Emergent Structure

In the modern Western constitutional democracy or Rechtsstaat , the structure of authority is "rational-legal"; that is, the citizenry confers obedience not to charismatic leaders but to a codified set of laws, which may be logically derived from a more general, basic law known as the Constitution. Modern (i.e., post-imperial) China has never had an effectively codified legal code, and in partial consequence the constitutions so hopefully drafted have remained politically spurious—well-intentioned statements of principles without practical effect.

There was some desire to rectify this situation after Liberation. After the CPPCC had been convened, it undertook the development of a nationwide legal system, promulgating the Land Reform Law and Marriage Law and a number of other laws. The first session of the NPC in September 1954 not only approved the PRC Constitution, it also passed regulations governing arrests and detentions and other rules related

to the first FYP.^[9] In the decade following promulgation of the Constitution more than eleven hundred laws and decrees were enacted to add to those statutes that had provided a loose framework for the administration of justice in the 1949–56 consolidation period.^[10]

Although these steps perhaps betokened a sincere commitment to the rule of law, legality was to make less headway in China than in any other state socialist system. The fact that upon assuming power the CPC abolished "all laws, decrees, and judicial systems" previously established is perhaps understandable given its cosmological conception of its mission, but doing so created a legal vacuum. Nor was any general codification of socialist law ever completed, although a number of beginnings were made. As a result, there was no possibility of appeal to various laws, customs, or traditions aginst the policies of the CPC or the will of its local functionaries. Although a number of laws were passed, their vague terminology left ample room for interpretation according to the whim of local Party leaders. Moreover, the regulations establishing the courts stipulated that "Where no [legal] provisions have been made, the policy of the Chinese People's Government shall be adhered to."^[11] Thus the People's Courts in practice became responsible for enforcing policies, directives, or regulations more often than laws, and these were commonly marked "provisional," sometimes even "for internal use only" (neibu ), thereby restricting access to cadres.^[12] From 1966 to 1976 the legislative function fell into desuetude (with no laws passed), and directives were issued in the name of a combination of central organs (in fact often simply by Mao himself).

The precise reasons for the stultification of "socialist legality" in China are too complex to detain us here. Continuing the revolution is in any case incompatible with commitment to a set of fixed principles or institutionalized procedures, for the exigencies of the movement are in constant flux. This is not necessarily to say that we are dealing with a regime of lawless terrorism or naked coercion (though these were also at hand). In contrast to the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, the CPC regime relied less on its secret police network than on its manipulation of social organization. Thus the structure of authority in the PRC came to

[9] Zhang Youyu, "Revolution and the Legal System: Written in Commemoration of the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party," Minzhu yu Fazhi , no. 7 (July 25, 1981): 5–9.

[10] John Gardner, Chinese Politics and the Succession to Mao (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), pp. 158–59.

[11] A. Doak Barnett, Communist China: The Early Years , 1949 –55 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), pp. 32, 47, 50–51.

[12] Steven Mosher, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese (New York: The Free Press, 1983), pp. 59–67.

consist not of law, not even of an hierarchical apparatus of coercion, but of the compartmentalization of society into consensually responsive groups .

First a word about the generation of this consensus, to be followed by a discussion of the structure of the groups. The content of the consensus was defined not by law but by Marxist-Leninist ideology. Yet the precise content of that ideology could not be determined by referring to the canon of sacred texts any more than the correct interpretation of Christianity can be determined by referring to the New Testament. The meaning of the classics remained subject to authoritative construal by the center, and inasmuch as the gates of revelation had not yet closed, from time to time the center could add to the canon by compiling selections from its ongoing stream of ideological commentaries and ideologically relevant policy directives. Thus a "rolling" consensus was generated to follow a sinuously undulating ideological "line" that continually redefined itself via the emission of doctrinal emendations, slogans, and polemics.

