3
Staffing the Party-State, 1949–66

This chapter analyzes various social groups that were recruited for the party and the state bureaucracy in terms of "virtue," "ability," and "seniority"—the three criteria that the CCP claims to have used—and the implications of the cadre policy for the political process. To the party, "virtue" meant political loyalty and reliability—one's commitment to Marxism-Leninism as well as to the Leninist principle of the party—which were frequently inferred from one's class background, political history, social relationships, and family background. In addition, political loyalty has also been assumed from political activism and support for a particular policy line at a given moment.

During the guerrilla war period, "ability" referred to the capacity to mobilize people for the specific political task of fighting a guerrilla war. After 1949, despite the functional requirements of managing urban sectors and developing the economy, the CCP by and large continued to use the old idea of ability, although it was usually measured in terms of educational level as well as performance not only in specific functional work but also in political leadership. "Seniority" was based on when a person joined the party or revolutionary movement. Unlike virtue and ability, seniority has never been officially recognized as an important criterion in personnel management. But it has been the most important factor in China, more important than in any other bureaucratic organization, because seniority symbolizes both proven political loyalty and accumulated "practical experiences."

Although the specific meaning and relative weight of the three criteria have changed, often becoming the focus of inner elite conflict, the overall trend has been for the CCP to increasingly stress virtue, while downgrading the relevance of ability in personnel management. The trend reflected the continuing rural orientation of the revolutionary elite who founded the new regime and the

CCP's failure to adjust its cadre policy to the requirements of economic development and modernization after its successful political revolution.

Staffing the Party-State Apparatus

The party approached the task of setting up a power structure in the newly liberated areas as it had previously dealt with the problem of setting up a new base area: it dispatched cadre groups that worked as "frames"—nuclear groups—and supplemented their strength with cadres recruited locally.^[1] Once these cadres (commonly known as "southbound cadres") moved into a newly liberated province, they were usually reinforced by local underground party members, as well as by local guerrilla forces. When the People's Liberation Army (PLA) moved to the front, some units—known as "localized forces" (zhuli difang hua )—were usually left to be used locally. However, the combination of all these groups was not sufficient to administer the vast liberated areas. For instance, in Hunan province there were about 15,000 civilian cadres with about one division of the PLA to govern its population of 18 million.^[2]

Despite the heavy reliance on military personnel, the CCP encountered a keen shortage of qualified personnel to fill 2.7 million positions when the People's Republic of China was founded. The problem was particularly serious at the local level.^[3] The CCP drew from six different groups to ameliorate the cadre shortage.^[4] They were (1) existing cadres generally known as "old cadres," (2) young high school or college graduates, (3) activists from mass movements such as land reform (most of them came from the worker and peasant classes), (4) old nonparty intellectuals who

[1] Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Renshi Zhidu Gaiyao (Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 1985), 102–4.

[2] Hunan Dangshi Tongxun , no. 1, 1985, 15.

[3] Harry Harding, Organizing China: The Problems of Bureaucracy, 1949–1976 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981), 36.

[4] For the recruitment of cadres the regime made a distinction between "absorption" (xishou ) and "recruitment" (luyong ). Absorption implied those who were automatically qualified for the cadre positions, whereas recruitment implied selection from a large group of people. The two groups of people who were absorbed into the cadre ranks were graduates of colleges and high schools and demobilized soldiers. Recruitment of cadres was made from worker and peasant activists as well as from unemployed people in the society. Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin , 20.

were scattered throughout the society, (5) demobilized PLA men, and (6) selected officials from the former Nationalist government.

We do not know how much each of these groups contributed to the total cadre pool. Even though Harding reports that only 750,000 old party members were qualified, a larger number of them must have eventually landed cadre positions.^[5] The total number of college graduates in 1950 was only 40,000, so their contribution cannot have been great.^[6] The number of available intellectuals was also very small: China had produced only 210,000 college graduates between 1923 and 1949, and only 10,000 of these had studied abroad.^[7] About 100,000 of these older intellectuals were sent to special "people's revolutionary universities" for political education between 1950 and 1952, and others were given ideological training in short courses.^[8]

Since the combination of the three groups was not sufficient to remedy the shortage of cadres, the CCP relied heavily on former Nationalist government officials. They must have constituted the largest proportion of the cadre class immediately after liberation, particularly in low-level technical positions.^[9] Since their political loyalty was dubious, their recruitment could only have been a temporary one. Relying on these groups, the regime set up a basic structure, and by 1952 the cadre shortage was somewhat alleviated.^[10] By the mid-1950s, the Chinese cadre corps was composed of several different groups, each of which had different degrees of seniority, ability, and virtue.

The first group was the old cadres, the most senior group who had "conquered the world." Their political reliability was unquestionable, but their average educational level was not high; the highest-level group included intellectuals who had joined the movement during the anti-Japanese war, but many of the middle-and lower-level cadres were from "desirable class backgrounds" and had relatively little education. For ability, all the old cadres

[5] Harding, Organizing China , 35.

[6] Ibid., 36.

[7] Zhongqing Shehui Kexue , no. 3, 1985, 42; another Chinese source reports the figure to be 180,000, Shehui Kexue Cankao , 20 July 1986, 11.

[8] Harding, Organizing China , 37.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 38.

could claim the "long practical experience" of fighting a guerrilla war.

The old cadres were also divided into two smaller groups: those from the "red" areas, also known as "southbound cadres," who constituted a majority of the old cadres, and those who had done underground work or fought the guerrilla war in the "white" areas. Since most underground work was done in a person's native area, these people were "native cadres," and their educational level was much higher than that of their red-area counterparts, whom they considered as "outsiders." Former underground workers also tended to have more complicated relations with the KMT; some had been arrested; others had close contacts with KMT authorities. Their class backgrounds and "complicated historical problems" made them easy prey for a politically motivated investigation in the early 1950s. The campaign against "localism" eventually weakened their power in local politics.^[11]

On the whole, the old cadres occupied leading positions at every level of the party-state organs down to the county. They were also heavily concentrated in such politically powerful positions as secretary of the party committee. Even old cadres with little education—gong nong bing —landed leadership positions at the county and commune levels. Thus, after a careful study of local leadership, Michel Oksenberg concluded that "the generation which seized power during the early years of the revolution continued to monopolize the center of power at the local level, at least until the start of the CR."^[12]

The second group, officials retained from the old regime, could claim neither seniority nor virtue, and very few of them were allowed to join the party. Their only reliable asset was their ability. Even those who were kept were mere functionaries within specialized organs. A series of campaigns, including the Three Antis (sanfan ), directed against corruption, waste, and bureaucratism, and the Five Antis (wufan ), aimed against bribes, fraud, tax evasion, and those in the business community who were leaking state eco-

[11] For this reason, many of the "localists" joined the rebel faction during the CR.

