of March 26 P'eng Chen welcomed
to Peking a delegation of the Japanese Communist Party
led by its General Secretary, Kenji Miyamoto. The sub-
sequent disagreement of Japanese and Chinese leaders over
the issue of damping down the Sino-Soviet dispute in
order to provide "united assistance" in Vietnam has led
some analysts to connect P'eng's words of friendship and
praise for the Japanese with his subsequent downfall.
However, it should be remembered that Moscow has specifi-
cally identified P'eng as one of the foremost enemies of
Sino-Soviet cooperation, and many of his statements over
the years did indeed reflect a decidedly anti-Soviet bias.
Moreover, the proliferating Maoist charges against P'eng
have not, to date, included allegations of improper con-
nivance with the Miyamoto delegation. More recently,
Japanese Communist Party (JCP) aources have claimed that
a joint CCP/JCP communiqui was actually prepared (some say
it was also signed) after discussions at Peking in which
trusted supporterc of Mao -- including Chou En-lai and
K'ang Sheng -- participated though Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng
Hsiao-p'ing did not. While the contents of this draft
communiquA have not been revealed -- and it may well have

S_•l--•
_J •-• __i - -_ ._ - - -• -• ,-- •: ' -- • ' ' V e ••
 -113-

Early in April, newspaper attacks against Wu Han re-

sumed after a lull of several weeks. For the first time,
the Party organ Jen-min Jih-pao Joined in condemning Hai
Jui Dismissed from Office, calling it a "poisonous weed,"
and the critics freely alleged that Wu Han had actually
intended to exonerate P'eng Teh-huai. Meanwhile, the
army's Chieh-fang ChUn Pao stressed the responsibility of
those in positions of leadership -- including, rather
pointedly, secetcaries of Party committees -- for the
errors of their subordinates, and called for a renewal of
self-criticism even among veteran nd highly-placed cadres.
On April 14 K.,-* MW-jo, president of the Academy of Sciences
and perhaps the best-known intellectual in the regime, made
a groveling an t':xtrovaganc confession of error, condemning
all tat he k-so ever written as "worthless" in the light of
Mao's pristine standards and suitable only for burning.
Two days later, the newspapers of the Peking Municipal
Party Committee, Peking Jih-pao and Ch'ien-hsien, published
abject self-criticisms in which they reproached themselves
for having printed not only the objecticnaloic works of Wu
Han but also articles by Teng T'o and Liao K~o-sha, who had
not been previously condemned.

been an innocuous document -- both Japanese and Chinese

sources agree that it was subsequently scrapped on Mao's
personal orders when the Miyamoto delegation visited him
in Shanghai. If so, it would indicate that Mao continued
to wield supreme power in the regime well before the
purges of the Cultural Revolution. Japanese accounts of
the affair were published in the JCP organ Akahata on
November 4 and 7, 1967, in articles by Ichiro Sunama and
Junichi Konno, respectively.

.4
 -115-

IV. THE FIRST PHASE OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

On April 18, 1966, an editorial in Chieh-fang ChUn Pao

in effect publicly ushered in the first phase of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, although it made no fotmal
announcement of a new campaign and even spoke of a "social-
ist cultural revolution" as having developed over the pre-
123
ceding three years. Tracing the "struggle of two roads"
in Party history from Mao's 1942 criticism of Wang Ming
forward, the editorial noted the intensification of that
struggle which began after the Tenth Plenum (September 1962)
and was subsequently manifested in the reform of the Peking
opera. The article then called for a new upsurge of Maoist
ideological study and mass criticism that would foster a
proletarian outlook and eliminate the bourgeois vestiges
in Chinese culture (notably,
the "superstitious reverence"
124
for the liberal literature and art of the 1930s). The

12 3
Periodization always tends to be arbitrary,
but it
can be a useful device for organizing historical phenomena.
Thus, the author is not disposed to quarrel with an edi-
torial of the Shanghai Wen Hui Pao (September 30, 1967)
which has dated the "first stage" of the cultural revolu-
tion as beginning with the Maoist attack on Wu Han in No-
vember 1965 (possibly to call attention to the significance
of Wen Hui Pao's role in the attack). His position in the
present analysis, however, is that, even though dissension
and conflict first rose to the surface in the fall of 1965,
the concerted and publicized drive to launch an unprece-
dentedly sweeping and profound "cultural revolution" came
only in April of the following year.
12 4 "Hold High the Great Red Banner of Mao Tse-tung's
Thought and Actively Participate in the Great Socialist
Cultural Revolution," Chieh-fang ChUn Pao, April 18, 1966.
Subsequently, Chou Yang and other figures active in the
"national defense literature" of the 1930s were to be linked
to Wang Ming, as rightists who opposed the "proletarian"
line of Mao and Lu HsUn.
 1 - I16-

leading rote and authoritative manner assumed by Chieh-

fang ChUn Pao in this and other editorials, in May and
June of 1966, made it apparent that Mao looked to the PLA
(or, at least, its Generai Political Department) and Lin
Piao to carry out the Cultural Revoýut-on, although it was
I admitted that some elements in the irmv r:ad opposed this
assignment. The militan-. tone cf the. . ar3:_'s- a re-
I flected insuch titles as "•Never Fovr.•t tne CIac Strugg1e"
(May 4) and "Open Fire on the Black Anti-Party and Anl-
Socialist Line:" (May 8), portended a violent and thorough
purge, which would go beyond literary and art circles to
strike at "bourgeois" elements in the Party and army and
thereby to achieve a basic ideological "rectification"
touching all of society.

THE PURGE OF P'ENG CHEN

Meanwhile, there was intense political maneuvering

behind the scenes as the Peking Party Committee tried
desperately to ithstand the Maoist assault. The April 16
self-criticism of the Peking newspapers under the Committee's
control was rejected by the Maoists as a fraud, though this
was not revealed until the publication of a withering edi-
torial in Chieh-fang ChUn Pao on May 8. During most of
the critical period of March 26 to April 19, Liu Shao-ch'i
was traveling abroad (except for a brief return to Sinkiang
in the first days of April) on a trip that turned out to
be much more extensive than originally announced. On
April 21, two days after Liu's unceremonious return to
I China, Mao, who was vacationing with Lin Piao in Hangehow,
is reported to have sent a blunt letter criticizing P'eng
Chen to a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee

--__ S.... n•,•,1w ,•m

. u.. .•.
 -117-

chaired by Liu. According to the same source, a "central

conference" of the leaders in Hangehow had already
125 When he thereupon attempted
"fatally" censured P'eng.
to evade responsibility by shifcing the blame for errors
of the Peking Committee to Teng T'o, Mao again denounced
him. A Red Guard account of the backstage maneuvering in
late April stresses the role of Liu Jen (Second Secretary
of the Peking Committee and Political Commissar of the
Peking garrison), who allegedly spread the story that
P'eng Chen's only mistake was in regard to the aforementioned
"Outline Report" of the Group of Five, released in Febru-
126
ary 1966.
These and other defensive maneuvers were interpreted
by the Maoists as expcing the "revisionist nature" of
P'eng and his associates, who were described as having
crawled out of their holes like "poisonous snakes" under
127
the increasingly rigorous test of ideological loyalty.

1 2 5 This information is from a Peking wallposter put

up on April 25, 1967, and summarized in Mainichi on
April 27, 1967. Earlier, the Red Guard newspaper Chan Pao
(February 24, 1967) had referred to "documents" criticizing
P'eng Chen and the Peking CCP Committee which were sent
to it by Mao on April 21, 1966.
1 2 6 Chan Po, February 24, 1967. Liu Jen was also
accused of conspiring secretly with other members of the
Peking Party Committee (notably, Cheng T'ien-hsiang) to
thwart Mao's criticism, and of later burning compromising
documents of the Committee to evade censure.
See, for e .ample, the sensational expos6 entitled
"Thoroughly Criticize and Repudiate the Revisionist Line
of Some of the Principal Leading Members of the Former
Peking Municipal Party Committee" in Hung Ch'i, No. 9,
July 1966. i -
S-
3
 S~-118-

Apparently, some of .iao'q followers still did not fully

grasp the extent of Mao's suspicions and the depth of h.s
128
determination to purge the Party leadership. These
became clearer in early May, as Chieh-fan& ChIn Pao and
the Shanghai Party newspapers launched a series of in-
creasingly violent attacks against the Peking CCP press,
Teng T'o, and finally the "black gang" in the Municipal j
Party Committee. P'eng Chen's days were numbered.
The axe fell at an enlarged conference of the Polit-
II buro that was convened by Mao some time in May, probably
around the middle of the month. It is entirely possible
that the meeting did not take place in Peking. At least,
Mao appears to have entertained a visiting Albanian dele-
gation elsewhere early that month (perhaps at Shanghai on
May 5 -- three days before Chieh-fang Chtn Pao had publicly
129
rejecLed the self-criticism of the Peking Party press).