It has long been assumed by students of "totalitarianism" that its characteristic emphasis on mobilization entailed a corresponding "atomization" of social structure. In the vivid words of Hannah Arendt:

The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently, the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community were fools. . . . The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships.^[13]

Although Arendt was addressing herself not to totalitarian society but to the social breakdown that spawns it, subsequent theorists such as Fried-rich and Brzezinski not unnaturally inferred an interest of the new leadership in maintaining such atomization indefinitely: "every human being should, for best effect, have to face the monolith of totalitarian rule as an isolated 'atom.'"^[14] This atomization implies an absence of intermediary voluntary associations, kinship networks, or other organized groupings that might impede elite access to a mobilizable mass.^[15]

The Chinese experience, however, belies this theoretical prediction. It is true that pre-Liberation China suffered social disintegration, but due

[13] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973 ed.), pp. 308, also 315, 317, 323, et passim .

[14] Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 279.

[15] William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 33.

to the underlying strength of the family and kinship network, coherence seems to have been sustained at the primary group level, except perhaps in the coastal cities—not prominent after 1927 in the Communist ecology of success.^[16] And in the post-Liberation period, although certain reforms (such as Land Reform or the Marriage Law) had atomizing effects, the regime soon superseded the former and eased enforcement of the latter. After 1956, China began to crystallize into a social structure of much greater rigidity than that characterizing prerevolutionary Chinese society or that characterizing other state socialist societies—greater, indeed, than any society since medieval Europe.^[17] In a country that had previously witnessed vast population migrations there emerged a social structure honeycombed with walls—barriers to both vertical and horizontal mobility or communication. These barriers coincided with the boundaries of the "basic unit" (jiceng danwei ), the basic building block of the social structure. The Chinese aptly refer to these barriers as "frames" (kuangkuang ).

Why were these frames erected—particularly given the regime's concern with permanent mobilization? The leadership probably saw no contradiction: whereas ideological content might change with the vicissitudes of the historical dialectic, the organizational form could remain fixed. For the basic units were after all not autonomous, but corporately integrated into the centralized administrative network in such a way that they would ensure, not resist, "progressive" change. The leading organization theorists and custodians within the Party (such as Liu Shaoqi) had revolutionary backgrounds in conspiratorial base-building in the White areas, inclining them to emphasize a cellular pattern in which a clear distinction between units was expedient in order to prevent enemy counterintelligence agents from unraveling the entire network upon penetrating one cell. After half a century of social disintegration and national weakness, it also must have seemed appropriate to rebuild a sense of community, not based on the old conservative building blocks of the extended family, but on new ones in which socialist ideals of equality and mutual self-help would be implemented. Such an organizationally enforced solidarity offered the potential for "high levels of social solidarity and cooperation, crime control and social order, as well as a rapid re-

[16] See Roy Hofheinz, Jr., "The Ecology of Chinese Communist Success: Rural Influence Patterns, 1923–1945," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 3–78.

[17] In the Soviet Union, for example, there is only a rule against migration into the few largest cities (which is not that effectively enforced), not prohibitions affecting the entire urban hierarchy. Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish, Urban Life in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 21. See also Philip Short, The Dragon and the Bear (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982), pp. 20, 75.

molding of the marriage customs, family patterns, fertility behavior, and other social and intellectual habits of the citizenry."^[18]

Of what did the unit consist? This varied: the unit might be a geographical district, such as a village or a city street; it could be an institutional, occupational, or other such group within the district—a factory, shop, school, company, government office, hospital, group of carpenters or butchers or writers or artists, even such catch-all assortments as "urban workers," or "agricultural laborers, poor and lower-middle peasants." In any case, every member of society was categorized into a unit. An individual could (and usually did) fall into several different categories—one based on employment, say, one on residence, a third on membership in a mass organization—but only one of these was likely to be "basic," and this was the unit of employment. Each unit was linked to the center through a pyramidal national structure that included a congress and an executive committee at each administrative-geographical level into which China was divided: district, county, special administrative district, special municipality, province, and autonomous region.

The basic unit became the functional substitute for the extended family, the crucial difference being that it was controlled from the center. It assumed the functions of the clan, educating the children, healing the sick, and paying a pension in old age. If a factory worker retired, his son would have first option to take his place. Like the clan, an incest taboo seemed to obtain—people would select mates within the same city or rural county, but not within the same unit. As in a clan, propitious marriages could enhance the unit. Military officers were known to hand-pick attractive young female recruits with a view to their marriageability, based on the notion of "reflected glory," a practice that resulted in a rather startling florescence of feminine beauty in military ambiance. Otherwise, "mixed" marriages—between peasant and worker, between peasant and educated youth—were so rare that if a college graduate married a peasant it warranted a celebratory notice in the local paper or even in People's Daily .