[12] Michel Oksenberg, "Individual Attributes, Bureaucratic Positions, and Political Recruitment," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 155–57.

nomic secrets, eventually removed these officials from office, and by 1956 most of them had been dismissed.^[13]

The third group consisted of old intellectuals. Some, with national fame, received honorary positions because they had been targets of the CCP's united front policy. Others were assigned to specialist positions where they could utilize their expertise. Old intellectuals could not claim virtue or seniority, but they possessed knowledge that the regime needed, and it helped them to survive in functional positions.^[14]

The fourth group consisted of young intellectuals—the new high school and college graduates at the time of liberation—who joined the southbound teams or were assigned to cadre posts right after liberation. Many of them came from undesirable classes, but they could claim that the old bourgeois ideology had not influenced them as much as it had the old intellectuals. Most of them were assigned to functional fields of the party-state structure. Almost thirty years later, the few members of this group with the right family background, political attitude, and connections emerged as national leaders.

The fifth group was made of demobilized soldiers. Generally, the military preferred to discharge only those not suitable for their needs—such as female officers, former KMT officers who had voluntarily surrendered to the CCP, and those "old in age, physically weak, and low in cultural level," although sometimes "young intellectuals and specialists" whom key industrial projects needed were transferred as well.^[15]

Reassignment was uniformly managed by the center. Every year the military set up a plan to discharge a certain number of PLA men, and then the Military Affairs Commission coordinated the task with the civilian government to allocate the number of persons to each local authority, which assigned people to appropriate posts. When an army officer was transferred to the civilian sector, he was entitled to a post equivalent to his military rank in terms of salary, level, and fringe benefits.^[16] Since military seniority was

[13] Ezra Vogel, "From Revolutionary to Semi-Bureaucrat: The 'Regularization' of Cadres," China Quarterly , no. 29, January–March 1965, 36–60.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin , 20–34.

[16] For a comparison of the ranks of military personnel and civilian cadres, see ibid.

based on the date of enlistment and seniority was transferrable, former soldiers could usually claim high seniority. Their political loyalty had been tested on the battlefield, and their contribution to the final defeat of the KMT forces was readily recognized. Many of them were party members of long standing, but they were generally poorly educated.^[17] Given these strengths and weaknesses, it is not surprising that many demobilized soldiers were assigned to coercive organs and to political positions that required only low-level technical competence, such as the political department in a factory.^[18]

The largest pool for political cadres was that of worker and peasant activists. They were politically reliable because they were recruited from the poorest sector, which had benefited most from the Communist revolution. But their lack of education was a drawback. Nonetheless, the regime justified their promotion to cadre positions for the reason that "once on the job, their rich practical experience and firm class standpoint enable them to learn administrative practice quickly."^[19] This group filled vacancies at the lower levels, usually serving in their native locality. Their career pattern leading to the cadre position was first as an activist in the mass movement, then joining the party, and finally occupying a leadership position in a new party-state institute.

Among virtue, ability, and seniority, seniority was clearly the most important factor, which in turn reinforced old cadres' dominance at not only national but also municipal- and county-level politics. For instance, according to Ying-mao Kau, 68 percent of the Wuhan municipal elite were party members; 83 percent of the party members had joined before 1949; over one-half of the elite (58 percent) were revolutionists who had made their careers in the Communist movement before the beginning of the third revolutionary civil war; only 18 percent of them had any technical training.^[20] While old party members monopolized key positions within the bureaucracy, the rank and file of the party expanded rapidly.

[17] Oksenberg, "Individual Attributes."

[18] Ibid.

[19] Harding, Organizing China , 20.

[20] Ying-mao Kau, "The Urban Bureaucratic Elite in Communist China: A Case Study of Wuhan, 1949–65," in Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics , 216–67.

Party Membership Recruitment

During the last stage of the civil war, party membership jumped from 1.3 million (in 1946) to almost 4.5 million by the time the CCP proudly declared the founding of the new state in 1949. Membership increased to 5.8 million, and 250,000 party branches were organized by 1951^[21] (see table 2).

The rapid expansion compromised the quality of new recruits.^[22] In addition, there was a need to spread party membership evenly in all localities because the heaviest concentration was in central-north China (hua bei )—almost one-third of all party members. The CCP decided in March 1951 to expel "bad elements" and educate party members with Communist ideology to achieve "purity and quality and to improve the combat capacity of the party."^[23] The qualifications of all party members were carefully checked against official guidelines, which specified the types of people to be expelled as well as eight requisites for party members that were more stringent than those of the 1945 party constitution.^[24] Consequently, 328,000—about 5 percent of party members—were expelled.^[25]

When the rural cooperativization drive started, party leaders decided to accelerate membership recruitment in rural areas to prepare for the forthcoming agricultural collectivization. Hunan province reportedly recruited 120,000 peasants—an astonishing 42 percent of all its party members—in 1956. Most peasants recruited during this period were activists of "unified purchase" or "backbone elements" of the agricultural cooperation movement, and

[21] Although rural members constituted the majority (3 million), the PLA ranked first in terms of the ratio between the total number of people employed and party members in a given sector (1.6 million party members were in the military). Seven hundred thousand party members were employed in state organs, whereas workers accounted for only 200,000 members. Wang Yifan and Chen Mingxian, Zhongguo Congchandang Lice Zhengdang Zhenfeng (Harbin: Heilongjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1985), 123; Zhonggong Dangshi Cankao Ziliao (Renmin Chubanshe, 1974), 87.

[22] For the quality problems of party members, see Wang and Chen, Zhongguo Congchandang .

[23] Ibid., 87; Shenhui Kexue Cankao (Qinghai), 30 September 1984, 2–7. For the official resolution on party rectification, see Zhonggong Dangshi Cankao Ziliao , 121.

[24] For the types of persons to be expelled and the requirements of members, see Zhonggong Gongchang Lice Zhongyao Huiyi Ji (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), 2:13–15.