T h12Tus. in a speech on April 30. 1967, Ch'i Pen-vtl

recalled that, when Mao, on April 30, 1966, had exclaimed
that Khrushchevites were all around "being raised as our
successors" while the people slept, "we could not under-
stand what he meant." At that time, Ch'i continued,
traitorous elements still had a strong hold on the Party
Central Committee and its propaganda and organization de-
partments as well as on government offices. (A r~sum6 of
Ch'i's speech was published in Mainichi, May 12, 1967.)
It may be significant that Mao's unpublicized remarks of
April 1966 came two days after Liu Shao-ch'i had addressed
a visiting Albanian delegation in a major speech in which,
though he delivered a scathing attack on Soviet "revision-
ism," he neglected to mention Mao, to praise his thought,
and to refer to the Cultural Revolution.
1 2 90n May 10 Radio Peking announced that Mao had met

earlier with the visiting Albanians led by Mehmet Shehu

and had hosted a banquet in their honor (date and place
unspecified). It was his first public appearance in nearly
six months. On May II Jen-min Jih-pao and other newspapers
 -119-

Whatever the precise date and site of the fateful Polit-

buro conference, we are now told that Mao used the session
to launch an open attack direccly against P'eng Chen and
clique.
others of "the counterrevolutionary
Mao's indictment received the official endorsement
of the Party in a Central Committee Circular of May 16,
1966, which (1) dissolved the Group of Five and its offices,
(2) revoked the controversial "Outline Report" which P'eng

gave prominent coverage to the event, featuring a banquet

photograph that showed Mao with most of his top lieutenants
and the Albanian guests. Interestingly enough, Teng
Hsiac-p'ing was seen seated immediately on Mao's right,
flanked by Chou En-lai and, in third place, Lin Piao (who
had also been out of the public eye for several months).
Liu Shao-ch'i, who was not present -- although he enter-
tained the Albanians during both their eaclier and later
visits to Peking -- had presumably remained in the capital.
While we cannot be absolutely sure from present evidence
just when or where the banquet occurred, the best guess
would be thac. it was ltIld aL Shanghai on tine afternoon and
evening of May 5, since we know that Teng, Chou, and
others listed as present were there with the Albanians on
that day, and since the visitors' announced schedule
would have permitted a lengthy talk and evening banquet
then -- but not so easily on other days of their itinerary.
Had the banquet been held in Peking, it seems unlikely
that Liu Shao-ch'i would have been absent from it.
130
This information, which comes from a recent Red
Guard booklet (Chiao-yu Ko-ming, JPRS, No. 41,932), identi-
fied other members of the "clique" as Lu Ting-i, Lo Jui-
ch'ing, and Yang Shang-k'un. This may exaggerate the scope
of Mao's concept of "the counterrevolutionary clique" at
that time, although the four men have been linked in sub-
sequent Red Guard accusations. The focus of Mao's attack
probably was P'eng Chen and the Peking Party Committee.
The relatively less powerful leaders Lu, Lo, and Yang
managed to elude public humiliation for a month or more
after P'eng's downfall -- although Lo, at least, had
probably been secretly suspend J some months before the
May conference.
I -i20-

Chen had rashly circulated on February 12, and (3) estab-

lished a new group, directly under the Standing Committee
of the Politburo, to carry out the Cultural Revolution.131

Besides calling upon the CCP to "criti..LC/e and repudiate"

what were termed the anti-Party, a:-itisociali.st "so-called
academic authorities," the Circu'ir watned tha.: "repre-
sentatives of the bourgeoisie" haJ sneaked into Party,
-vernment, army, and cultural sp.i_ es and tV_. they must
be either removed or transferred to _ther positions:

[F Some of them we have already seen through,

others we have not. Some we still trust
and are training as our successors. There
are, for example, people of the Khrushchev
brand still nestling in our midst.

"Above all," said the Circular, such people must not be

entrusted with leading the Cultural Revolution. However,
it assumed that "many" were still assigned to such tasks,
thereby creating an "extremely dangerous" situation.

" 13 'The May 16 Circular, which was not published for

a year (NCNA, May 16, 1967), was originally sent to all
CCP regional bureaus, all committees of provincial and
equivalent level, all departments and commissions under the
Central Committee, all leading Party members and groups in
state and mass organizations, and the PLA's General Politi-
cal Department. Moreover, it directed that these recipi-
ents send copies of both the Circular and the erroneous
"Otline" of February 12 down to Party committees at the
heien (county) level in the civil administration and at
the regimental level in the PLA. Radio Peking, in comment-
ing on the significance of the May lb Circular a year later,
declared that it had "for the first time . . . systemati-
cally presented the theory, line, principles, and policy of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (NCNA, May 17,
1967).
 -121-

The dismissal of P'eng Chen was belatedly revealed

in an announcement, on June 3, 1966, that the Peking Party
Committee had been reorganized some time before under a
new first secretary, Li HsUeh-feng.132 In all likelihood
the purge of the CCP's central propaganda apparatus began
at about the same time, although the replacement of Lu
Ting-i and Chou Yang was not publicly announced until July.
Significantly, the central Party organ, Jen-min Jih-pao,
rather abruptly assumed an extreme Maoist tone in a series
of editorials published in the first week of June. After-
ward, the army's Chieh-fang ChUn Pao -- until then the
leading voice of the press in the Cultural Revolution --
went to some lengths of deference to affirm the authori-
tative nature of these statements.

THE WIDENING STREAM OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Meanwhile, Mao and other top leaders were publicly

and privately explaining the nature and objectives of the
"1"great revolution that touches people to their very souls."
On May 1, 1966, Chou En-lai tohd a Sino-Albanian friend-
ship meeting in Peking:

A socialist cultural revolution of great historic

significance is being launched in our country.
This is a fierce and protracted struggle of "who
will win," the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, in
the ideological field. We must vigorously pro-'
mote proletarian ideology and eradicate bourgeois
ideology in the academic, educational and journal-
istic fields, in art, literature and in all other

1i32In keeping with the regime's usual practice of re-

fraining from public attacks on disgraced Politburo members,
P'eng Chen's name was not mentioned in the official press
(as opposed to unofficial sources such as Red Guard posters)
until the publication of the May 16, .96b, resolution in
May 1967.

__-_I >
 -122-

fields of culture. This is a key question in

the developn;eit in depth of our socialist revo-
lution at the present stage, a question con-
cerning the situation as a whole and a matter
of the first magnitude affecting the destiny
13 3
and the future of our Party and country.

A few days later, on May 7, Mao issued an unpublicized

directive pointing toward the ultimate goal of this ideo-
logical revolution -- the new Ccrmunist man, imbued with
proletarian consciousness and able to act in all social
roles. He declared that persons in all walks of life --
soldiers, laborers, peasants, intellectuals, Party cadres,
and others -- should be trained in politics, culture, and
military affairs so as to become useful in industry,
agriculture, and warfare, or wherever else needed.134
Other authoritative statements pointed out, however, that
before these objectives could be realized it was necessary
to uproot all "bourgeuis" elements standing in opposition
to socialism and the thought of Mao Tse-tung: "Without
135
destruction, there will be no construction."'

