Seven—
Structural Fragmentation

During the post-1968 period, there was a shift from the paradigm of a residual "feudal-capitalist" counterpolity against which a revolutionary vanguard led the masses in a breakthrough toward a new utopia to a fragmentation of the revolutionary leadership into factional networks. The theoretical basis for this fragmentation was the discovery of an emergent "class conflict" within the leadership, corresponding to factional policy disagreements. This class qua factional antagonism quickly ramified among all social strata, each side vying for exclusive claim to the symbolism of revolutionary virtue.

During the late Cultural Revolution period, structural fragmentation went through three phases. In the first phase, experimentation with alternative "revolutionary" organizational arrangements (chiefly the Revolutionary Committee) quickly gave way to the reconstruction under military auspices of a monolithic emergent structure, complete with rigid organizational frames and a target definition derived primarily from residual class categories. This was in effect barracks communism, in which military hegemony was achieved by subjecting civilian political cadres to permanent reeducation and rusticating (or otherwise silencing) opposition.

Its collapse upon the death of Lin Biao made way for the second phase, in which a balance was sought between three factionally relevant social categories: rehabilitated civilian cadres, politically active soldiers, and radical activists. A synthesis between forces of order and forces of revolutionary vitality was sought not in new organizational forms, but in "affirmative action" recruitment policies within old forms.

For various reasons this balancing act collapsed, resulting in the formation during the third phase of two discrete factional networks based on a mix of ideological affinity, personal ties, and functional specialization. On the one side were the moderates, consisting of a coalition of military and rehabilitated civilian cadres, with a relatively broad and deep reservoir of career connections, who dominated the central and provincial administrative and planning bureaucracies. On the other side were the

cultural radicals, consisting of a small minority of senior veterans and a somewhat larger group of relatively junior civilian cadres and supportive local publics. Radical leaders had relatively narrow and shallow bases, but managed to gain control of the central propaganda network and a number of auxiliary organizations. Both sides competed vigorously with all the organizational weapons at their disposal.

The Lin Biao System

In November 1974, three students in the city of Guangzhou, under the collective penname "Li Yizhe," wrote a long, polemical big-character poster, the target of which they called the Lin Biao "system" (xitong ). They explained:

What is a "system"? It is the total entity of related things—thus a complete system. The Lin Biao system is the whole lot of Lin Biao's theories, programs, roads, lines, policies, measures, style of Party [building], style of study and style of work which has, in various spheres of politics, jurisprudence, military affairs, economy and culture, opposed the Party center and Chairman Mao and thus brought great disasters upon the whole people and spread poison over the whole country.^[1]

The poster extended for a hundred yards in length, and attracted crowds of attentive readers. Local cadres were reportedly taken aback by the scope of the critique and by the sophistication of the argument, and somewhat at a loss about how to handle the incident. When the contents of the poster were referred to the CC for their instruction, Li Xiannian pronounced it "reactionary through and through, vicious and malicious to the extreme," and the three perpetrators were placed under arrest.^[2]

The probable reason for Li Xiannian's indignation and for the harsh reaction of the authorities is that the focus of the attack by "Li" was so broad, conflating features peculiar to Lin's period with others characteristic of the pre- and post-Lin regimes. (Li's conception of Lin's regime as a seamless web is also obviously overstated, in view of the drastic shrinkage of his base in the final showdown.) Yet Lin Biao did leave his inprint upon the country. Within a very brief time span he constructed a structure of radical praetorianism or barracks communism that comprised one of the politically feasible futures that lay open to Maoism upon the termination of spontaneous mobilization.

Lin Biao's intervention into politics did not follow the typical pattern of the "man on horseback" in a less developed country, for it took place at

[1] Li Yizhe, "Concerning Socialist Democracy and Law," pp. 11–20. Also translated in IS , vol. 12, no. 1 (January 1976): 110–49.

[2] "Editor's Note," IS , vol. 12, no. 1:111.

the invitation of the civilian political leadership. The PLA intervened massively at every level during the Cultural Revolution in order to fill the vacuum left by the destruction of the Party-state bureaucracies. The army expanded its power along two main organizational axes:

1. Military dominance was asserted following demobilization of the Red Guard and Revolutionary Rebel bands by dispatching "support-the-left" troops—or, to be more precise, troops implementing the "three-support" and "two-military" campaign.^[3] Zhou Enlai told Edgar Snow that no less than 2 million soldiers were engaged in this campaign, including virtually the entire strength of the Regional Force troops, consisting of more than a million men. These troops were not normally sent as intact units, but were parceled out to form political work teams, or "soldiers' Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams." Such teams were sent into all communes, enterprises, schools, offices, and state and Party organizations (including most State Council ministries) in which factional strife had disrupted normal administrative capacity, in order to supervise operations. As they began moving into troubled areas, the teams placed local police and public security personnel under their jurisdiction in the form of a so-called Military Control Commission (MCC), which exercised practically total control over the local civilian population. These temporary administrative organs were to prepare for the formation of RCs to succeed them, though in many cases the Mao Thought teams or MCCs declined to "fade away" following establishment of RCs. By the end of 1969, all organs, units, enterprises, and rural areas were thus governed by at least one (and perhaps all) of the following: a workers' unit, a PLA unit, a Mao Thought propaganda team, an RC preparatory group, and a Communist Party branch preparatory group—all of which were coordinated by the military and, in most cases, headed by an officer.^[4] The various military work teams saw to it that the schools or factories to which they were assigned were organized in the same way that the army itself was organized, forming regiments, companies, platoons, and so forth, and teaching the "three-eight style of work" taught in the PLA.