[25] Zhibu Shenghuo (Beijing), no. 1, 1984, 19.

almost all of them—95 percent in some cases—were classified as poor peasants at the time of the land reform.^[26] After joining the party, new members led collectivization movements and then assumed leadership roles in the newly established cooperatives.^[27]

The party had also expanded rapidly in urban areas, particularly in industrialized areas where few members existed before 1949, in preparation for the socialist transformation of industry. For instance, in the Anshan Iron and Steel Company, only 2,800 people joined the party between 1950 and 1953; but the party admitted 72,000 workers (90 percent of whom were youths) in 1953–54 alone.^[28] The city of Zhengzhou reported that the number of party members among construction workers increased fourteenfold in one year. As was the case in rural collectivization, new party members led the peaceful transformation of industry and eventually landed cadre positions in enterprises. "Model workers, advanced workers, and pioneers in technology" were also accepted in order to effectively promote technical innovation.

The party also admitted a fair number of intellectuals immediately after 1949 when their cooperation was indispensable, particularly in propaganda, education, culture, and the arts.^[29] The introduction of the first five-year-plan further accentuated the need for the cooperation of intellectuals. Therefore, the regime adopted a lenient policy of "unifying, educating, and transforming intellectuals." The CCP granted the class status of "staff" to those who worked in big organizations and "laborer" to self-employed professionals (e.g., reporters, artists, and athletes) on the grounds that they earned their income by selling their labor.^[30] Even "those who are receiving high salaries, such as engineers, professors, and specialists, are also classified as staff."^[31] Only a small number of intellectuals were classified as "reactionary" or "national bourgeoisie." Consequently, some intellectuals managed to join the party and to become cadres after undergoing ideological reform.^[32]

[26] Daily Report , 28 February 1956, AAA25.

[27] Ibid., 6 July 1956, AAA14; 16 December 1954, AAA22.

[28] Ibid., 2 July 1954, AAA6.

[29] For the occupational distribution of about 2 million intellectuals, see Zhongqing Shehui Kexue , March 1985, 42–48.

[30] Renda Fuyin , February 1985, 53.

[31] Ibid.

[32] For a survey showing intellectuals' attitudes toward the CCP, see Zhongqing Shehui Kexue , March 1985, 42–48.

However, the CCP gradually tightened its control over intellectuals. Many of them became the target of mass struggle in such political campaigns as the Three Antis, the Five Antis, the suppression of counterrevolutionaries, opposing America and aiding Korea. The CCP's continuing emphasis on class background, the imposition of official ideology, and the nationalization of educational institutions were bound to clash with the intellectuals' propensity to be critical and independent. The campaign against Hu Feng, a prominent literary figure, for his alleged counterrevolutionary views served as a chilling warning, particularly to intellectuals in creative fields.

As the morale of intellectuals gradually deteriorated, Zhou Enlai found it necessary to improve their political position in 1956. Declaring that 80 percent of intellectuals supported the CCP and that they constituted a "formidable force in the socialist construction program," he urged the party to improve their living and working conditions as well as their political status.^[33] Endorsing Zhou's suggestion, An Ziwen, director of the organizational department, instructed lower-level party committees "first to accept famous specialists and authorities, and then investigate their qualifications," while criticizing lower-level party leaders' reluctance to admit intellectuals as an expression of fear on the part of those members without any education.^[34] Consequently, the proportion of intellectuals to the total number of party members increased from about 12 percent in 1956 to about 15 percent in 1957 (see table 8). In Hunan the total number of intellectuals admitted to the party during the first five months of 1956 amounted to 1 percent of total party membership, and 21 percent of the 1956 new recruits in Beijing were intellectuals.^[35]

Between 1953 and 1956, the number of party members took another quantum leap. By the time of the Eighth Party Congress in 1956, membership had grown to 10 million, almost two party members for every 100 Chinese, an increase of nearly 1,000 percent from

[33] Current Background , no. 376, 7 February 1956, 7.

[34] Keyan Pipan , nos. 4–5, 1968, in Hungweibing Ziliao Xianbian (Washington, D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 1980), vol. 2, 0587; see also Guangdong Shengwei Zuzhibu, ed., Zai Zhishifenzizhong Fazhan Dangyuan (Guangdongsheng Renmin Chubanshe, 1956).

[35] Daily Report , 10 April 1956, AAA36; Survey of China Mainland Press , no. 1325, 10 July 1956, 19.

1945. Compared with this national trend, the increase of members in the areas liberated during the last stage of the civil war was even more dramatic.^[36] Most of the new recruits were young people.

We have no comprehensive demographic information that shows the composition of party members recruited in the first surge of recruitment after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Data from Zhejiang province may adumbrate the national trend (see table 9).

The composition of those recruited in Zhejiang between 1949 and 1957 approximates the pattern of composition of the entire party as reported at the Eighth Party Congress (see table 8). The percentages of workers and peasants are very close to the national figures. Table 9 indicates that 11.3 percent of the newly recruited were government employees. Although we do not have any information on the total number of cadres in the province, 27,000 must have constituted a large portion of all government employees at that time.

In sum, party membership increased substantially after the founding of the People's Republic of China. From 1949 to 1957, the number of cadres almost tripled—from 2.9 million to 8.1 million (see table 32). By 1956, about 63 percent of those who belonged to

[36] From the date of its liberation to 1956, Qinghai recruited 41,609 party members (2.1 percent of its total membership), 5,944 new members per year on average. Shehui Kexue Cankao , 30 September 1984, 2–7.

the party had been recruited after liberation. Most of them were recruited during mass movements, which exclusively relied on political criteria (including class background). Their revolutionary potential was impressive; most of them came from classes that had little reason to protect the old society, and they proved their loyalty to the party by demonstrating activism in various campaigns. But a basic weakness was a low level of education and a lack of specialized knowledge—the basic requirements for leading a nation toward industrialization and rapid economic development. However, those party members without cadre positions expected their political virtue to be rewarded with such positions.