Thus, as the Cultural Revolution unfolded, during

late May, June, and July of 1966, spreading out from Peking
into the provinues, its main fire was directed against the
presumed agents of "bourgeois" ideology on the cultural

13 3
NCNA, May 1, 1966.
134The content of Mao's May 7 directive was publicized
a year later in articles celebrating the anniversary of
its drafting. (See, in particular, Jen-min Jih-pao, May 8,
1967.) In education, Mao foresaw an end to the traditional
domination of "bourgeois intellectuals" (i.e., specialicts
or professionals) by such means as reduced curricula and a
broadened, albeit more superficial, scope of studies.
13 5
jen-min Jih-pao, June 4, 1966.

m m•.
. . . ..• . . . .
 -123-

front -- educators, writers, and artists as well as their

of ficial supervisors in the CCP propLganda apparatus.
Concentrating initially on institutions of higher learning
-- notably universities in Peking, Nanking, Shanghai, and
Wuhan -- the humiliation and purging of academic officials
extended downward through the entire educational system;
the attack culminated .n an announcement, on June 13,
a six-month suspension of all regular schooling to permit
of ' .

the formulation of new and ideologically purer criterJa

for student admission.
At the time, the main instruments for implementing
thz purge at the local level were "work teams" that the
Party committees sent out to the schools and universities
under their jurisdiction. Ultimate control evidently was
vested in an ad hoc group within the reg-lar central Pirty
apparatus dominated by Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao.p'ing.
The phenomenon of the work teams, which effectively puL
local Party officials in charge of directing and super-
vising the Cultural Revolution, was not a new organizational

twill be recalled that the May 16', 1966, Circular

13 ___

of tne Central Committee called for the establishment of a

new group, directly under the Politburo Standing Committee,
to take charge of the Cultural Revolution -- replacing
P'eng Chen's Group of Five. We may infer that Mao, as
Chairman of the Standing Committee, approved this arrange-
ment, which, until he himself chose to play a more active
and direct role in Peking, gave over-all responsibility
for guiding the Cultural Revolution to Liu and Teng. Pre-
sumably this would have been the case even though, as we
shall see below, on July 9 Ch'en Po-ta was revealed to be
the "leader of the group in charge of the Cultural Revolu-
tion."
 -124-

device, having been employed earlier in the "socialist

education campaign." In the absence of new, specific
directives on how to carry out the Cultural Revolution,
the teams used the techniques developed in previous recti-
fication drives, which included the selective application
of violence and terror, always carefully limited and kept
znder tight Party control. Such concern for order and
discipline was, of course, diametrically opposed to the
prevailing atmosphere of militancy, intolerance, and
suspicion engendered by the Maoist ideological revival and
the consequent denigration of formerly venerated teachers
and officials.
t
The inevitable clash between Party authority and the
revolutionary "left" occurred toward the end of May, when
Nieh YUan-tzu, a philosophy instructor at Peking University,
and six of her students, purportedly on thcir own initia-
tive, posted a ta-tzu-pao directly criticizing the uni-
versity's president and CCP Committee. The newly reorgan-
ized Peking Municipal Party Committee, apparently sensing
the potential darger in such unauthorized attacks, ordered

the poster taken down. At this point the matter was brought
to the attention of Mao (perhaps by Chiang Ch'ing), who on

June I personally ordered that the poster be published

137
throughcut China. It appeared in Jen-min Jih-pao the
following day, a portent of the future direction of the
Cultural Revolution and testimony to Mao's ultimate power.
In approving this "first Marxist-Leninist poster," as it
is now called, Mao emphasized his determination to "go to

1 3 7 See speech by K'ang Sheng on September 8,

1966, in
Current Backpround, U.S. Consulate General, Hong Kong,
No. 819, March 10, 1967.

L
 -125-

the masses." His action, according to later assessments,

"kindled the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural
1 38
Revolution and set in motion the mass movement.",
Moreover, Mao's curious reference to the poster as the
"declaration of the Peking People's Commune in the 1960s"
is now cited as evidence that he foresaw the emergence
of a "new form" of state organization -- one which, elab-
orating on the model of the Paris Commune of 1871, would
mobilize China's huge population to smash the old order,
seize power from "the handful" of Party authorities "taking
the capitalist road," and create an enti'ely new revolu-
139
tionary situation and a proletarian dictatorship.

THE LEADERSHIP OF LIU SHAO-CH'I AND THE PARTY APPARATUS

Although Mao evidently overruled the new Peking CCP

Committee on the unauthorized posting of ta-tzu-pao, he
gave no open hint of a general or profound dissatisfaction
with the leadership of the Cultural Revolution at the time,
and left the regular Party apparatus in charge of it through
June and July. It was subsequently charged, however, that
during this period "one, two, or even several responsible

13 8
See New Year's editorial entitled "Carry the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution Through to the End" in
Jen-min Jih-pao, January 1, 1967. Chou En-lai later re-
ferred to Mao's order for publication of the poster as "the
first signal" of the Cultural Revolution. (See his speech
to a Congress of Red Guards of Peking Universities released
by NCNA on March 2, 1967.)
139Ths
These claims of Mao's foresight were made in an
editorial entitled "On the Struggle of the Proletarian
Revolutionaries To Seize Power," published in Hung Ch'i,
No. 3, February 3, 1967.

e4
 -126-

persons in the Central Committee" seized upon Mao's ab-

sence from Peking to attempt to sabotage the Cultural
Revolution. They allegedly tried to impose a "bourgeois
dictatorship" on all sectors under their control, advancing
a "bourgeois reactionary line," "clamping down on different
views," and carrying out a "white terror" to suppress the
140
revolutionary activists. More specifically, according
to the later indictments, the CCP apparatus under Liu
Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing hurriedly dispatched work
teams throughout thc country without consulting Mao, who
"as early as June" had urged that the teams "not be sent
,141
out hastily." It might be more accurate to say that
Liu and Teng sent the teams in response to a risi- g number
of calls from organizations and schools for an investigation
and purge of their leaders, and that the moderateness of
this response was in keeping with the practice employed
in the earlier Ssu-ch'ing ("four clearances") campaign.

An alternative, the critics later pointed out, would have

been for the Party apparatus to give the left activists

14 0
Jen-min Jih-pao, January 1, 1967.

'l1 See November 28, 1966, speech of Chiang Ch'ing at

Peking rally of literature and art workers, excerpts of
which appeared in Hung Ch'i, No. 15, December 13, 1966.
In a speech by T'ao Chu in December, publicized in a
Peking ta-tzu-pao posted on December 14, 1966, Liu and
Teng were publicly named as leaders of the plot to sabo-
tage the Cultural Revolution (during Mao's absence from
Peking in June and July). (The Washington Post, December
15, 1966.) According to one Red Guard source, Liu dis-
patched the work teams despite the fact that, during a
conference held at Hangchow on June 9, 1966, Mao had
warned against sending them out. (Ching-kang-ghan, Febru-
ary 1 and 8, 1967.)

"OWT
 -127-

in local organizations free rein to promote spontaneous

4 2
and uncontrolled "revolution.'
Whatever may have been the intent behind their dis-
patch, the work teams seem to have acted with less than
all-out enthusiasm on encountering the raging mass criti-
cism and the purging of prominent intellectuals and Party
officials. Faced in many places with a situation rapidly
approaching anarchy, they tried to maintain some semblance
of order and Party control. As a militant young kinder-
garten teacher later complained,

The work team was the fire-extinguishing

team. Upon its arrival [at the school],
it immediately urged us to "calm down,
and not be excessive." It, in fact,

142On August 22, in

an address at Tsinghua University,
Chou En-lai declared that, when local organs requested
that work teams be sent to them ("according to the re-
quirement of the 'four-clearances' campaign"), the Party
Central and Peking Municipal CCP Committee could have
employed either of two measures: "One was to send the
work team which would seize the power of the black gang,
or suspected black gang, or the capitalist authoritarian
elements. . . . The alternative was to let the people of
the particular unit promote the revolution themselves and
throw everything into confusion for a period." In the
latter case, he took it for granted that "the people would
rise up themselves to promote the revolution under the
call of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and
follow the revolutionary path," an assumption that Liu,
Teng, and other Party rcguilars apparently were unwilling
to make. Chou complained that the Party authorities
failed to "experiment" with both courses of action, elect-
ing only to send out the work teams. Moreover, the teams
were not clearly instructed as to "policy and tasks" and
inevitably made mistakes. (See the text- cf Chou's speech,
as translated from a collection of ma:,'riels on the
Cultural Revolution published in Canton on October 28,
1966, in JPRS, No. 41,313, June 8, 1967.)