2. As the civilian governmental (i.e., RC) and Party structures were reconstructed, the numerous leadership and staff vacancies were filled by professional soldiers. The same situation prevailed during the immediate post-Liberation period, but, unlike their predecessors, these soldiers did not demobilize. Local military leaders dominated the local and provincial RCs that were established between the summer of 1968 and the spring of 1969, and, because most delegates to the Ninth Congress were produced

[3] The "three supports" were support for the broad masses of the left, industry, and agriculture; the "two militaries," military control and military training.

[4] Ilsa Sharp, "The Saplings," FEER 69, no. 28 (July 2, 1970): 17.

by the RCs at various levels, the military also gained control of the Central Party apparatus. Only slightly more than 28 percent of the incumbents of the Eighth Congress (32 full members, 14 alternates) retained their positions in the Ninth. Of the 279 members elected, 132 (about 46 percent) were military commanders or political commissars (compared with 30.9 percent in the Eighth CC), 77 (27 percent) were cadres, and 56 (90 percent) mass representatives.^[5] The CC also included 34 members of the central government (28 full members, 6 alternates, 18 percent of the total), thus serving as a major catchment basin for revisionist bureaucrats who had been washed out of the Politburo; among the Eighth CC incumbents who retained their positions were 15 full and 2 alternate members of the old Politburo, including Chen Yun, Nie Rongzhen, Chen Yi, and Xu Xiangqian. Of mass representatives elected, most were anonymous newcomers (only 2 were former Red Guards); if they received permanent functional positions outside the CC, these were usually subordinate positions in provincial RCs.

The Politburo was even more heavily weighted with military cadres than the CC (13 of the 25 total were military officers, only 3 of whom were members of the previous Politburo); 6 of these were Lin's personal protégés (Lin Biao himself, his wife Ye Qun, Li Zuopeng, Wu Faxian, Qiu Huizuo, and Huang Yongsheng), and the remainder were former marshals or provincial and regional military officials whose loyalties were not yet apparent. Five civilian radicals became Politburo members, 2 of whom (Kang Sheng and Chen Boda) sat on the Standing Committee. Only 2 State Council representatives survived (Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian), leaving such veterans as Zhu De, Liu Bocheng, Ye Jianying, and Dong Biwu as a "swing" bloc.

The military's dominance was evident not only in its authoritative coordination of other units through PLA-dominated work teams and appointment of military officers into most commanding civilian political positions, but in the leverage the military continued to exercise over the two conceivable sources of opposition: rebel "mass organizations" and demoted civilian Party-state cadres. We have already noted the importance of the 1967 clash between Red Guards and PLA regional forces in splitting cultural and military radicalism and establishing the domin-

[5] All eleven known MR commanders were elected, as well as all known MR chief commissars except for those from Tibet; all told, some 26 percent of the CC were drawn from the regional commands, including at least fifty-three general officers and some twenty-seven Military District (MD) or garrison officers. The chairmen of all twenty-nine provincial RCs (the majority of whom were military officers) were elected to full CC membership. The headquarters and staff departments were also quite well represented (12 percent) in comparison with the Eighth CC, though the real strength of this group was to be found in its domination of the CC's Military Affairs Commission (MAC). Ralph L. Powell, "The Party, the Government and the Gun," AS 10, no. 6 (June 1970): 441–72.

ance of the latter: whereas only two of the RCs set up before the Wuhan Incident were led by soldiers, nineteen of the twenty-three RCs established thereafter were. In addition to the prominent military role in the rustication of Red Guards that terminated spontaneous mobilization, there was an inherent class-based antipathy between soldiers (usually of "poor peasant" background) and young rebels (of urban middle-class background). This hatred was exacerbated when the PLA reverted to the "blood-line" theory of class origins in their implementation of such campaigns as the "great criticism," "cleansing of class ranks" or the "one-hit, three-anti" (yi da san fan —hit counterrevolutionaries; anti corruption/theft, extravagance, and waste) in the 1968–70 period.^[6] The radicals mobilized to protest their suppression in the wake of the Ninth Congress, becoming so troublesome that on August 28, 1969, the CC issued an eight-point Central Document banning struggle by force, dissolving all armed factions and mass organizations, and remanding all workers and peasants to their units of production.^[7] Even when representatives of the "revolutionary masses" attained positions on RCs, these were usually not members of the disbanded rebel organizations but model workers or peasants receiving sinecures; being of inferior status and lacking political experience, they looked for guidance to the leadership, who encouraged them to remain at their units and "not divorce themselves from production."^[8]