The basic unit controlled the dispensation of employment, welfare, ration tickets, and housing. So intensively did it regulate every facet of the lives of its members that post-Mao reform advocates referred to "unit ownership" (danwei suoyouzhi ).^[19] Workers were assigned to a unit upon completion of their schooling (usually a few days before graduation) under the presumption that they would remain there for life, and if

[18] Ibid., p. 26.

[19] The theme of "social bondage" (shehui shufu ) emerges prominently in recent Chinese fiction. See Xu Xuedong's "Transfer" [Diaodong ], for example, a long short story relating the difficulties of leaving a unit, or Jiang Xuan's "The Corner Forgotten by Love" (also made into a controversial movie).

they were fortunate their wives would be assigned to the same unit. One usually lived in a unit apartment, and in the more modern units, residences were all located in the same compound as the place of employment, making the unit self-contained. When watches and bicycles were in scarce supply one had to obtain permission from unit cadres to buy a bicycle or watch; when child-bearing became regulated for demographic reasons, "consultation" with unit cadres was required to conceive a child.

Whereas it is true that horizontal mobility was not restricted by a general ban on travel or by an internal passport requirement, as in Eastern Europe, a multistranded web of bureaucratic dependency more than made up for this apparent liberality. To obtain permission to travel outside the unit, a member had to ask unit authorities for a few days' leave from work for some concrete reason. If leave was granted, the traveler then had to obtain special ration coupons permitting purchase of rice or bread outside of the province (ration coupons were valid only in the home province). In order to find lodging at one's destination, the traveler must provide a letter of introduction from the home unit. Perhaps in part due to such bureaucratic constraints, the transportation infrastructure remained underdeveloped, with one of the most rudimentary road systems in the world. Permanent relocation from one part of the country was even more difficult, for in contrast to other state socialist systems there was no labor market in China, and assignment to work units was normaly irrevocable. In some cases reassignment could be obtained in order to reunite families in which husband and wife were assigned to geographically remote units, but protracted separations were also common, particularly among intellectuals. This became known as the "cowherd and weaving girl" (niulang zhinü ) problem, after the mythical separation of lovers who, through divine intervention, could meet once a year by crossing the river of stars over a magical bridge of flying birds. Some seasonal rural-urban migration was permitted to fill industrial labor shortages when they occurred, but the normatively approved direction of population flow was from urban to rural areas, in contrast to the usual pattern in developing countries, and usually contrary to the wishes of the participants.^[20]

One of the reasons frequently given for the emphasis on boundaries and unit integrity was the unit's security function. Thus, every block, factory, or compound erected high walls around itself (sometimes with

[20] See Ross Munro's series, "The Real China," Toronto Globe and Mail , October 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13, 1977. Also see Gail Henderson, "Danwei: The Chinese Work Unit" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1982), since published as Gail Henderson and Myron S. Cohen, The Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Yuichi Funabashi, Neibu: One Report on China (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, Pub., 1982).

broken glass on top), curfew hours were instituted, armed guards posted, and so forth.^[21] Most Chinese carried an assortment of keys for various locks and padlocks; a bicycle, for example, was never left unlocked, even inside a unit. Ground floor windows, whether in city or countryside, usually had iron bars. This emphasis on security was perhaps conducive to unit solidarity, but it also fostered an attitude of indifference toward occurrences outside the unit, including national or international politics. Westerners acquainted with the low Chinese crime statistics found it difficult to reconcile the concern with security with any realistic threat. As a young British professional noted in his diary during a two-year teaching sojourn in Nanjing:

They genuinely are often quite ignorant about commonplace things in their own society outside their immediate experience. If one asks one's teachers about a fairly routine and mundane point about the administration, one generally gets a collection of different and vague replies. This means that amazing barriers must be surmounted when inter-unit communication is necessary. What would seem to be solvable by a simple phone call elsewhere requires lots of scratching of heads, top-level conferences, and "careful consideration." A more serious offshoot of this is the great wastage involved in the overduplication of jobs, . . . Waste in the millions of useless walls around housing estates, offices, everything. Not to keep out intruders, as it often ends up unfinished, but to assert the identity of a unit.^[22]