!
 -128-

encouraged the bourgeois authoritarians

S~andthe revulutionary masses.143
discouraged

As the struggle deepened, pitting individuals and groups

against each other all of whom claimed to be for Mao and
revolution, distinctions between "true" and "false" revo-

lutionaries became increasingly subjective and debatable.

As the work teams had not been given clear criteria for
judgment, they tended to procrastinate and to damp down

student extremism. For example, the team that Mme Liu

Shao-ch'i (Wang Kuang-mei) le0 to Tsinghua University on
June 21 began, as she later allegedly confessed, by de-

manding "adequate preparation" before anyone could level

accusations at individuals. Terming its critics "false
leftists" and "troublesome schemers" (a charge not without

some foundation), the team maneuvered to prolong the de-

bate, thereby "leading to a situation in which students
struggled against students, and the battlefield was en-

larged." Ultimately, according to Mine Liu, "We could no

longer control the situation and therefore resorted to

I 143See article by HsU Chien-hua in the Red Guard

periodical Hunt-se Chih-kung (Red Staff Members and Work-

ers), No. 3, January 29, 1967. (Translated in JPRS, No.
41,107, of May 22, 1967.) HsU had posted ta-tzu-pao
attacking her kindergarten principal in early June, and
this apparently had resulted in the dispatch of a work
team to the school. She was speechless with anger when
the team overrode her criticism and suggested that those
resisting its decision were "counterrevolutionary." How-
ever, her protest to the newly reorganized Peking Municipal
CCP Committee was ignored, and, because of her persistent
efforts to purge the principal, she was subsequently branded
"an "ambitious individual" (which may not have been far from
the truth).
 -129-

strong political repression."

,144 Thus, what may have be-
gun as a normal, if not perfectly legitimate, concern of
the CCP's "organization mer." for discipline and stability
ended in alienation of the "revolutionary leftists," who
-- even in the absence of any coercion -- would likely
have viewed the "work teams" as part of a plot to sabotage
145
the Cultural Revolution.
All this is not to say, of course, that Liu and the
Party apparatus were totally blameless. Their support for
Mao's increasingly radical campaign of indoctrination and
purge was at best lukewarm, and they evidently were bend-
ing every effort to bring it under firm Party control.
While Liu continued to play a very prominent political
role after his return from the extended spring trip to
South and Southeast Asia -- he presided at the May Day fete
at Tien-an-men, entertained State visitors, and, as late

144
An account of Mine Liu's confession, said to have
been written in October 1966, was published in The Wash-
ington Post, December 28, 1966.
145It would, of course, be difficult, if not impos-
sible, to identify and weigh precisely all the varied
motives driving the "revolutionary leftists." Their op-
position almost certainly sprang from a range of mixed
motives, personal and psychological as well as ideological.
Some probably were congenital radicals and malcontents;
at least a few nourished real or imagined grievances
against the established authorities; some may have acted
primarily from considerations of personal ambition, while
others were sincerely driven by an uncompromising idealism
or rigid, puritanical zeal. In any event, it would seem
reasonable to suppose that in the prevailing unstable,
iconoclastic atmosphere, and given an ill-defined --
almost open-ended -- mandate to criticize, many students
were likely to be disposed toward extremism.

i
 -130-

as July 22, 1966, was keynote speaker at a massive Vietnam

war rally -- he remained strangely quiet on the burning
topics of Mao's thought and the Cultural Revolution, in
contrast even to such "moderates" as Chou En-lai. Jen-
min Jih-pa? on July I quoted approving references to Mao's
thought by Liu and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, as well as by Chou
and Lin Piao, but did not substantially increase the pub-
lic commitment of the Party apparatus to the increasingly
146
fanatical leftwardi ouur:e prescribed by M-.
Some of the most damaging evidence against Liu Shao-
ch'i for his role in this period has been supplied in his
own alleged confessions (none of which, however, has been
accepted by the Maoists to date). According to these, Liu
presided over the CCP Central in Mao's absence from Peking
and was in charge of the Cultural Revolution for approxi-
mately fifty days after June 1, 1966. During this period
, he acknowledged I.ving made mistakes of policy, notably
I
in the dispatch of work teams which suppressed the revolu-
tionary masses, instituted local news blackouts, and for-
bade street demonstrations or the posting of ta-tzu-pao.
I This, according to Liu's reported admission, led to a
situation, beginning in Peking, in which students were
I set against students, true "revolutionaries" (a small
minority in most cases) were accused of being

1 4 6 Among
other things, this editorial (celebrating
the CCP's 45th anniversary) attempted to establish a cri-
terion for separating "true" from "false" revolutionaries.
It declared: "One's attitude toward Mao Tse-tung's
thought is the yaidstick distinguishing the genuine revo-
lutionary from the sham revolutionary and the counter-
revolutionary, the Marxist-Leninist from the revisionist."
 -131-

counterrevolutionary, student clashes erupted, and an

47
"atmosphere of terror" prevailed in many schools.

Other sources have indirectly confirmed Liu's efforts

at this time to retain some measure of discipline and
Party control over the rapidly spreading conditions of
chaotic, violent struggle in the universities and other
institutions. For example, at Liu's suggestion a "So-
cialist Institute" was established outside Peking, where

147In his firstself-criticism (delivered at a Party

meeting in October 1966 but reported only on December 26,
1966 -- in a Red Guard poster), Liu maintained that the
work teams were initially dispatched to schools and organi-
zations in the capital, through the reorganized Peking
CCP Committee, in response to "very active" requests by
important officials of departments under the Central
Committee and by the central headquarters of the Communist
Youth League. This would help explain the subsequent
violent criticism against the new Peking Party Committee
(under Li HsUeh-feng). Liu went on to explain that, after
news of the dispatch of work teams to Peking institutions
was published, requests flooded in for the sending of
such teams to many other parts of the country. The con-
tent of Liu's first confession was reported in Asahi,
December 27, 1966, and Mainichi, January 28 and 29, 1967.
Lengthy extracts later appeared in Current Scene, May 31,
1967.
In a second self-criticism (said to have been written
for a group of Peking Red Guards on July 9, 1967, and re-
ported in Mainichi on July 31), Liu repeated that in June
and July of 1966 he had made errors in "policy line and
direction" when he sent out work teams which then proceeded
to suppress the "revolutionary teachers and students."
He added that this mistake was compounded in early August,
when for three days he went to the Peking Architectural
College to direct the activities of the Cultural Revolu-
tion, in company with Li HsUeh-teng, Liu Lan-t'ao, Ku Mu,
and Ch'i Pen-yU. In this position Liu restricted the
posting of ta-tzu-pao and punished as "counterrevolution-
aries" studen- 4ho tried to distribute bulletins from
Peking University -- actions that were admittedly in "vio-
1qtion" of the May 18 Central Committee Circular (and, as

a
 -132-

some 500 prominent artists, writers, teachers, and cultural

officials who had been attacked were sent for criticisms
and reform under protective custody, thus saved for a time
from bodily injury by uncontrolled and increasingly
148
hysterical mobs of student activists. Similarly, Liu
Shao-ch'i and T'ao Chu are now said to have mitigated the
proposals for reform of the educational system in July,
which called, among other things, for the reconvening of
primary and middle schools in the fall. The proposals
later were attacked as part of a dark plot to "strangle"
149
the development of the Cultural Re.!volution in the schools.
Such evidence of moderation and reticence in the face
cf a runaway Cultural Revolution should not obscure the
very substantial "reforms" that were being carried out
under the over-all leadership of Liu and the Party apparatus.