Purged cadres were disposed of in one of three ways: they were sent to May 7 cadre schools, sent to settle down on the farm as members of production teams, or sent to take part in manual labor for a specified period. As of January 10, 1969, nearly three hundred May 7 cadre schools had been set up in Guangdong alone, and more than a hundred thousand cadres had been sent for retraining. There they attended Mao Thought study classes, practiced criticism and self-criticism, and engaged in manual labor. Some groups of cadres were sent to the countryside to settle down indefinitely and receive reeducation from the masses. Shorter labor stints were more common: some units implemented the "three-thirds" system (one-third of the time doing manual work, one-third going down for investigation and study, and one-third engaged in routine office work), whereas some units spent half their time each day doing

[6] Small meetings were held before and after work. Large meetings were usually held in the evenings, at which short articles of criticism written by the masses would be publicly discussed and linked to concrete problems. Dai Dan, "'Da pipan' he 'yi da san fan'" [Great criticism and "one hit, three anti"] ZW , no. 209 (October 16, 1970):8.

[7] URS , vol. 56, no. 5 (July 15, 1959): 59; editorial, "Cadres Should Persist in Taking Part in Collective Productive Labor," RR , November 20, 1969, p. 1.

[8] Nanfang Ribao , January 10, 1969, p. 1; RR , August 22, 1969, p. 2; RR , October 17, 1969, p. 2; RR , August 18, 1969, p. 2; HQ , no. 9, 1969.

manual labor, the other half doing their regular work. In each of these resocialization arrangements the military was in command and retained discretion to block the rehabilitation of cadres.

Lin was also energetic in organizing the masses into politically utilizable organizations, often introducing new organizational vehicles—partly because of ideological antipathy to the old ones, no doubt, but also because restoring the original organizations would necessitate rehabilitating their civilian leadership.^[9] The masses were initially (mid-1968) organized along functional lines into various "congresses" (daibiao dahui ): the Workers' Congress (gong dai hui ), the Poor-and-Lower-Middle Peasants' Congress (pin xiazhong nong daibiao huiyi ), and the Red Guards' (or University and Middle-School Students') Congress.^[10] Article Fifteen of the Party Constitution adopted at the Ninth Congress alluded to the "Three Congresses" (san dai hui ), and in fact some provinces held three-congress provincial meetings.

After the Ninth Congress such relatively unstructured assemblies fell into desuetude, to be replaced by a more militaristic pattern of organization. In schools, students were organized into battalions, companies, platoons and squads; in the factories, workshops, sections and work shifts were rechristened battalions, companies, platoons, and squads, each with its own "commander."^[11] "Provincial activists' meetings" were introduced, under the direct jurisdiction of the PLA. Every functional group was to have its own catechism: there were the "four firsts," the "four-good company" movement, the "three-eight work style," and the directive to be "soldiers with five good qualities."^[12] For the youth, there were

[9] The Red Guards were no longer autonomous, of course, but placed under the supervision of the military. Functioning as a junior branch of the Red Guards were the "Red Little Soldiers" (hong xiao bing ), including children between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen, which replaced the pre-Cultural Revolution Young Pioneers. Its activities included learning revolutionary songs and basic military drill or attending Mao's Thought study sessions. CN (Hong Kong), no. 370 (July 23, 1970); "Commentary," HQ , no. 7, 1970; China Topics , YB524 (May 6, 1969).

[10] RR , May 31, 1969, p. 2; July 9, 1969, p. 2; August 22, 1969, p. 4.

[11] CNA , no. 795 (March 20, 1970).

[12] The "four firsts" (sige di yi ) were: first priority for the human factor, for political work, for ideological work, and for living ideas. A "four-good company" was good in political-ideological work, in following the "three-eight" movement, in improving the organization, and in relation to the masses. (The four firsts and four-good company were Lin's summation of Mao's discussion of the priority of politics in his 1929 speech in Gutian.) The "three-eight work style" (sanba zuofeng ) referred to one of Mao's directives consisting of three phrases and eight characters: The three phrases called for firm political attitudes, a simple and diligent work style, and flexible strategy and tactics. The eight characters constituted four words: unity (tuanjie ), concentration (xinchang ), seriousness (yansu ), and liveliness (huopo ). The "five goods" include the first three points of the four goods, plus two additions: good in production techniques, grasping scientific experiments and technical innovation, and good in patriotic sanitation. JFJB , January 22, 1964, as cited in TilmanSpengler, Der Sturz von Lin Piao: Paradigm für militärisch-zivile Konflikte in der Volksrepublik China ? (Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, Mitteilung no. 76, 1976), p. 245.