The Antirightist Campaign

By the time of the Hundred Flowers campaign during the mid-1950s, however, the need for new cadres had decreased, thus intensifying the conflict among the various social groups for cadre positions.^[37] At the same time, the bureaucracy was hopelessly

[37] About the increasingly severe competition for upward mobility among university and middle school students, see Jonathan Unger, Education Under Mao (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and Susan Shirk, Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategy in China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

overstaffed, and many cadres had no specific work to do.^[38] The campaign to "simplify the administrative structure and to reduce the number of cadres" further heightened tensions within the Chinese bureaucracy, tensions that had been building up since 1949.

Harding identifies four areas of conflict at the time of the Hundred Flowers campaign: (1) between local cadres and "outsiders," (2) between the educated and noneducated, (3) between junior and senior cadres, and (4) between party and nonparty officials.^[39] These tensions usually overlapped in any one case; however, the main conflict was between virtue and ability, the first represented by a majority of the party members, who had less education, and the second by intellectuals, who tended not to be party members. As noted, nonparty member cadres owed their positions to their ability; native cadres were better educated than "outsiders," junior cadres better than senior ones, and nonparty officials better than those who belonged to the party.

In fact, the party had been stepping up discrimination against nonparty member cadres as the total pool of members increased after 1949. By 1957 total party membership had reached the 12.7 million mark (see table 2), almost a threefold increase from 1949. Once the party came to have a large reservoir of its own members, it probably tried to fill cadre positions with new members—who expected to be rewarded with tangible benefits—while making a genuine effort to increase party member cadres' technical competence through short-term training programs.^[40]

[38] For a detailed study of the administrative simplification, see Gongfei "Xiafang" Wenti De Tuishi (Taipei: Diaochaju, 1958). The monograph reports:

In the thirteen provincial corporations in Qinghai, 73 percent of cadres on the average had nothing to do. For example, there is one accountant who fills in only one accounting form in a day; another manages only food coupons; another is in charge of the tickets for getting haircuts. Managing the bath tickets needs one full-time person, and managing furniture requres another. As a result, male workers wander around the streets, and female workers do needlework.

Guangdong province reported that in some commercial corporations, the ratio of cadres to workers was 13:12. In some colleges and high schools, the teacher-student ratio was 1:1 (39).

[39] Harding, Organizing China , 145–47; Ying-mao Kau, "Urban Bureaucratic Elite," 236.

[40] Dazhong Bao , 25 August 1957.

The proportion of nonparty cadres probably declined steadily after 1949. By 1957, about 60 percent of cadres were party members, a substantial increase from the estimated 13 percent in 1949.^[41] Moreover, party members dominated leading positions, whereas those nonparty members who managed to hold their positions saw their administrative authority diminish because they had no access to information allowed only to party members.^[42] The increasing domination of member cadres can be noted in the changing official formulas for the united front strategy. Before 1949, the party insisted on the proportion of 3:3:3; in 1956 Zhou Enlai was urging that at least one-quarter of government jobs be given to nonmembers.^[43] If in 1956 2 mil on nonparty cadres did hold 25 percent of all government positions, party member cadres numbered 6 million, and there were probably another 6 million members who did not hold cadre positions. The conflict between the better-educated nonparty member intellectuals and party member cadres surfaced in the Hundred Flowers campaign.

When the intellectuals were induced to air their grievances in the Hundred Flowers campaign, they vented their rage on the dictatorial power of the party-state, particularly its tight monopoly of authority over cadres and its increasing emphasis on virtue. They charged that party cadres considered themselves made of "uncommon stuff" while looking down on nonparty people as knowing nothing of politics.^[44] Although they agreed with the CCP that cadres should be appointed on the basis of virtue and ability, they disagreed with the party on what they meant, rejecting the official practice of regarding party members as uniquely virtuous. To them, virtue, as defined by the party, meant "absence of talent."^[45] They were bitter about the old cadres whom they regarded as tubaozi , "without education and devoid of virtue," relying instead on their "seniority to eat unearned rice." The CCP was also accused of having put officials retained from the Nationalist era in the "freezer" as "materials to be preserved," but with the ulterior intention of

[41] Qinghai Ribao , 15 August 1957; Nanfang Ribao , 17 August 1957.

[42] Frederick Teiwes, Politics and Purge in China (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1979), 260.

[43] Wenhui Bao , 24 September 1957.

[44] Teiwes, Politics and Purge .

[45] Qingdao Ribao , 14 September 1957.

dumping them as "waste." After experiencing "eight years full of difficulties, and difficulties without end," the retained officials did not "have any hope."^[46]

The party's initial response to the intellectuals' charge was rather subdued and defensive. To the criticism that party members lacked virtue, the official news media rather lamely argued that "true virtue" referred to such qualities as "unlimited loyalty to the proletarian class and the socialist task, a high degree of organizational discipline, and lofty political qualities"—all qualities the old revolutionaries presumably possessed.^[47] The official media defined ability in a similar way: it was the ability to fight guerrilla wars and to lead mass campaigns against class enemies.

Furthermore, it seems that the party pleaded for understanding about the difficulties inherent in managing personnel matters.

When we promote those from worker-peasant backgrounds, they [rightists] accuse us of "solely emphasizing background"; when we promote old cadres, they criticize us of "exclusively relying on seniority"; if we promote cadres with strength in functional ability, they blame us for "overemphasizing ability at the expense of virtue"; they oppose the promotion of politically reliable cadres who lack vocational ability, calling them "water barrel cadres"; if we promote female comrades, they accuse us of being engaged in "skirt relations," pointing out the few wives of leading cadres; if we promote cadres from the lower level, they charge us with egalitarianism; if we promote those from the upper level, they insist that we officials protect one another. They object to others being promoted once in five years. But when they themselves are promoted once a year, they continue to complain that their talents are wasted. On the one hand, they criticize those loyal to the party and the party leaders as "following a leadership line" and "docile dogs." On the other hand, they praise liberals resisting leaders for their determination to struggle for and uphold truth.^[48]

However, once the antirightist campaign began, the defensive tone changed to harsh denunciation. Mao reversed Zhou Enlai's estimate made one year before by insisting that 80 percent of intellectuals were "bourgeois intellectuals."^[49] Deng Xiaoping played a

[46] Ibid.