we shall presently see, of Mao's proposal of July 24 that

work teams be recalled).
14 8
The celebrated violinist Ma Ts'e-ts'ung, who was
President of the Central Music Academy in Peking before he
fled the Mainland, later recounted his fifty-day incarcera-
tion at the Socialist Institute. The program of criticism
and thought reform was far from mild, but it was conducted
under the disciplined supervision of army men. However,
the inmates were subjected to much greater abuse and personal
danger when, occasionally, they were sent back to their
respective schools for mass criticism. When Ma and his
companions arrived at the Socialist Institute in mid-June
of 1966, they were told that they would be there from eight
to twelve months, depending on their progress in reforming.
On August 9, however, they were suddenly retur,•ed to the
hostile environment of Peking, perhaps an indication of Liu
Shao-ch'i's loss of power at that time. (See Ma Ts'e-ts'ung's
story in Life, June 2, 1967.)
14 9
"Chronology of the Two-Road Struggle," JP__, No.
41,932, p. 52.
 -133-

As early as June 9, 1966, the All-China Federation of

Trade Unions called upon its constituent organs to place
the Cultural Revolution "in the topmost position of all
work" and regard it as "the center of current trade union
work" (although emphasizing that it was to be carried out
150
under firm CCP guidance). Simultaneously with these
intensified efforts to mobilize mass support for the
Cultural Revolution, the purge of high-level Party and
government officials was stepped up. In early July, after
a barrage of public atLacks against Chou Yang and Lin Mo-
han, important changes were revealed in the leadership of
several key Party organs: "T'ao Chu was named head of the
Central Committee's Propaganda Department, a post previ-
ously held by Lu Ting-i; he and Yeh Chien-ying were
appointed to the Secretariat (Yeh presumably replacing
Lo Jui-ch'ing in that body); and Ch'en Po-ta, Mao's
trusted political secretary, was referred to as "leader

150 Kung-jen Jih-pao, June 10, 1966. The June 9 notice

instructed trade union organizations to act "under the
leadership of Party committees at all levels" and to strive
to be "competent assistants to the Party." It viewed the
Cultural Revolution primarily in ideological terms, as
"a struggle between Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tse-tung's
thought, on the one side, and capitalist and revisionist
ideology, on the other." It summoned trade unionists to
develop "a high degree of revolutionary fervor," unite
with the masses, take an active part in criticizing bour-
geois intellectual "authorities," unmask the anti-Party
"black gang" (destroying the "three-family villages" and
sweeping away all "monsters"), wipe out the influence of
"black lines" in the trade unions, and eradicate the "four
olds" (old ideology, culture, habits, and customs). Re-
garding Mao's thought as "the supreme directive for all
work" and "never forgetting the class struggle," the trade
unions were to become "schools for creatively studying
and applying Chairman Mao's works."

p _"
 -134-

15 1
of the group in charge of the Cultural Revolution."
It has been estimated that, by the end of July, at least
165 prominent literary figures, professors, and official8
responsible for cultural and propaganda work had been
purged.15
Despite these accomplishments, Mao appeared Lo be
dissatisfied. In part, his displeasure may have resulted
from unrealistically high expectations for the Cultural
Revolution following the purge of P'eng Chen and the

mid-May. By any standard, however, there were grounds

151See NCNA dispatches of July 7, 9, and

10, 1966.
Possible factors in TVao Chu's sudden elevation from
regional to national leadership were suggested on p. 106
above. The puzzling story of his equally precipitous
fall from power in late December 1966 lies beyond the scope
of the present study. Despite the subsequent Maoist at-
tempts to link him with the alleged crimes of Liu Shao-ch'i,
in June and July 1966, it would seem more likely that T'ao
was not regarded as having erred until some time after
August, when his political star reached its zenith.
15 2
See ChUn-tu HsUeh, "The Cultural Revolution and
Leadership Crisis in Communist China," Political Science
Ouarterly, June 1967, p. 178. While the vast majority of
HsUeh's total were purged in the public phase of the
Cultural Revolution after mid-April 1966, he apparently
also included among the 165 the handful of prominent offi-
cials dismissed during the earlier stages of the "socialist
education campaign." On the other hand, the Hong Kong-
based American journalist Robert Elegant has estimated
that, during the two months of June and July alone, "more
than 300 senior propagandists and educators were purged."
(The Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1967.)
15 3
The following October, in his speech to a Party
work conference, Mao recalled his profound dissatisfaction
at the lack of attention paid to articles and Central Com-
mittee announcements publicizing the Cultural Revolution
in the period from January to May. Presumably, he expected
 -135-

for disappointment, as Lne local work teams, unclear as

to their mission, stirred up a storm of resistance among
"revolutionary leftists." At Peking University the team
was itself purged by radical activists. At Tsinghua Uni-
versity, where Mine Liu's team successfully stenmmed the
opposition for a time, a minority of students in the
affiliated middle school organized into a militant combat
group -- precursor of the ReJ Guards -- dedicated to re-
bellion against the "revisionist leadership." Moreover,
there is evidence that in some places PLA political cadres
assigned to the work teams worked at cross purposes with
the Party leaeership, actively encouraging the rebellious
elements. (However, this alone would not justify the
inference of some analysts that Mao was conspiring with
Lin Piao to sabotage the efforts of the teams so as to
Teng.) 154
discredit and entrap top CCP leaders like Liu and

much more from the new leadership prescribed in the Central

Committee Cilcular of May 16.
t154iAn article in Hung Ch'i, No. 5, of 1967, tells of

the participation of three PLA political cadres on the work

team sent to carry out the Cultural Revolution at Nanking
University. Beginning in late June, they covertly played
an independent role, disagreeing with and then opposing the
provincial CCP Committee's orders and encouraging student
attacks on high university officials. These activities
were all the more serious as one of the three men was
deputy political commissar of the Kiangsu Provincial Mili-
tary District.
In assessing the significance of this story it should
be noted that such reports of PLA sabotage of the Party-led
work teams have not been widespread. Even ir this single
case, moreover, there is no indication that the PIA trio
acted on higher orders from the military establishment
(i.e., Lin Piao). Indeed, the deputy commissar might have
been acting in direct opposition to the wishes of his
superior (whose position on the matter was not revealed).
The histovy of the PLA in the Cultural Revolution is
 -136-

MAO'S ENTRY INTO DIRECT LEADERSHIP

On July 18, 1966, two days after his celebrated swim

L in the Yangtze, 155 Mao returned to Peking, where from then
on he was to play a more active role in tL.e leadership of
the Cultural Revolution. His influence was dramatically
manifeated only six days later, on July 24, when the Party
decided to recall the controversial "work teams" and to
156
convene a Central Work Conference. Shortly thereafter,

replete with examples of bold deputy commissars who were

promoted for daring to "rebel." Thus, the Hung Ch'i article,
far from substantiating a Mao/Lin plot to sabotage the work
teams (much less to entrap Liu and Teng), may be no more
than the account of a single case of three especially
F zealous -- or unscrupulously ambitious -- PLA cadres who
sought to spark student unrest and refused to abide by the
provincial CCP Committee's order to cool things down (an
order that tndy have been supported by the commissar of
the Military District).
i= ~ ~~155 Ac o n
According Lo official accounts released nine days
after the event, Mao swam a distance of almost 15 kilometers
in the Yangtze (downstream, presumably) in the incredible
time of one hour and five minutes. He was accompanied by
Wa.g Jen-chung, Second Secretary of the CCP Central South
Bureau, First Secretary T'ao Chu having previously departed
fo, Peking. For an account of the controversial swim see
Michael Freeberne, "The Great Splash Forward," Problems
of Communism, November/December 1966. More recently, Red
Guard sources have suggested that not all Chinese leaders
appreciated Mao's marathon feat, an attitude which later
got some into difficulties. Teng Hsiao-p'ing is quoted
as having expressed the rash view, doubtless in private,
that "Everyone suffers from subjectivism, Mao Tse-tung also.
Thus, many people did not want him to go for a swim, but
he completely ignored them." (Quoted from Hain Pet-ta,
January 30, 1967, in The New York Times, Jdnuary 31, 1967.)
156
See Liu Shao-ch'i's self-criticisms of October 1966
and July 1967, Mainichi, January 28 and 29, and July 13, 1967.
In his second confession,as noted earlier, Liu admitted
having continued tc support the work team at the Peking
 -137-

on August 1, the Eleventh Plenum of the CCP Central Com-

mittee convened in Peking, the first such meetiuig in
157
nearly four years.