the five requirements for worthy revolutionary successors.^[13] For cadres aspiring to rehabilitation, there were the "three criteria."^[14] The meeting repertoire also reflected military influence. For example, on the basis of provincial "four-good" and "five-good" movements, exemplary individuals or units would be selected to attend provincial meetings, sometimes in conjunction with such meetings as the "congress of activists in the study of Mao Zedong Thought" (huoxue huoyong Mao Zedong sixiang jiji fenzi daibiao hui ), or "meetings for the exchange of experience in the study of Mao Zedong Thought." Such meetings were held only after months of preparation and careful selection of participants at county-level activists' meetings. There was even some speculation that such meetings (which by early 1970 had been held in twelve of twenty-six provinces) might climax in a national congress, which might then replace the NPC (whose functions it in fact duplicated). But there were also reports of local and provincial resistance to the four/five goods campaign.^[15]

Just as his economic initiatives jeopardized his relations with Zhou Enlai, Lin's organizational arrangements tended to alienate the radicals, isolating him in his showdown with Mao. His militaristic organizational preferences emphasized the reconstruction of tight organizational frames to which the radicals were opposed, due to their rebel constituency as much as to their abstract ideological commitments. The emphasis of Lin and the military politicians popularly associated with his rule on the restoration of discipline snuffed out the phase of radical organizational experimentation that flickered briefly in 1967–68. This emphasis precluded the possibility of an alliance with his most logical civilian collaborators, and possibly disquieted Mao as well. It seems to have also alienated any potential civilian mass constituency, for interview informants in Hong Kong were unanimous in their rejection of Lin's organizational arrangements.

Lin's demise allowed his contributions to radical reorganization to fall into swift and apparently unsung oblivion. Beginning in 1970 at Lushan,

[13] Viz., (1) living study and (2) living application of Mao Zedong Thought; (3) act as a shock brigade in the Three Great Revolutionary Movements (class struggle, the struggle for production, and scientific experiment) in the countryside; (4) thoroughly implement mass criticism; and (5) take heroes as examples, conscientiously fighting self, criticizing revisionism, and remolding world outlook. HQ , no. 9, 1970.

[14] Viz., (1) "Do they hold high the red banner of Mao Zedong's Thought? . . . (2) Do they engage in political and ideological work? . . . (3) Are they enthusiastic about revolution?" Spengler, Sturz . Lin considered the first criterion decisive whereas Mao deemed it less important, though he did not make his attitude clear until later.

[15] CNA , no. 795 (March 20, 1970).

a national campaign was launched to "criticize revisionism and rectify work style" (pixiu zhengfeng ). Its thrust was antiradical, enabling the moderates to criticize Cultural Revolution innovations without openly repudiating the Cultural Revolution itself. "Revisionism" was redefined in terms of the belief in "innate genius" (tiancailun ) or the "hero in history" (yingxiong shiguan ; i.e., Mao's personality cult), as counterposed to "materialism" and "the people make history."^[16] The purpose of the campaign was to provide an appropriate public atmosphere for the introduction of more moderate policies; as Zhou explained to the national media in September 1972, "Without thoroughly discrediting the ultraleftist trend, you will not have the courage to implement Chairman Mao's revolutionary line."^[17] Between late 1971 and the fall of 1972 a series of national planning conferences was convened on such topics as public security, economic planning, and science, taking as their framework for debate criticisms of previous "ultra-left" agricultural, industrial, and educational policies.

A Delicate Balance

Contrary to popular misconception, the period from the death of Lin Biao until the polarization anticipating the succession crisis was not one of radical hegemony, but one in which a tenuous balance was briefly attained between mutually suspicious political groupings. This striving for balance was evident in the tacit agreement to divide political patronage equitably during the reconstruction of the central political structure, and by the observance of certain limits to inter-group competition. Adoption of this quota system was justified in terms of the desire to infuse a more revolutionary spirit into the existing structure through the recruitment of younger and more militant cadres, the aspiration to create a radically different structure having been implicitly abandoned with the shift from the RC to the reconstruction of the Party apparatus in 1969.

The fall of Lin Biao and his paladins created an organizational vacuum that the moderates and the radicals colluded to fill. As early as December 1970 a new definition of the "three-in-one combination" formula was advanced—instead of "soldiers, cadres, and masses," the formula that had been used since the establishment of the RCs beginning in 1967, the point was now to unite "old, middle-aged, and young people"—thereby tacitly excluding a military quota, permitting an increased proportion of rehabilitated cadres, and placing mass representatives in a position of

[16] Xu Zhuanfu, "'Pi-Lin zhengfeng,'" pp. 5–8.