As suggested in this diary entry, the emphasis on unit self-containment informed the handling of information as well: only ideologically "correct" generalities were freely disseminated outside and among units, whereas more specific information was typically treated as "intelligence" and restricted to those authorized to receive it. The resulting information system was shaped like a star rather than a wheel, a vertically organized system lacking in lateral integration. Western travelers were struck by the paucity of plaques or signs to identify government buildings, not because their identity was confidential, but because information just did not circulate laterally. Much of what in the West is publicly available information, regularly shared with citizen and foreigner alike, was classified as restricted material (neibu ). Telephone books, maps, newspapers, and academic articles or books having no apparent connection with national security were regularly classified neibu .^[23] Telephone conversations were

[21] Ross Munro, October 10, pp. 1, 23.

[22] From the China diaries of a young British professional and former member of the Sino-British People's Friendship Association who taught English in Nanjing under the terms of the exchange from January 1975 to February 1977, and graciously permitted me to peruse and to quote from them. (Hereinafter "Diaries.")

[23] Peter Van Ness, "Black, White and Grey in China Research," Far Eastern Economic Review (hereinafter FEER ) 123, no. 6 (February 9, 1984): 30–31.

widely suspected to be at least selectively tapped, and there must have been a fairly elaborate recording system in the offices and residences of central leaders, to judge from the copious use of verbatim quotations when they later fell victim to criticism. Public security inspected the mail flowing inside and outside the country with some thoroughness; domestic mail was probably monitored less systematically, though the provision in the 1982 State Constitution restricting such activity to public security forces gives rise to the suspicion that domestic mails must have come under the surveillance of the unit leadership.

But the most pervasive and meaningful form of unit control over information was the file (dang'an ) system: in a sealed envelope in the personnel section of every unit there was a confidential dossier for every employee, containing not only the normal elements of a biography but any confessions or self-criticisms or political charges made by informers in the past and the Party's summary evaluation of the individual, including a genealogy of the person's class background for the past three generations. The individual had no access to the file; only authorized cadres knew its contents.^[24] The reasons for this cult of secrecy can only be surmised, but it is worth bearing in mind that the CPC was born in a threatening milieu in which secrecy was conducive to survival, and that the engineering approach in particular was perfected in enemy-occupied areas.

Naturally, the ambit of the public sector, a realm that in the West mediates between political authority and individual (or family) privacy,^[25] was constrained by such considerations. Library borrowing was hedged by numerous discouraging restrictions: a person asking for a particular book must bring a letter certifying his (or her) need for it.^[26] At most university libraries, foreign language periodicals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias were kept in reference rooms reserved for teachers and graduate students, access again being contingent upon possessing a certificate proving that one's vocation required it.^[27] There was no official prepublication censorship, as in the Soviet Union, but authors (and sometimes editors) were responsible for their publications and liable to purge or public criticism if their selections were deemed politically unsuitable; books might also be withdrawn from circulation at the slightest change in official tastes. Some newspapers (e.g., China DailyPeking Review ) were designated for

[24] Ross Munro, October 10, pp. 2–3; October 8, pp. 1–2.

[25] See Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandlung der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1962).

[26] Jay Mathews and Linda Mathews, One Billion: A China Chronicle (New York: Random House, 1983), p. 291.

[27] Fox Butterfield, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea (New York: Times Books, Quadrangle Publications, 1982), pp. 360–94.

international circulation, some (e.g., People' Daily , Red Flag ) for national and international circulation, some (e.g., People's Liberation Army Daily , most local newspapers) restricted to national circulation, some (e.g., Cankao Xiaoxi ) restricted to circulation among officials, some (e.g., Cankao Ziliao ) restricted to circulation among high officials. The distribution of information within the bureaucracy was similarly multitiered, and the power of a given official might be gauged by "political access" to the document stream within the hierarchy^[28] —thus one of Zhang Chunqiao's "crimes," for example, would be to give his wife (a lower-ranking cadre) access to higher-level documents.