Architectural College as late as the beginning of August

1966, 1 5 7
According to a sensational press report from

Peking, first published in the Yugoslav journal Politica

and later reprinted in other periodicals, Liu Shao-ch i
and his adherents had attempted earlier to call a plenary
session of the Central Committee, on July 21, to impeach
Mao during his absence from Peking. This was said to be
in retaliation for Mao's PLA-backed seizure of mass media
in early June and for -he purge of P'eng Chen -- who was
now busily traveling _.n the northwest and southwest lobby-
ing for the support of Central Committee members. By mid-
July, with half of those members in Peking and anti-Mao
troops on the way from Shensi, the chances cf impeachment
looked good. However, says the report, on July 17 and 18
and Tientsin and proceeded to take over the capital garri-
son, arrest Lo Jui-ch'ing (allegedly Liu's ally), and
restore Mao's position. In these circumstances Teng Hsiao-
p'ing, the CCP Secretary-General, changed his mind and
refused to call the plenary session of the Central Committee
that Liu had requested. With the situation firmly under
control, Mao returned to Peking in triumph on July 28.
As Gene T. Hsiao has pointed out (Asian Survei, June
1967), this account is of doubtful validity, for the over-
whelming weight of evidence indicates that Mao returned
to Peking on July 18 and that Lo Jui-ch'ing was not arrested
until December 1966 (although he had been diamissed from
office months earlier). While it can be argued that these
facts do not necessarily contradict the essential elements
of the "impeachment theory," other aspects of the situation
would tend to do so. For example, Liu was the most promi-
nent leader in evidence at a massive Vietnam war rally in
Peking on July 22, the day after the planned impeachment
I
plenum was to have taken place. Indeed, Liu seems to have
retained his power until the August plenum convened, More-
over, it seems doubtful that Liu and his friends desired
to restore P'eng Chen -- much less had any realistic hope
of doing so -- after the general condemnation of the Peking
"black gang" in May, June, and early July. One could also

+
 -138-

Even before its work had been concluded, pushing the

Cultural Revolution to a new stage of development, Mao
had further revealed his objectives and his determination
to induce sweeping changes. On August 1, Chieh-fang
ChUn Pao in its Army Day editorial quoted excerpts from
Mao's previously unpublicized directive of May 7, in which
he exhorted the PLA to become a "Great School" where soldiers
mastered politics and culture as well as the military
,.158
arts. The new Maoist vision revealed in this statement
was of a pure, utopian Communist society, in which all
individual interests and occupational differences (such as
those between industry and agriculture, mental and manual
t work, and urban and rural concerns) would have been elimi-
nated and the ideal of a completely selfless and inter-
changeable man realized. Mao evidently viewed this goal
as attainable only through complete commitment to the
"regenerative process of all-out ideological struggle, and,
by implication, to the total social mobilization needed
to carry out such fundamentally transforming criticism and
political study (with primary emphasis on the thought and
example of Mao himself). Those previously entrusted with
the leadership of this enterprise -- initially, F'eng Chen;

question whether the alleged troop movements around Peking

(which have not been corroborated elsewhere) would have
been necessary, inasmuch as Mao had apparently censured
P'eng Chen effectively from Hangchow, or that they would
have intimidated dissident Central Committeemen, dissuad-
ing them from assembling. Until more persuasive evidence
can be adduced, the "impeachment theory" remains interest-
ing but improbable.
1 58 As indicated above, the date
and context of the
quoted statements by Mao were not made public until May

1967.

I ~ - #.5 .-1- **
~LWn1n f ~ -.. ~ -- i
 -139-

later, the regular PFrty apparatus under Liu and Teng --

had failed to demonstrate their unreserved faith in or

commitment to this goal by not pursuing it with the en-
thusiasm, speed, and efficiency demanded by an increasingly
impatient and inflexible Mao.
In word and action, therefore, Mao now began to re-
veal that he intended to withdraw the mandate for direct-
ing the Cultural Revolution from the Party officialdom
and to confer it directly on the "masses," which meant,
ultimately, on the activating "left revolutionaries" among
them. He hinted at this in a letter to the nascent Red
Guards at Tsinghua commending their steadfast revolutionary
orientation and promising support for all who shared it
elsewhere in the counw.ry. On August 4, Mao reportedly
sent Chou En-lai to Isinghua so that he might personally
reverse the censure and end the disciplinary measures
taken against rebellious students by the work team under
Mme Liu Shao-ch'i. That the busy Chou and other top

1An indication of the immature and often petty and

personal nature of the student rebellion may be seen in the
later testimony of Chu Teh-i, one of its leaders at Tsinghua.
On April 10, 1967, Chu spoke at a mass Red Guard rally of
how he had attempted suicide (and sustained a permanently
disabling foot injury in leaping onto railroad tracks)
after Mine Liu's work team had confined him to dormitory and
ordered him to write a self-criticism. This punishment,
hardly grounds for attempting suicide to any normal person-
ality, does not seem to have been excessive in view of Chu's
own account of his behavior. Was he being condemned for
some lofty defense of Maoist principles? He rmade no such
claim. Rather; in the din of "democratic" discussion he
apparently had played the petty role of troublemaker, rais-
ing accusations against fellow-students who came from the
families of high officials (they included a daughter of
Liu Shao-ch'i and a son of Ho Lung), charging that they
were "sitting on the same bench as the work team," and even
 -140-

leaders should have been compelled to occupy themselves

seriously with the sophomoric antics and feuds of local
university students is indicative of the bizarre revolu-
tion in priorities that Mao and his supporters soughc for
the regime.
Although by then the Eleventh Plenary Session of the !
Central Committee was well under way, Mao was not content
to confine his views to its precincts -- perhaps because,
initially, he was unable to win decisive support for them
there. He continued his extracurricular activities by
personally writing a ta-tzu-pao, on August 5, entitled
"Bombard the Headquarters, My First Big Character Poster."
It began by reiterating the importance of the May 25 Peking
University wallposter by Nieh YUan-tzu and her group of
students, and then called upon all comrades to reread it
along with the accompanying commentary that Mao had ordered
printed in Jen-min Jih-pao on June 2. Despite the publica-
tion of these "well-written" messages, he complained,
in the last 50 days or more, certain
leading comrades from 1ne Central Committee
to local districts have taken the opposite
road, have adopted a reactionary, bourgeois
standpoint, have implemented a dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie, have struck down the
great stirring Cultural Revolution movement,
have confused right and wrong, mixed up black
and white, attempted to exterminate the revo-
lutionaries, suppressed divergent views,
implemented a White Terror, have spread the
power of the bourgeoisie with an air of

suggesting that Liu had sent his wife to conspire with the
team. (See David Oancia's dispatch in The New York Times,
April 14, 1967.)
 -141-

self-satisfaction and destroyed

16
the
spirit of the proletariat.

He went on to imply that these mistakes were related to

unspecified rightist tendencies in 1962 (before the Tenth
Plenum?) and to "left-in-form-but-actually-rightist" devi-
ations in 1964 (perhaps a reference to the intensified
Ssu-ch'ini campaign). Once again, Mao, frustrated by the
failure of the ideclogical revolution to keep up with his
rising expectations, sought an explanation, or rationali-
zation, in the hidden motives of those he had entrusted
with its leadership -- motives to be gleaned from a
tortuous, arbitrary, and at times paranoid reinvestigation
of their previously accepted statewents and actions.

THE ELEVENTH PLENUM

The Central Committee's meeting in the first twelve

days of August 1966 was billed as a "plenary session," but
attendance evidently was spotty, and the participants were
a very mixed lot. Although no complete list of those
present was announced, important provincial leaders are
known to have been absent. Moreover, the later sessions
appear to have been packed with "revolutionary" students
and teachers from Peking institutions. The resistance to
the decisions of the meeting that subsequently became
widespread within the Party apparatus, and the open Maoist
attacks against the vast majority of Central Committeemen
(by deed, if not always by name) suggest either that the

16 0
Text taken from the Tsinghua Red Guard paper
Ching-kang-shan of April 6, 1967, as it appeared in
Current Scene, May 31, 1967.