[17] Theoretical Group, Heilongjiang Party Committee, and the Theoretical Department of RR, in RR , March 23, 1978, as cited in Ann Fenwick, "The Gang of Four and the Politics of Opposition: China, 1971–1976" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1983).

apprenticeship. The criteria for screening and "liberating" cadres were also relaxed in 1971, as the Party-building campaign accelerated at the provincial level. According to one estimate, by the end of 1973 military officers still held 46.5 percent of the positions (and nineteen of the twenty-nine chairmanships) on provincial Party committee secretariats, but cadres now held 44 percent and radicals 9.5 percent.^[18]

At the central level, the post-Lin purge vacated fully one-third of the seats filled by the Ninth CC, three-fourths of which were PLA leaders, the other fourth formerly associated with the CCRG; 7 full and 1 alternate Politburo members were also dismissed.^[19] At the Tenth CC, 100 of the 319 members (31.3 percent) were still soldiers, 91 (28.5 percent) cadres, and 107 (33.5 percent) mass representatives. In comparison with the allocation of seats at the Ninth Congress, this represents a slight gain in the proportion of cadres, a loss (of 12.8 percent) in the proportion of military, and a substantial gain (of about 9 percent) in the proportion of mass representatives. The radicals also claimed 9 of the 29 members of the Politburo, and 3 of the 9 seats on its Standing Committee. The number of vice-chairmen was increased from 1 (Lin Biao) to 5 (2 of whom, Kang Sheng and Wang Hongwen, were radicals), thereby signaling the "collective" character of the post-Lin succession arrangements.^[20]

Whereas quantitatively considered the radicals made impressive gains at all central levels, if the quality of those gains is scrutinized they appear more modest, limited essentially to the Politburo, over which Mao wielded personal control. The reason has to do with the essentially honorific and acclamatory function of the CC, which meets too briefly and infrequently to function as a policy-making body.^[21] To the extent that the CC has any political significance it functions as a talent pool for the co-optation of members of the various "standing" committees that actually make policy on a daily basis; aside from the Politburo Standing Committee, these include the various functional committees of the CC

[18] "China," in FEER Yearbook 1974 (Hong Kong), pp. 117–39.

[19] An estimated 75 percent of the purged military cadres were members of Lin's Fourth Field Army, thereby bearing out Whitson's conception of the field army as a political loyalty group, at least in this instance. FEER Yearbook 1974 .

[20] The Politburo Standing Committee included Ye Jianying, Zhu De, Zhang Chunqiao, Dong Biwu, Li Desheng, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Hongwen, and Kang Sheng. Of these, Zhang, Wang, and Kang could be considered cultural radicals. The new vice-chairmen were Zhou, Kang, Wang, Li, and Ye. Wang Hongwen had herewith vaulted from a mere CC membership to the Standing Committee and a Party vice-chairmanship, but inasmuch as he was the youngest and least powerful of the radicals, there was speculation that his was a showcase appointment.

[21] This was especially true during the Cultural Revolution decade, when the CC met in plenary session only six times altogether. The Eighth CC met for its Eleventh Plenum in August 1966 and for its Twelfth in October 1968; the Ninth CC met for its First Plenum in April 1969 and for its Second in August-September 1970; the Tenth CC met for its First Plenum in August 1973 and for its Second (very briefly) in January 1975.

and the administrative bodies of the State Council.^[22] Of the twenty-one full members of the Politburo, nine received no appointments to the Standing Committee, nor (so far as is known) to the CC departments then being formed,^[23] nor to any government position.^[24] That these nine included the prominent members of the radical grouping can hardly have been accidental. This pattern was even more evident in the appointment of mass representatives to the CC, a large proportion of whom were model workers without local political bases (or even necessarily radical ideological affinities): most of them were never heard from again after their election to the CC.^[25]

Given the essentially ceremonial character of their positional gains in the post–Lin Biao reconstruction of the central Party apparatus, one might have expected the radicals to adopt Lin's orphaned military support base, seeking common ground ideologically with "military radicals." But any ideologically committed radicals in the military were purged along with Lin Biao, and the regional military leaders who had opposed Lin were unfavorably disposed toward radicals of any stripe, having fended off verbal and physical assaults by their confreres during the Cultural Revolution. The leading cultural radicals, utterly bereft of military experience or connections, offered no appeal to these veterans. The immediate military beneficiaries of Lin's demise were the old marshals whom he had shunted aside at the center, the MR commanders at the regional level. Ye Jianying replaced Lin as vice-chairman (and acting chairman) of the Military Affairs Commission, and was also appointed defense minister in January 1975.^[26] By the end of 1974 Deng Xiaoping

[22] See Dittmer, "The Formal Structure of Central Chinese Political Institutions," in Sidney Greenblatt et al., eds., Organizational Behavior in Chinese Society (New York: Praeger, 1981), pp. 47–76.

[23] Reconstruction of the CC departments did not begin until after the Tenth Congress, and proceeded in almost total secrecy. The only department whose organization was made public was the Department for Foreign Relations; of the Departments for Organization and for United Front Work only rudiments could be identified, most of those mentioned in the press being newcomers unknown to the general public. See Wolfgang Bartke in CA , November 1976, pp. 598–603.