[47] Guangxi Ribao, 1 August 1957.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Mao Zedong Xuanji (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1977), 5:484.

key role in the antirightist campaign. In his "Report on the Rectification Movement" delivered at the third extended conference of the Eighth Party Congress, he declared that intellectuals belonged to the bourgeois class because of their family backgrounds and the type of education they received. This represented a drastic shift from the past practice of emphasizing that most intellectuals earned wages. Party members who had spoken out against the party were condemned as spokesmen for the bourgeois class who had entered the party "surreptitiously." Accepting the view that the antisocialist political ideology of the intellectuals came from their class background rather than from the possession of any objective knowledge, Deng advocated training "proletarian intellectuals" and "revolutionary specialists" by promoting young workers and peasants to carry out the tasks usually performed by the intellectuals.^[50]

Following Deng's reports, the center issued specific criteria for defining rightists. The basic criterion was whether or not a person opposed socialism, but how to determine intention was undefined, leaving room for abuse.^[51]

Rectification mainly affected intellectuals in party and government organs above the province and municipality levels as well as in "business units"—such as educational institutions, research units, newspapers and the publishing industry, literature and art groups, and public health organizations. Many informants insisted that during the campaign higher authorities sent down a quota of rightists to each unit, and each unit in turn had to meet the quota, even by manufacturing rightists if none was found. The way to detect a rightist was by first checking the records of speeches and then by mobilizing the masses to recall questionable statements, speeches, and problems. Through these methods, the CCP produced about half a million "rightists," which represented 10 percent of all intellectuals.^[52] Probably those who earned the rightist

[50] Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Dangshi Yanjiushi, ed., Zhonggong Dangshi Cankao Ziliao (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1979), 8:635–66.

[51] For the official criteria used for selecting rightists, see ibid.

[52] Harding, Organizing China , 149. According to Frederick Teiwes (Politics and Purge ), between 15 and 40 percent of the leadership of the democratic parties and between 2 and 3 percent of the members of the CCP itself were labeled rightists during the antirightist campaign. The label, in many cases, was not removed until after Mao's death.

stigma were the most outspoken, independent, and honest intellectuals. After the antirightist campaign, no one dared to challenge the party.

On the other hand, the ferocious opposition to perceived rightists that a large number of party members demonstrated is understandable when one looks carefully at the basic structure of the party. More than half of the twelve million party members had been recruited after 1949. Many of them were from worker or peasant backgrounds with little education, and they obviously owed their positions to political loyalty. As the beneficiaries of the new order, through land reform and the socialization of industry, they knew very well that without the Communist Party they would not have risen so far. Thus, they were genuinely eager to defend their interests and reacted violently when intellectuals criticized the party. In this sense the campaign symbolized the peasant mentality not only of Mao but also of the party as a whole. The antirightist campaign has been called the peasants' challenge to intellectuals.^[53]

The Hundred Flowers period was the last time the issue of member versus nonmember cadres was publicly aired. With the antirightist campaign, it seems that the Chinese people accepted the party's prerogative over personnel management and the domination of party cadres in all leadership positions. The process of extending political power over other functional fields is best exemplified by the concurrent appointments of top party leaders to professorships at various universities.^[54]

After the Antirightist Campaign

Party member recruitment came to a standstill during the Hundred Flowers period, but it resumed immediately after the antirightist campaign. As was the case with the preceding movement, the groups targeted for recruitment were those who had proven themselves in the previous antirightist campaign.^[55] Heilongjiang province reportedly acquired 6.4 percent and Guizhou province 10

[53] "Discussion of 1957," in Qingnian Lundan (Wuhan), 1985.

[54] For instance, Tao Zhu, Kang Sheng, Zhou Yang, and Ko Qingxi were appointed to professorships at universities and colleges.

[55] Daily Report , 1 July 1959; 11 July 1959.

percent of their total party membership in this manner.^[56] A particularly sought-after group were women: Zhejiang province recruited 10,500—27.2 percent of all women members—in 1959.^[57] The recruitment drive continued throughout the Great Leap Forward period. During the euphoric period in which the party sought to build an immediate socialism—known as the "Communist wind"—the party again resorted to quotas for basic units. As a result, "the recruitment work was sloppy, and some localities blindly pursued quantity, thus lowering the quality of the party members."^[58]

Despite the antirightist movement, the official line continued to emphasize a balance between ability and virtue.^[59] Obviously China needed able cadres to carry out the economic development that the Eighth Party Congress had promised. However, the party changed its policy to combining the "red" and "expert" in each cadre by training experts from the peasant and worker classes instead of relying on party member cadres for virtue and the intellectuals for ability. Liu Shaoqi instructed the party to "cultivate a large number of cadres, raise their ability, and promote the specialization of cadres."^[60]

The leftist tendency of the Great Leap Forward, however, pushed aside the moderate leaders' efforts to create "proletarian experts." During that period, the built-in anti-intellectual bias among cadres from worker and peasant backgrounds reasserted itself, frequently equating intellectuals with their former exploiters.

The class background of intellectuals is not good, their social relations are complicated, and their ideology is backward. Although their living conditions in the old world were not as good as the capitalists', they were much better than the workers'. The workers are the only creators of values, but intellectuals exploit them just as the capitalists do.^[61]

When the Great Leap Forward resulted in disaster, Mao withdrew from the front line, while Liu Shaoqi renewed the effort to

[56] Survey of China Mainland Press , 26 August 1959, 6.

[57] Daily Report , 9 March 1959, C3.

[58] Shehui Kexue Cankao , 30 September 1984, 2–7.

[59] Dazhong Bao , 14 May 1958.

[60] Renmin Ribao , 1 May 1958.

[61] Zhongqing Shehui Kexue , March 1985, 42–48.

"raise the technical and scientific level of the cadres and to promote cadres with special expertise to the leading posts." Under his leadership, the party decided to stop the recruitment and to carry out a "fresh registration."^[62] At the same time, Zhou, who had been desperately trying to provide adequate working conditions for specialists by guaranteeing five-sixths of their working hours for their speciality, organized the Guangzhou conference in 1962.^[63] Realizing the essential functions that experts and specialists perform in running a modern society, moderate leaders were ready to co-opt intellectuals into the party-state apparatus. But this effort did not last. Instead, the CR began.