The "neo-feudal" horizontal segmentation of society by unit frames and the secretion or vertical channeling of information (and free flow of propaganda) gave rise to the impression that there were "two worlds." As every member of a unit learned, there was "a distinction between inner and outer" (nei wai you bie ), meaning that dirty linen should not be washed in public. Language itself became bifurcated: the heroic public language was used to satisfy ever more probing demands for evidence of thought reform, whereas the private language preserved the traditional norms that keep friendship and kinship ties alive. The two discourses were kept apart as a result of conflicting social demands, but each could be used in its appropriate context.^[29] Whereas this disjunction between public and private may to some degree echo traditional patterns of communication and association, the impression of my informants is that under the CPC it became noticeably sharper, more strictly enforced, thereby giving rise to a general evacuation of the public realm.

There were also numerous impediments to vertical communication and mobility, encompassing not only the declining prospects for upward promotion as Party recruitment dwindled at the end of the 1950s and higher positions were monopolized by veteran officials on the basis of seniority and retained indefinitely,^[30] but the general phenomenon of

[28] Oksenberg, "Methods of Communication."

[29] Helmut Opletal, "Four Observations on Chinese Mass Media," The Asian Messenger 2, no. 3/3, no. 1 (Autumn/Winter 1977): 38–40; also Opletal, Die Informationspolitik der Volksrepublik China: Von der "Kulturrevolution " bis zum Sturz der "Viererbande " (1965 bis 1976 ) (Bochum: Studienverlag Brockmeyer, 1981). The author, an Austrian student, studied at Beijing University and the Beijing Language Institute from 1973 to 1975, returning for further visits in 1976 and 1977. See also Helmut Martin, "Sprachpolitik," in Brunhild Staiger, ed., China (Tübingen: Horst Erdmann, 1980), pp. 392–407.

[30] Though it sounds rather sweeping to say that the avenues of upward mobility were becoming constricted by the late 1950s, a wide range of evidence may be cited in support of such a generalization. At the highest level, see Franklin Houn, "The Eighth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party," American Political Science Review , June 1957, pp. 392–404. For two studies of lower-level bureaucratic staffing, one in a rural, the other in an urban context, which confirm a sharp decline of vertical mobility after 1957, see Michel Oksenberg, "Local Leaders in Rural China, 1962–65: Individual Attributes,Bureaucratic Positions, and Political Recruitment," pp. 155–216; and Yingmao Kau, "The Urban Bureaucratic Elite in Communist China: A Case Study of Wuhan, 1949–65," pp. 216–71, both in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969). On Party admission, see Roberta Martin, Party Recruitment in China: Patterns and Prospects (New York: Columbia University, East Asian Institute Occasional Papers, 1981). Martin finds that after the most rapid growth period in Party history, from 1945 to 1956 (about an 886 percent increase) and another big increase in the 1956–57 period, there was a lull. The period from 1961 to 1969 witnessed an increase of only 3 million (from 17 to 20 million).

"bureaucratism" (guanliaozhuyi ). This refers to those cadre behavior patterns, whose exact identity and nature has been a matter of periodic discussion and redefinition, which give rise to estrangement between elites and masses. Political estrangement consists partly of an asymmetrical communication flow (you talk, we listen; we talk, you don't listen), partly of Ressentiment aroused by cadre privilege (tequan ). Bureaucratism was regularly dissected but usually attributed to the moral deficiencies of individual officials rather than to the organization itself, illustrating one of the chief differences between Chinese and Western theories of organization. Nevertheless, a number of structural features probably contributed to increasing "bureaucratism" during this period.

In 1956 a cadre rank system was established, consisting of a twenty-six-grade scale.^[31] The major divisions fell at grades seven, thirteen, and seventeen: grades eighteen to twenty-six included the vast lower echelons of state employees or "national cadres" (guojia ganbu ); grades fourteen to seventeen were considered middle-ranking cadres and assigned to positions of leadership at the commune and county levels; while those in grades eight to thirteen were high-ranking cadres (gaoji ganbu ), usually prefectural or provincial officials or department heads in Beijing. Highest were those ranking grade seven and above—chairman of the CPC, chief of state, chairman of the NPC, premier of the State Council, down to government ministers, CC members, provincial first Party secretaries, and Military Region commanders. Other professions boasted different grade numbers: five for technicians, sixteen for actors, eight for workers in state enterprises, twelve for academics, even four for cooks. An individual's standing in this elaborate hierarchy determined not only monthly pay but how many square feet of housing one might be assigned, whether one traveled by car or bicycle, which schools one's children attended, and whether one had access to foreign films and literature. According to the regulations of the State Council governing transportation, for example, cadres of grade thirteen and above had use of a limousine to commute to