- - =_-
 -142-

Plenum did not have a quorum when the critical resolutions

were passed or that those voting misunderstood the nature
and implications of Mao's proposals. 161 it is also pos-
sible, of course, that the participants were temporarily
mesmerized by Mao's pretensions of authority or were
intimidated -- within the limits of legality -- by the
I kibitzing "revolutionary" masses. In any event, under

Mao's personal direction the Eleventh Plenum proceeded to

adopt a program of historic import for the Chinese revolu-
tion and to effect the most far-reaching changes in the
r Party's top leadership since its rise to power in 1949.
I The sixteen-point "Decision Concerning the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution," adopted on August 8,
termed the campaign in progress "a great revolution that
touches people to their very souls" and a new, broader,
and deeper stage of China's "socialist revolution." 1 6 2
It charged that, although the bourgeoisie had been over-
thrown in the earlier stages, representatives of that
class were "still trying to use old ideas, culture, customs,
and habits of the exploiting classes [the "four olds"] to
corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and endeavor to
stage a come-back." To counter this "ideological"

16 This may have been hinted at later in Chiang Ch'ing's

speech of November 28, where she insisted that concern for
the legal niceties of "minority" and "majority" were less 71
of
important than one's class viewpoint and true espousal
Marxism-Leninism and the "correct" Maoist line. (See ex-
cerpts of the speech in Hung Ch'i, No. 15, December 1966.)
1 6 2 "Decision
of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution," Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1966.

L|
I 7- -~_ _ - - -

- -- ~ -
---. fi -
- - -- ~ ---- ---
 -143-

challenge, the document declared, the proletariat must do

the exact opposite, employing new imperatives -- styled
as the "four news" -- in order to "change the mental out-
look of the whole of society." The present objective was

. to struggle against and overthrow

those persons in authority who are taking
the capitalist road, to criticize and
repudiate the reactionary bourgeois aca-
demic "authorities" and the ideology of
the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting
classes and to transform education, lit-
erature and art and all other parts of the
superstructure not in correspondence with
the socialist economic base. . .

In pursuing this goal, the Decision averred, "the only

method" was for "the masses to liberate themselves." This
meant that the Party leadership "at all levels" (presumably,
however, only the levels below the Mao-dominated Central
Committee) must dare boldly to "arouse the masses" -- making
the "fullest use" of ta-tzu-pao and great debates "to argue
matters out" -- "distinguish right from wrong," "criticize
63
the wrong views, and expose all the ghosts and monsters."1

163In pointed reference to the work teams previously

dispatched to universities and other institutions by the
Party apparatus, the August 8 Decision (Article 7) warned
against unnamed persons who had organized "counterattacks"
against the masses of those who put up ta-tzu-pao, and had
advanced such slogans as "opposition to the leaders of a
unit or a work team means opposition to the Central Com-
mittee of the Party . . . means counterrevolution." It
deplored the fact that "a number of persons who suffer
from serious ideological errors" (especially some of the
anti-Party rightists) were taking advantage of inevitable
mistakes and shortcomings in the mass movement to "spread j
rumors," agitate, and brand some of the masses as "counter-
revolutionaries."

- - ---
~
 -144-

To give practical leadership to the struggle ('hich,

because of the ingrained "four olds," would cake "a very,
very long time"), the Decision of Augtxst 8 specified that
"cultural revolutionary groups, committees, and congresses,"
already emerging, be permanently established in educational
institutions, governmental organs, "factories, mines, other
enterprises, urban districts, and villages." These leading
groups, themselves subject to L.igher Party authority, were
to be elected in "a system of general elections like that
of the Paris Commune," their members chosen from lists of
nominees submitted by the "revolutionary masses," who
could also criticize and recall them.
Despite the militant general exhortation to carry out
I "daring" mass criticism and the ideological struggle, the
document of August 8 exhibited a certain moderation and
balance less evident in subsequent Maoist statements and
behavior. It assumed that "the great majority of cadres"
were "good or comparatively good" and ordered that "strict-
est care" be takc-" to distinguish errant comrades (who
should be exposed and persuaded to reform' from "the handful"
of anti-Party rightists in power. The latter, after being
repudiated and overthrown, were still to "be given a chance
to turn over a new leaf." In the contention of views in-
evitable in mass debates, in which nonantagonistic contra-
dictions "among the people" would find expression, reason
and persuasion should be emphasized, rather than coercion
and force; the minority was to be allowed to argue its
case and reserve its views, and care was to be exercised
to prevent a situation of the masses' struggling among I
themselves rather than against erring or counterrevolu-
tionary elements. The Party leadership was urged to

... . ... ___...

_______
______._____°
 -145-

discover, strengthen, and rely on the "revolutionary left,"

isolate the "reactionary rightists," and strive to "win
over the middle and unite with the great majority." But,
even so, it was expected that unity with 95 per cent of
the cadres and masses would only be achieved "by the end
of the movement.' 1 6 4
Other evidence of moderation included the stipulations
that press criticism of individuals be cleared with higher
Party organs; that "patriotic" and productive scientific
and technical personnel be helped "gradually" to transform
their ideological viewpoint and work style; that the armed
forces be allowed to carry out the Cultural Revolution in-
dependently (under the CCP's Military Affairs Commission);
and that the campaign "to revolutionize people's ideology"
not stand in the way of developing economic production
("take hold of the revolution and stimulate production").
These concessions to reality may have been exacted by the
more pragmatic Party leaders as a price for their acqui-
escence in the broader decisions. They may have been the
bait with which the Maoists sought to trap suspected
opponents. Or, they may have been delib..rately inserted
by a militant but still rational Mao as a means either of
ensuring the ultimate success of the Cultural Revolution
or of facilitating a "fall-back" position in times of
tactical retreat (the "zigzags" of the "revolutio,,ary road").

It is interesting to recall that regime spokesmen

had previously used the figure of 95 per cent as descriptive
of that proportion o" the population already united in
loyalty and devotion to the socialist revolution. See, for
example, Chou En-lai's speech to the National People's
Congress in December 1964, which appeared in Peking Review,
No. 1, January 1, 1965.

- 9
 -146-

The final "CommuniquV" of the Eleventh Plenum, adopted

on August 12, 1966, was in some ways a more radical docu-
ment, reflecting the decisive triumph that Mao and his
165
supporters scored at the session. One conspicuous
feature was its emphatic praise of Mao, which suggested
ever stronger efforts to foster unquestioning belief in
his omniscient leadership:

t Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-

Leninist of our era. Comrade Mao Tse-tung

1651t is
1 possible that Mao succeeded only in the
tlast few days of the Plenum in securing a complete victory
and crushing all effectle resistance within the Central
Committee to his radical cultural revolutionary program,
with its stress on the Mao cult. Such an hypothesis
would help explain an otherwise mysterious incident in-
volving Mao which occurred on August 10-11, shortly after
approval of the sixteen-point "Decision" with its mini-
mal concessions to moderation. On the evening of August
10, Mao made his first public appearance in Peking in
nearly nine months, reportedly greeting a crowd of de-
votees at "the place of -he Party Central." The first
edition of Jen-min Jih-pao on the following day carried
news of the event, recording a few innocuous words by
Mao (such as "Comrades, How Are You?") but emphasizing
the god-like effect of his presence on the people ("Come
quickly and touch the hand that has just been shaken by
Chairman Mao"). Almost as soon as the edition made its
appearance, it was suddenly and inexplicably withdrawn
from circulation. The second edition, which was published
that afternoon, did not contain the worshipful account of
Mao's public appearance. The story did, however, appear
in the Aug st 12 Jen-min Jih-pao. One may speculate -
and no mc - that, in the interval, dissident Central
Committee .L nad objected to the story (or certain aspects
of it), perh-es from a broader basis of opposition to
further Mao-ization of the Cultural Revolution, and had
then been crushed by the Maoist juggernaut, which made the
most of his mass appeal, demonstrated once again, and of
his personal prestige among the "revoljtionary" Peking
students and teachers who now packed the pl.enary session.
 -147-

has inherited, defended and developed

Marxism-Leninism with genius, creatively
and in an all-round way, and has raised
it to a completely new stage. Mao Tse-
tung's thought is Marxism-Leninism of the
era in w .h imperialism is heading for
total cnllapse and socialism is advancing
to worldwide victory. It is the guiding
principle for all the work of our Party
16 6
and country.