As the crisis generated by the Great Leap Forward came to a close, Mao, coming out of semiretirement, advanced the slogan "Never forget class struggle." By 1964, as China's ideological dispute with the Soviet Union intensified, Mao advocated the cultivation of "millions of revolutionary successors." "This is a matter of great, extremely great, importance, a matter of life and death for the fate of the party and the nation." Revolutionary successors had to be (1) real Marxist-Leninists, (2) revolutionaries, (3) proletarian politicians who could be one with the majority of the people, (4) models in practicing the party's democratic centralism, and (5) modest, aware of the danger of being arrogant, and good at self-criticism.^[64]

Mao did not mention anything relating to ability. None of the five conditions, which were exclusively related to virtue, touched upon the essence of Leninism—party spirit. Instead, Mao strongly emphasized three abstractions: Marxism-Leninism, revolution, and the masses. With the new criteria for revolutionary successors, the party embarked on a policy of "actively, and cautiously absorbing new party members on a comparatively large scale" by means of the Socialist Education Movement (SEM). Qinghai province recruited 10,530, the largest group of new members ever admitted in

[62] Shehui Kexue Cankao , 30 September 1984, 2–7.

[63] For the radicals' criticism of the Guangzhou conference, see Xiju Zhanbao , 24 June 1964. Enjoying the new freedom, some party intellectuals such as Wu Han and Deng To published articles subtly satirizing Mao's "petty bourgeois fanaticism," criticism which later started the CR.

[64] Renmin Ribao , 4 July 1964.

one year.^[65] Another source estimated that about 2.2 million were recruited during this period.

By the time of the CR, party member cadres completely dominated the party-state. Oksenberg reports that almost 100 percent of even county-level and district-level cadres were party members—90 percent at the multivillage level, 83 percent at the village level, and 60 percent at the subvillage level.^[66] Kau reports a similar situation among the Wuhan municipal elite: the old party members dominated the higher echelons of the municipal bureaucracy. Party member cadres monopolized politically influential positions, whereas cadres without party membership—who possessed 93 percent of all technical and professional skills in the bureaucracy—languished in functional placements, which had neither influence nor prestige.^[67]

Political Implications of the Cadre Policy

After founding the new regime in a 1949, the former revolutionaries continued to recruit cadres largely through mass campaigns, using the methods of centrally assigned recruitment quotas, recruiting large numbers in groups—known as the "wave style," and party rectification. Immediately after 1949, when the CCP faced the urgent tasks of setting up a new state, restoring social order, and reviving the war-shattered economy, the founding fathers of the new regime tried to balance virtue and ability in selecting cadres. At that time the CCP adopted a pragmatic and lenient policy toward intellectuals in order to utilize their functional expertise and political support. Once the CCP succeeded in solving such immediate urban problems as controlling inflation and launching the first five-year plan, the delicate balance between competency and political loyalty gradually shifted in favor of the latter. The intellectuals' criticism of the party's cadre policy and the subsequent antirightist campaign decisively tipped on the side of

[65] By the end of 1966 Qinghai had a total of 77,665 party members, 3.3 percent of the population. Shehui Kexue Cankao , 30 September 1984, 2–7.

[66] Oksenberg, "Individual Attributes," 180.

[67] Ying-mao Kau, '"Urban Bureaucratic Elite."

political reliability. The practice of looking at class background to gauge political attitude continued until Mao's death.

The radical faction led by Mao was largely responsible for the anti-intellectual bias that persisted in the new China. But the bias also had a deeper root: it reflected the diffused sentiment of the rank and file of party members and the cadre corps at that time. When land reform started in 1946, peasant cadres challenged the intellectual cadres because they were from the well-to-do social classes. When competency was briefly emphasized for the selection and promotion of cadres during the first five-year plan, many of the former guerrilla fighters complained bitterly because their contribution to "conquering the world" was not fully appreciated and because their guerrilla war skills were no longer needed—"the heroes have no place to use their weapons." During the antirightist campaign, top party leaders could easily mobilize the former revolutionaries as well as newly recruited party members to crush the demands calling for increased attention to professional competency, thus making it possible for "the old heroes to have a place to use their weapons."^[68]

The class-based cadre policy made it impossible for the political elite to maintain a proper balance between social revolution on the one hand and economic construction and nation building on the other. The cadre policy was less dysfunctional in the rural areas where the regime's task was rather simple and the educational level of the cadre corps was not particularly low compared with that of the average rural population. But in urban areas, the educational level of the cadres was not much higher than that of the urban population they governed, although urban efforts required more sophisticated, diverse, and specialized knowledge. Moreover, the experiences of the revolutionary elite were less relevant to the efficient management of urban areas.

Not only did the CCP recruit its cadres from social groups that were ill-equipped to act as "proctors," but it also failed to train them for the complexities of economic development and management in modern society, as Stalin did in the Soviet Union during

[68] From interview in Beijing in 1986. For fragmented data on the class background of lower-level cadres immediately after the establishment of the PRC, see Zhongnan Junzhengweiyuanhui Tugai Weiyuanhui Diaocha Yanjiushi, Zhongnanqu Yibaifenzhi Diaocha (Wuhan: Diaocha Yanjiuchu, 1953), 322.

the 1930s.^[69] Consequently, the educational level of the top elite during the 1950s was actually lower than that during the Jiangxi period of the early 1930s. For instance, according to Derek Waller, about 31 percent of the Jiangxi elite had a college-level education, whereas only 26 percent of the Eighth Central Committee members had a similar level of education.^[70] Intellectuals constituted 14 percent of all CCP members in 1957, whereas the same category amounted to 43 percent of the Polish Communist Party in 1960.^[71]

In the early 1950s Chinese leaders tried to improve the cultural and technical standards of the existing cadre corps by setting up an "intensive middle-school program specially designed for the workers and peasant cadres" as well as cadre training institutes. China had about 347 cadre training institutes—34 managed by central organs and 313 by provincial and municipal governments.^[72] By 1956, 1.27 million cadres had received training in their specialized fields and in basic political theory. All remaining cadres were scheduled to receive similar training by 1962. In addition, existing educational institutions organized special classes for cadres on active duty.^[73]

Training efforts, however, had substantially declined by the time of the Hundred Flowers campaign and gradually came to an end as the overall political orientation shifted. First, the center gave jurisdiction over cadre schools to the provinces and municipalities. Then, by August 1961, it was decided to stop cadre training for three years, and many school facilities were used for other purposes. In 1964, the regime finally closed the remaining training institutes.^[74]

In reflecting on what went wrong with the Chinese political sys-

[69] Stalin systematically trained children from the working class into "proletarian experts." After the great purge of the first generation of revolutionaries in 1930, he promoted them to leadership positions. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Stalin and the Making of a new Elite, 1928–1939," Slavic Review 38 (September 1979): 377–402. Also see her Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

[70] Derek J. Waller, "The Evaluation of the Chinese Communist Political Elite, 1931–56," in Robert Scalapino, ed., Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972).