[31] See Ezra F. Vogel, "From Revolutionary to Semi-Bureaucrat: The 'Regularization' of Cadres," CQ , no. 29 (January-March 1967): 36–60; Martin King Whyte, "Bureaucracy and Modernization in China: The Maoist Critique," American Sociological Review , no. 38 (1973): 149–63; and Harding, Organizing China , pp. 1–32, et passim .

their ministries, cadres of grades fourteen to seventeen might travel by car when necessary to conduct state business, whereas cadres in grades eighteen and below received no transportation provisions. High rank gained access to special flights on Trident jetliners housed on the military airfield in Western Beijing, or to the medical expertise and equipment of Beijing Hospital (a resticted facility). Even the availability of telephones and bathtubs was dictated by political position: only department chiefs and agency heads normally rated either a phone or a tub at home—others must use the public telephone and neighborhood bathhouses.^[32]

From a macro-sociological perspective, cadre privilege soon became the most salient exception to general egalitarian tendencies in Chinese society. It was not advertised, of course, but the sheer growth of Chinese officialdom made it difficult to conceal. In 1949, the Party could claim only seven hundred twenty thousand qualified cadres, a figure deemed sufficient to cover only about a third of the posts vacant; 3 million cadres were thus recruited between October 1949 and September 1952. Party membership grew from 4,488,000 in 1949 to 17 million by 1961 (only 20 percent of whom had joined before 1949). The bureaucracy was clearly a growth sector of the economy, dwarfing even industry: in Shanghai, where total employment between 1949 and 1957 increased by 1.2 percent per year, and factory workers and staff grew by 5.8 percent annually, health and government workers increased by an annual rate of 16 percent.^[33] By 1955, government cadres were consuming 9.6 percent of the national budget, nearly double the figure originally planned (5 percent).^[34] Whereas bureaucrats controlled less than 10 percent of China's gross national product before 1949, by 1972 this figure had risen to 30 percent.^[35]

The stratified distribution of privileges made it difficult to sustain the myth of "unequal role, equal status." The hierarchical distribution of rank and perquisites, and the use of the dossier system to supplement seniority as a basis for promotion, meant that young cadres were systematically oriented toward ingratiating their superiors rather than to-

[32] Mathews and Mathews, One Billion , p. 200; Mosher, Broken Earth , pp. 59–67. The ranking of cadres also decides the length of their "tails," meaning the number of service personnel and assistants they can have. High-ranking cardes can have drivers, cooks, nurses, doctors, and the right to use vacation resorts provided by the state. If they should be purged and imprisoned, rank will in most cases continue to determine their meal allowance and treatment. Thus Jiang Qing, for example, was said to be eating very well after her arrest and imprisonment. See Bernstein, Center , pp. 131–40.

[33] Kraus, Class Conflict , p. 6.

[34] Gordon White, "The Post-revolutionary Chinese State," in Victor Nee and David Mozingo, eds., State and Society in Contemporary China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 30–31.

[35] Kraus, Class Conflict , p. 6.

ward cultivating their subordinates.^[36] If they succeeded in doing so, they could look forward to a life of security and gradually increasing income, consumption, power, and status. As official behavior thus became systematically reinforced, cadre motives became suspect even when their conduct was unexceptionable—were they dedicated to service to the people, or to their own careers? The former became a form of public rhetoric that referred to a collective abstraction (the whole people, not you people) or to the future (not now, later). Monopolizing the distribution of workpoints, bonuses, good job assignments, and other postitive incentives, retaining exclusive right "correctly" to interpret higher directives or slogans, cadres could rule rather high-handedly without much fear of retribution as long as they fulfilled the demands of their superiors, and their subordinates had "no exit." Authority, which according to "mass line" conceptions should follow a circular flow, became "transitive." After 1956, the elite-mass distinction thus began to displace "class struggle" as the dominant operational contradiction in Chinese society.