The Communiqu6 stressed that the intensive study of Mao's

works by all Party members and the entire nation in the
Cultural Revolution was an event of "historic significance."
A year later, an official reassessmont of the Eleventh
Plenum would conclude that its greatest historical contri-
bution was to be found in the "scientific exposition" of
the place of Mao's thought in the development of Marxism-
Leninism, and the resulting consolidation of his "abso-
1 67
lute authority."

POWER. POLICY, AND IDEOLOGY AT THE ELEVENTH PLENUM

The August plenum resulted in extensive changes in

the top Party leadership. As later information (such as
order of appearance at mass rallies) was to confirm, Lin
Piao replaced Liu Shao-ch'i as second in command under Mao.
Lin's was the only nane other than Mao's to appear in the
published documentation of 1he Plenum, and recent accounts

166
"CommuniquA of the Eleventh Plenary Session of the
Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,"
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1966.
1 6 7 See editorial entitled "A Great Milestone" in
Jen-min Jih-pao, August 8, 1967.
 -148-

have revealed that he was accorded the title of "deputy

supreme commander" of the Party and called Mao's "closest
comrade-in-arms.''168 According to Liu Shao-ch'i, who fell
from second to eighth place in the (unofficial) rankings,
16 9
the meeting elected a new Politburo Standing Committee.
Subsequent evidence suggests that the membership of the
committee was enlarged from seven to ten or, possibly,
eleven. After Chou En-lai, who retained third place in
the leadership, T'ao Chu was spectacularly catapaulted
into the turth position, followed by Ch'en Po-ta, Teng
Hsiao-p'ing, K'ang Sheng, Liu Shao-ch'i, Chu Teh, Li Fu-
ch'un, and, possibly, Ch'en YUn.
Available evidence, however, does not point to a
classic power struggle as the main cause of these develop-
ments. The changes in the order of power and succession,
significant as they were in the historical context of a

1 6 8 1bid.
Red Guard ta-tzu-pao posted in Peking in
the late fall of 1966 purported to give the text of a
terse speech by Lin Piao at the Eleventh Plenum. In it
Lin bluntly declared that Mao had chosen him to be his
chief lieutenant and to impl-ment his orders without
compromise. However, Lin also indicated that he would re-
tain some discretion in the implementation, saying that he
would neither interfere with Mao on major matters nor
bother him about minor ones.
1 6 9See
his self-criticism of October 1966 (Mainichi,
January 29, 1967). In an undated wallposter purporting
to give Mao's speech to the closing session of the Plenum
(on the afternoon of August 12), he noted that there had
been a "readjustment" amng the memberships of the Polit-
buro, its Standing Committee, and the Secretariat.

I'
~ M~~4 ~~ ~
 -149-

theretofore extraordinary continuity, do not s3ggest the

clash of organi'ed factions or drastic purge of losers
characteristic of the classic power struggle, in which
considerations of policy and ideology are ruthlessly
subordinated to the prime goal of seizing or protecting
personal power. This is not to say, of course, that such
concerns were absent, but they were not the dominant
1 70
factor.
Nor did the August 12 CommuniquS, which (in contrast
with the earlier sixteen-point Decision) dealt with the
whole range of China's domestic and foreign policy problems,
give any hint that the Eleventh Plenum had been called
primarily to rectify past policy errors. Indeed, on two
issues that some analysts have considered the root causes
of the Cultural Revolution -- economic poliuy and Vietnam
strategy -- the Mao-dominated Plenum voiced specific
approval of past decisions, promised no sweeping changes,

I170
it will be recalled that the August 8 Decision
had called for the complete discrediting and overthrow of
"those within the Party who are in authority and are
taking the ca:uitdlist road," and at one point had termed
this "tie mwAin target of the present movement." Moreover,
Lin Piao, in his tmajor speech, reportedly promised that
the Plenum would "dismiss erring leaders." Liu, in his
October confession, revealed that during the se.-ond half
of the plenary session his errors had been discussed and
he had submitted to discipline.
It should also be noted, however, that the Eleventh
Plenum placed emphasis on ideological reformation ("treat
the illness in order to save the patient"; "unity,
criticism, unity") and that the critical leaders were not
actually disnmissed, although some were in effect demoted
and the inner circle of top offtcials was enlarged to
include more militant Maoists.

756
 -150-

and gave no indication of having had to overcome disagree-

ment. Thus, the Communiqu6 wen" beyond perfunctory
general approval to applaud specifically the successful
implementation of "the policy of readjusLmeent, congolida-
tion, filling out, and raising of standards" adopted after
the collapse of the Leap Forward, and it also put the
plenary session on record as agreeing "fully" with "all
the measures already taken and all actions to be taken"
in support of the Communist effort in Vietnam.
It would seem, therefore, that the division within
the leadership which had led to the calling of the
Eleventh Plenum was due to something much more profound
and immediate than substantive policy differences. Though
such differences no doubt existed, they were not the pri-
mary force that precipitated and accelerated the crisis.
Rather, at the heart o•f the crisis which the Eleventh
Plenum had been called to resolve was the conflict over

ideology and basic orientation -- or, as it had come to

be more narrowly focused, over the scope, implementation,
and leadership of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu-
t•ion. From the Maoist point of view, until these issues
were resolved -- thereby permitting the total indoctrina-
tion, purification, and mobilization of Chinese society --

questions of foreign and domestic policy would remain of

secondary importance, if not largely irrelevant. So, too,
the issue of who should rule and succeed Mao was, in the
first instance, a problem of ideological attitudes and
behavioral oricrtation. This was borne out by the state-
ments of Lin Piao, the new heir apparent (whose elevation
may be ascribed primarily to his diligent and effective
espousal of the Maoist vision), at the plenary session of

.-----. - ' .- '..--.- - .-- ,-- --..

 -151-

August 1966: In calling for organizational changes in the

Party leadership, Lin defined the criteria for dismisial
or promotion as one's attitude toward the thought cf Mao,
one's cooperation with ideological work and, in part-icular,
the Cultural Revolution, and one's possession or lack of
"revolutionary zeal."
In the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, the
regular Party apparatus under Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-
p'ing had failed the test of leadership. At the Eleventh
Plenum the increasingly utopian aspirations and funda-
inentalist requirermnrs of the mission, as defined by Mao,
were further clarified and the task of accomplishing it
was transferred to other hands. In the months following,
however, the new leadership cf Mao, Lin, Chou. and the
"cultural revolutionary groups" -- backed (somewhat un-
certainly) by the PIA, prodded by Chiang Ch'ing, and served
by the rambunctious and destructive Red Guards -- was to
prove no more successful than its predecessors at coping
'with the inner ambiguities and contradictions, resolving
the deepening political crisis, and effecting the ideologi-
cal transformation of Chinaa so insistently and unrealist-
ically demanded by Mao.

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3. REPORT TITLE
POWER, POLICY, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE MAKING OF CHINA'S "CULTURAL REVOLUTION"

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5. REPORT DATE Go. TOTAL No. OF PAGES 6b.No. OF REFS.

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10. ASITRACT I. KEY WORDS

An analysis of the sequence of events that China

culminated in Communist China's Great Cul- Communism
tural Revolution and the implications of Foreign policy
the present upheaval for Chinese domestic Economics--foreign
and foreign policy. Hypotheses have tended Politics
to focus on one or a combination of three Government
elements: power, policy, and ideology.. Policy analysis
"There isunquestionably a close interaction Asia
among these three elements; however, -the
chronology of events suggests that the
Great Cultural Revolution may be viewed as
an attempt by Mao to push China toward new
and unprecedented heights of faith and
fervor. Mao's increasingly utopian aspi-
rations and fundamentalist concepts of the
revolutionary mission were manifest in the
1966 reorganization of leadership. Insta-
bility seems destined to continue so long
as Mao and those designated by the Cul-
tural Revolution to succeed him dominate
the scene. Here changes in leadership or
alterations particular domestic and
foreign policivs will not suffice to real-
ize their revolutionary goals, which aim
at a fundamental transformation of Chinese
society and ideology. Disorder is likely
to increase if those in opposition are
ever able to join forces for a counter-
attack.