[71] Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 34.

[72] Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin , 59–98.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Ibid.

tem he himself helped build, Lu Dingyi, former director of the propaganda department, candidly attributed Maoist radicalism to the low educational level of the cadre corps.

[At the beginning of the liberation we] should have sent some party members [from peasant and worker backgrounds] to receive an education—not short-term training, but a regular college education. If [we had followed] that way for ten or twenty years, it would have been very good for our construction. Not pushing for that idea was largely my responsibility. That was a big mistake.

If a mistake has been made, it is better to recognize it. I am a graduate of Jiatong University, but I have worked for a long time in propaganda, education, and cultural fields, and I have not paid special attention to the importance of intellectuals. That was a great mistake! Any army without culture [wenhua ] is a stupid army. Without culture, how can one know what a democratic legal system is and thereby avoid promoting feudalistic [policies], such as promoting backyard furnaces to the extent of cutting down trees and stressing grain to the extent of eliminating sideline farming? [The lack of culture] led to blind commandism at the top level and to blind compliance at the lower level; both of them are equally ignorant. Ignorance led to the persecution of the intellectuals.^[75]

Having been recruited from the poorest sector of society, the Chinese cadre corps did not have a power base independent of the party-state, nor any vested interests such as wealth, prestige, or political influence to protect. They derived whatever they possessed exclusively from the bureaucratic positions they held in the state apparatus. In this respect, the Communist elites were quite different from traditional elites, who came mainly from landlords and wealthy families and who had their own social and economic interests to defend. At the same time, as scholar-officials appointed by the imperial court after passing the civil service examination, traditional elites also represented the state's authority. Their dual role helped maintain the balance between society and state.^[76]

Although the party-state recruited its cadres from the lower classes, most of them have acted more or less as agents of the state rather than as representatives of their class. The idea of state

[75] Minzu Yu Fazhi , no. 4, 1983, 3.

[76] Siku-kai Lau, "Monism, Pluralism, and Segmental Coordination: Toward Alternative Theory of Elite, Power, and Social Stability," Journal of the Chinese University of Hong Kong , 3, no. 1, 187–206.

bureaucrats representing the concrete interests of specific social groups has never been legitimized in China. Despite the notion of the party as the "vanguard," the CCP condemned those who were sensitive to the perceived interests of the masses for making the mistake of "tailism," a pejorative term for blindly following the lead of the masses, even though urging the cadres to practice the mass line and mass mobilization.^[77] As a result, instead of serving as a channel for the perceived interests of the Chinese masses as originally intended, the mass movement and mass mobilization became mere tools for implementing the radical policy chosen for ideological reasons.^[78] Furthermore, even though their economic interests lay with private farming, the basic-level rural cadres who had obtained their positions because of their poor-peasant background and political activism during the land reform faithfully carried out the collectivization policy. This clearly demonstrates that political interests were more important than economic ones as far as the bureaucrats were concerned. In other words, positions within the bureaucracy rather than economic interests largely dictated the political behavior of the cadres.^[79] As a result, the cadres were more responsive to their superiors in the party-state than to the particular class from which they were recruited.

Although the former revolutionaries set up a state structure ostensibly modeled after the Soviet's, the Chinese party-state was more centralized and with less structural differentiation and routinization. (For a detailed discussion of the structure, see chapter 9.) For the sake of making a socialist revolution, the party deeply and completely penetrated not only all the auxiliary mass organizations but also the state apparatus, imposing "monistic" leadership and thereby losing the flexibility that the layered organizations had previously offered. At the same time the party-state was never fully institutionalized to the extent of effectively regulating the behavior of each officeholder. Consequently, the group of cadres occupying

[77] Chalmers Johnson, "Chinese Communist Leadership and Mass Response," in Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou, eds., China in Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 1:397–447.

[78] Tang Tsou, The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), xiiv.

[79] For the distinction between class position and class situation, see Nicos Poulantzas, "The Problem of the Capitalist Class," in Robin Blackburn, ed., Ideology in Social Science (London: Collins, 1972).

political office represented the party-state more realistically than did the abstract notions of political structures, offices, and roles. This means that the political elite's values, habits, and style, which derived from their social characteristics and previous revolutionary experiences, had a deep influence on the evolution of the political institutions and their actual operation. As a result, distinguishing between the authority of the offices and that of the occupants is a difficult task in the party-state.

Subject to the personnel decisions of their superiors, the cadres were hierarchically organized according to well-defined ranks—which were initially devised for a salary scale but eventually became social status symbols. Although the cadres did not have any discretionary power over the "value premise"—which was Mao's prerogative as the guardian of official ideology—they enjoyed a substantial amount of discretionary power over the "factual premise."^[80] They were selected on the basis of political loyalty rather than competency and expected to use political criteria, which were open to subjective interpretation by the decision-makers, rather than any other functional criteria. The extensive personal networks existing among the old cadres and the Maoist pressure for constant contact with the masses made it difficult for the revolutionary cadres to operate exclusively on an impersonal basis. General rules and guidelines that in other bureaucracies operate to circumscribe the behavior of the occupants of office were vague and frequently couched in ambiguous ideological terms that allowed varying interpretations. In short, the cadres were expected to play the role of revolutionary leaders mobilizing the masses for social revolution rather than efficient and effective administrators.

The cadre system that the CCP developed immediately after 1949, including the practice of recruiting cadres from the most disadvantaged social groups on the basis of their loyalty as proven in political campaigns, buttressed the CCP's attempt to consolidate its own political structure through social transformation. Free from any external restraints encountered during the revolutionary era,

[80] For the distinction between the two, see Herbert Simon, "Decision-Making and Administrative Organization," in Robert K. Merton, ed., Reader in Bureaucracy (New York: Free Press, 1967), 185–94.

the party-state initiated a series of social revolutions that completely eliminated any social force that could have raised political demands or worked as a check on the ever-expanding party-state; ideological campaigns, quite often backed by coercion, broke the will of any of the Chinese people considering resisting the revolutionary changes.^[81] Each of these campaigns, which generated many activists recruited to fill cadre positions, further consolidated the party-state's domination over society.