[24] In the spring of 1972, reconstruction of the government apparatus accelerated; at least thirty-eight new ministers and vice-ministers appeared between September 1971 and December 1972. Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated in April 1973. Yet this was so clearly Zhou's bailiwick that the radicals had little basis to intercede. Bastid and Domenach, "De la Revolution," pp. 126–72.

[25] None of the mass representatives were first or second Party secretaries of their provincial Party committees, and twenty-eight of the forty-eight did not even have positions on the Standing Committees of their provincial Party committees.

[26] According to Nationalist sources, the original suggestion was Zhang Chunqiao as defense minister, but Liu Bocheng pounded the table with his hand to express the vehemence of his opposition. To placate the left, Zhang was appointed director of the General Political Department. See J.P. Jain, After Mao What? Army , Party and Group Rivalries in China (New Delhi: Radiant Pub., 1975).

had been appointed chief of general staff. Later, any possibility of independent kingdom-building at the regional level was foreclosed by the military transfers effected by Mao and Zhou (through Deng Xiaoping) in January 1974. The moderates continued to strengthen their control over the military through the rehabilitation of veteran military cadres, with whom good informal connections had long been maintained.^[27]

The optimistic interpretation to be placed upon all these developments is that the radicals could not have hoped to compete with veterans for policy-making positions on the various standing committees, in view of the priority customarily given to experience and seniority in such appointments, but that they were building for the future with their appointments of young people to the plenary assemblies, the candidate memberships, and other leadership "apprenticeships." The more pessimistic (and realistic) interpretation is that the radicals were being placated with showcase positions as a form of ideological window-dressing (from which they would in due course be squeezed out) while real power reverted to the same veterans who had monopolized it in the past.

It is true that the radicals made much more headway on the periphery of power, where they did not immediately threaten incumbents, than at the center. In their recruitment of activists into the Party as members or local leaders, for example, they achieved striking gains. The 1969 Party Constitution had omitted the previously required two-year probationary period for prospective Party members, facilitating an influx of no less than 8 million people into the Party between 1966 and 1973.^[28] of By the time of the Tenth Congress, Party membership had risen to 28.5 million (it would exceed 30 million by September 1976), representing an average increment of nearly one million members per annum since 1958; 25 percent of these were new recruits,^[29] most of them under the age of 30.^[30] Radical recruitment policies also had a noticeable affirmative-action com-

[27] By February 1975, the moderates had succeeded in rehabilitating the pre-Cultural Revolution commanders of all twenty-five provincial MDs and eighteen of the twenty-five vice-commanders. CA , February 1975.

[28] Zhou Enlai, "Report to the Tenth National Congress of the CPC" (August 24, 1973), in The Tenth National Congress of the CPC (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), p. 8.

[29] Y. C. Chang, Factional and Coalition Politics: The Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath (New York: Praeger, 1976), quoting Zhonggong Yanjiu [Chinese communist studies] (Taibei), vol. 8, no. 4 (April 1974): 71.

[30] A number of regional reports indicate that between 1966 and 1976, the majority of all candidates were under age thirty. For example, the overwhelming majority of the 60,000 who joined the Party in Beijing between 1966 and 1973 were under the age of thirty-five. Large numbers of the 33,600 recruited in Shanghai between 1969 and 1973 were less than twenty-five. In Liaoning province in the years 1965–76, 70 percent of all recruits were "young." RR , July 1, 1973; NCNA Shanghai, June 30, 1973; NCNA Shenyang, July 2, 1976.

ponent: whereas in the 1950s, only one in ten Party members was female, from 1966 to 1973, 27 percent of all new admissions were women.^[31] At the brigade, commune, district, and county levels there was also an attempt to install young people into leadership positions; by 1972, reports of new cadres forming 40 percent of the leading bodies at or below county level were not uncommon.^[32] Although the radicals probably lost a significant proportion of their mass constituency to the rustication program, this was to some degree a recoverable resource: those youths who proved themselves would be offered an enhanced likelihood of acceptance into the Party or Youth League,^[33] special preference for admission to universities,^[34] and good prospects for promotion to local leadership positions. Even more spectacular ascents were conceivable in exceptional cases (vide Zhang Tiesheng).^[35]

Though in balance they were still losing the race for control of the central policy-making structure to an emerging coalition of civilian and military veterans, compensated only by gains of no immediate political utility at the lower levels, the radicals were not without recourse. In 1973 they played a major role in reviving the old mass organizations, as what seems to have been part of a considered strategy to build an independent

[31] Joan M. Maloney, "Problems in China's Party Rebuilding," Current Scene 15, no. 3 (March 1977); see also Roberta Martin, Party Recruitment .

[32] However, the pattern was to restrict new young recruits to lower positions. In a typical report, a county in Shanxi took a total of 564 young people into the brigade, commune, district, and county leaderships, but only 3 were taken into the leading county organs. Shanxi Radio, July 15, 1974, as cited in CNA , no. 968 (August 2, 1974).

[33] Of the 8 million youths sent to the countryside between 1969 and 1973, at least 60,000 had been admitted to the Party by 1973, and another 830,000 had joined the CYL (as would be appropriate to this age cohort, and could normally be expected to lead to party membership). In January 1975, figures for the previous twelve-month period from fourteen provinces, special municipalities, and autonomous regions indicated that another 70,000 rusticated youths had joined the CPC within that time span. While on an average only 12,000 were accepted annually in the previous five years, the 70,000 accepted 1974 would indicate a natural rate of increase based on maturation. NCNA Beijing, January 21, 1975; see also Maloney, "Problems."

[34] In 1974, for example, Qinghua University graduated its first class of worker-peasant-soldier students. Over 500 of its 2,000 members had been admitted to the CPC while enrolled. If those already members when admitted to Qinghua are included, 70 percent of the 1974 class belonged to the Party. PR , no. 22 (May 31, 1974): 20.

[35] Zhang finally passed his entrance exam "with distinction" and became something of a national celebrity, winning election to the NPC Standing Committee in 1975. Other notable climbers included Zhang Liguo, a former Red Guard who became vice-chairman of the Hubei RC in 1968 and secretary of the Hubei CYL in 1973; and Zhu Kejia, who graduated from middle school in Shanghai at the age of eighteen in 1969 and went down to the countryside in Yunnan, where he founded a school in an isolated mountain village and arranged to establish a factory there. At the Tenth Congress he became a candidate member of the CC (at the age of twenty-two) and at the Fourth NPC was also elected a member of the NPC Standing Committee. See Wolfgang Bartke, in CA , January 1977, pp. 724–30.

organizational base. Such a base coincided with radical ideological affinities, with its focus on China's relatively deprived social categories of youth, women, and workers. First heralded in the 1973 New Year's joint editorial, organizational efforts proceeded in proper radical sequence "from bottom to top": in April 1973 the General Trade Unions (GTUs) of Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai were established; Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan (alone among the central leaders) were present at the Beijing congress, and Wang Hongwen attended the counterpart ceremony in Shanghai. By the end of 1973 all provincial GTUs, CYLs, and Women's Federations had been established (except Shandong, which set up its provincial organs in 1975).^[36] In September 1973 the organization of the (armed) worker's militia began, with national media attention being focused on the Shanghai "model."^[37] These mass organizations contained a considerable amount of "new blood," the leaders often hailing from the mass organizations of 1966–68—Ni Zhifu chaired the Beijing GTU, for example, and Wang Hongwen the Shanghai organ.^[38] Although nominally controlled by the regional Party leadership, the mass organizations were often coordinated by political departments set up under provincial RC auspices, under de facto control of the radicals.^[39]

The mass organizations proved to be politically useful. Whereas they had always figured prominently in the formation of local and provincial people's congresses, which in turn nominated the NPC, beginning with the Tenth Party Congress the mass organizations were also able to nominate about 20 percent of the members and candidates of the CC.^[40]

[36] The peasant associations, in contrast, were allowed to fall into desuetude; by the end of 1973 only four provinces (viz., Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangsu) had set up provincial organs. CNA , no. 1087 (July 22, 1977). This neglect reflects an obvious gap in the cultural radical Weltanschauung that was also to plague them in the future—not surprisingly, given the distribution of China's population.

[37] The campaign to establish an urban militia was heralded in a joint editorial entitled "Arm the Working Class" on September 29, 1973. The Shanghai model was distinctive in placing the militia directly under the Party committee, rather than under the local military garrison. But whereas other provinces talked of "learning from Shanghai in militia work," they were not at this time in fact following Shanghai in setting up an independent militia system. The purpose of the militia was to restore discipline among the working class and prevent factionalism; as such, it was expected to cooperate, not compete, with security organs and the army. CNA , no. 968 (August 2, 1974).

[38] FEER Yearbook 1974 , pp. 117–39.

[39] In the middle of 1973, Hubei reports revealed the existence of political departments in the financial and commerce system and in the industry-communications sector of the provincial Party committee. In Qinghai the provincial RC's political department was in charge of propagating the films made of Jiang Qing's model operas, among other things. Hubei Radio, July 13, 1973; August 15, 1973; Qinghai Radio, August 20, 1973.

[40] The provincial GTUs were best represented in the Tenth CC, with no less than twenty-two members and sixteen candidates, most of whom were model workers or peasants. Seven leading CYL officials became CC members, one a candidate; three members of the Women's Federation became members, seven candidates. At the provincial level, onehundred mass representatives have been identified as holding consequential positions: Forty were RC vice-chairmen and eighteen members of RC Standing Committees; eleven were secretaries and three members of the Standing Committees of the Party Secretariats. Half of these positions were held by GTU officials, nineteen by CYL officials, sixteen by Women's Federation officials and fifteen by peasant association officials. Helmut Martin and Wolfgang Bartke, Die Massenorganisation der Volksrepublik China (Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, Mitteilung no. 62, 1975), pp. 145–54.