Land reform brought an end to the political influence of the landlord class, which had frequently played the role of "guardian of society" when the traditional state adopted policies adverse to its interests. The collectivization of agriculture shifted control over economic resources from individual peasants to the state, thus depriving society of resources with which to challenge the party-state's authority. A continuous effort to equalize peasant incomes and an artificial intensification of class struggle in the rural areas prevented any peasant group from gaining substantial economic resources.

The peaceful transformation of industry deprived the capitalist class, which had never developed much political influence, of any control over resources, while absorbing some of them individually into the state apparatus as managers of enterprises. The introduction of the material allocation system through the state plan politically emasculated the urban population, making it completely dependent on the state for its income. As a result, individuals lost control over such crucial decisions as savings, consumption, labor allocation, occupational choice, and physical movement across administrative boundaries.

Workers in state enterprises are owners in theory, but they have never been allowed to exercise any substantive influence even in factory management. That was the case with the "one-man management system" of the early 1950s, as well as "the manager responsibility system under the leadership of the party committee" during Mao's era.^[82] Even when the Workers Mao's Thought prop-

[81] Tang Tsou, "Reflections on the Formation and Foundation of the Communist Party-State in China," in his Cultural Revolution , 259–334.

[82] For the change from the first to the second, see Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

aganda teams were sent to higher learning institutes during the CR, it was the military rather than the workers who exercised real power.

Intellectuals do not constitute an independent class, but because of their education and training they can provide the regime with the educated manpower necessary for industrialization and modernization. At the same time, in many societies intellectuals tend to acts as critics of the existing social and political order. This has been particularly true in modern China. Nonetheless, a series of campaigns after 1949 undermined their social prestige and political influence. Worst of all, the state extended its control over all "business units" and brought professional associations under its control, thus transforming what had been individual, practicing professionals into members of bureaucratized organizations. Finally, the antirightist campaign of 1958 muzzled outspoken intellectuals and blacklisted almost 10 percent of the intellectual population, thus ending the active political role that Chinese intellectuals had played since the May 4 movement. Thereafter, neither a social group that could check for the abuse of political power by the party-state nor a forum where political issues could be discussed existed.

There are cultural as well as historical reasons for the CCP's reliance on the political power of the party-state to initiate social change. Unlike the case of Western Europe, the state as an institution with an active role has never been problematic in China, Japan, or Korea, where the origin of the state—regardless of how one defines it—can be traced back several thousand years. Particularly in China, with its long tradition of centralized bureaucracy headed by an emperor, the state's existence has been historically, intellectually, and culturally accepted.

The personal experiences of senior party leaders reinforced the cultural tradition. The Communist movement from the beginning viewed a powerful state with overwhelming political power as a solution to the incessant internal civil wars among the warlords and to the external pressure from the imperialist powers. China's acceptance of Marxism-Leninism further contributed to the rise of the powerful party-state. From the beginning, Marxism-Leninism appealed to Chinese radical intellectuals as a political ideology rather than as scientific laws governing social development. Mao's

sinification of Marxism-Leninism—or "creative integration of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of China," to use the official Chinese phrase—can be summarized as the politicization of Marxism-Leninism. The fact that the CCP came to power only through a full-scale civil war against the Nationalists also favored a dominant state.^[83]

In retrospect, although they successfully defeated the Nationalists, the founders lacked the wisdom needed to maintain a proper balance between social revolution on the one hand and economic construction and nation building on the other. Nor did they demonstrate the ability to build an efficient party-state that could continuously adapt to new situations and perform the complex task of coordinating many specialized functional units in a modern society.

The failure is largely due to Mao's radicalism. As was the case with Wang Ming, who accepted the dogmatism of Russian Leninism, Mao's thought, which had resolved the basic problems of the Chinese revolution, also put the Chinese elite in a straitjacket after 1949.^[84] As a contemporary Chinese historian argues, "for a long period, Comrade Mao lived in China's backward countryside. He did not understand modern, socialized, large-scale industry. This caused him to sink, with regard to the question of socialist economic construction, even more into subjective utopianism marked by impatience for quick success."^[85]

Stressing the rural orientation of Mao cannot explain the question of why he had so much power.^[86] The root of the Maoist ultraleftist tendency should therefore be traced back to the cadre corps that the regime created after 1949. Largely from the lower

[83] For an attempt to explain the post–1949 policy in terms of the preceding revolutionary experiences, see Theda Skocpol, State and Social Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

[84] His experiences in the Yanan period remained central to his way of thinking, even after liberation when they were not as relevant. See Johnson, "Chinese Communist Leadership."

[85] Stuart Schram, "The Limits of Cataclysmic Change," China Quarterly , no. 108, December 1986, 612–24.

[86] By "rural orientation," I mean the tendency to view political processes in moral and ethical terms with millenarian expectations, to reject functional specialization and a market mechanism, and to emphasize self-sufficiency and distribution over production. For the peasantry's political outlook, see James Scott, "Hegemony and the Peasantry," Politics and Society , no. 3, 1977, 267–96.

rungs of society and without many vested interests to protect, cadres could be readily co-opted into the party-state apparatus and induced to act as the state's agents in its encroachment upon society. In their political outlook the cadres retained the peasants' viewpoint while remaining ignorant of the complex requirements of modern industrialized society. Whenever such pragmatic leaders as Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai attempted to adjust the cadre policy to such prerequisites of modernization as functional differentiation, specialization, professionalism, and routinization of administrative procedures, the powerful party, with its large number of uneducated members accustomed to political movements, resisted the changes with Mao's encouragement. Instead, the former guerrilla fighters—largely recruited from among poor peasants—sustained the mass mobilization even to run the economy, bringing their "small producers' mentality" and "guerrilla mentality" to the complex problems of managing a modern industrialized complex society.^[87] In this sense Mao's peasant mentality represented rather than shaped those of the majority of cadres, who, according to Liao Gailong, one of the best-known party historians, "not only worshiped authority, but also corrupted the party with egalitarian thinking."^[88] An extreme historical irony is that it was precisely Mao's success in mobilizing the peasants that later proved to be the basic limitation to China's political development.

[87] Qingnian Lundan , no. 2, 1985, 92–98; Andrew Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 114–22.

[88] Schram, "Limits of Cataclysmic Change."