They were also effective mobilizational vehicles. When such radical slogans as "going against the tide" (fan chaoliu ) appeared in the national media, the mass organizations of Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Xinjiang responded with conspicuous enthusiasm.^[41] In February 1974, for example, these organizations held mass meetings to condemn Lin Biao and Confucius and "all conservatives who sought to turn back the wheel of history," in which the strongest voices stemmed from the workers.^[42]

The radicals also began to take an active interest in the central propaganda apparatus at this time, focusing initial efforts on gaining control of the pace-making media outlets. They turned first to Red Flag magazine, the official Party organ, which offered a number of tactical advantages: control was relatively simple because of its compact organization (the editorial board consisted of only six persons), and it had enormous structural impact on the Chinese communication system—its title article in each issue had to be published on the front page of every newspaper, and an average of one-third of the articles in each issue were reprinted by the newspapers throughout the country.^[43] The magazine was edited by Chen Boda from the date of its founding (at Mao's initiative) in 1957 until Chen became too preoccupied with mobilizational activities during the Cultural Revolution, whereupon he ceded control, first (informally) to Guan Feng and Lin Jie, then, upon the purge of Guan, Lin, and Qi Benyu as members of the May 16th Group in 1968, to Yao Wenyuan. Yao eventually appointed all six members of the editorial board. The radicals also launched their own theoretical publication at Fudan University in Shanghai on September 15, 1973, for the purpose of analyzing the struggle between Confucianism and Legalism. Study and Criticism (hereinafter SC ) was a regional publication, hence free of the political constraints imposed upon central media; issues could be raised there more quickly and explicitly. Yet it was one of the few regional publications to have national (and even international) circulation, and for its first six months it displayed Mao's calligraphy on its masthead.^[44]

Though the radicals were assiduous and relatively effective in culti-

[41] CNS , no. 489 (October 18, 1973).

[42] CNA , no. 952 (March 8, 1974): 5.

[43] See the informative discussion of the politics of the press (specifically HQ ) in ZM , no. 14 (December 1978): 32–34.

[44] Fenwick, "The Gang of Four," chapter 4.

vating the central media, their influence at this point fell short of "hegemony." Zhou Enlai had acquired power over a wide range of activities upon the death of Lin Biao, and his access to the media remained excellent for as long as he was still active. He personally reviewed scripts to be broadcast over the central broadcasting network, correcting even wrong characters or faulty punctuation.^[45] Zhang Chunqiao could not finalize the manuscripts of even unimportant articles in People's Daily , but sent them to Zhou without bothering with logic and grammar;^[46] the premier once excused himself from a visiting American delegation to check the page proofs of the next day's People's Daily .

But it would also be misleading to assume that the media was factionalized at this point, attributing control of People's Daily and the broadcasting network to Zhou Enlai, say, and Red Flag and the Shanghai publications to the radicals.^[47] Themes representing diametrically different ideological positions would appear whose factional origins were not hard to imagine: the emphasis on "taking the back door" (aimed against cadre malfeasance) and the emphasis on "class struggle" or "proletarian democracy"^[48] probably all stemmed from the radicals; the emphasis on unity, discipline, and adherence to proper procedure from the moderates.^[49] Yet there were continual shifts of nuance in all the media, even

[45] In 1971 he once added the following marginal comment to a script of a sports broadcast: "Too long! I have already corrected it. Do not use so many adjectives." Before the broadcast of the news on the Tenth Congress on August 29, Zhou summoned the two announcers and told them at what speed they should read, and fixed the time of the broadcast. GM , January 12, 1977; CNA , no. 1070 (February 18, 1977).

[46] Wang Ruoshui, "The Greatest Lesson of the Cultural Revolution Is That the Personality Cult Should Be Opposed," (February 13, 1979), in Ming Bao Yuekan (Hong Kong), no. 2 (February 1, 1980): 2–15.

[47] Although criticism of Antonioni's documentary film"China" was widely construed to be a radical attack upon Zhou's State Council (Wu De's Cultural Group had allowed Antonioni to come to China, and the completed film was approved by Chinese diplomatic officials in Western Europe), criticisms were heavily featured in RR ; the three radical journals did not publish a single article criticizing Antonioni, nor did any of the twenty-two identifiable pen names for radical writing groups. None of the thirty-three radical institutions is reported to have organized activities demonstrating against Antonioni. Simon Leys, FEER 87, no. 3 (January 17, 1975): 30–32; Brugger, China , p. 159; James Tong, "The Radical Elite and Anti-Americanism and Xenophobia in the PRC, 1974–1976," unpublished paper, Political Science Department, University of Michigan, 1978; Chen Fenghua, "Wei Antonioni fan'an" [Reverse the verdict on Antonioni], ZM , no. 11 (September 1978): 14–16.

[48] For example, an article by Fang Hai in the December 26, 1973 Xuexi yu Pipan (XP) contended that "As long as a person is not anti-Party and anti-Socialist, he should be allowed to voice his own different opinion." As quoted in CNS , no. 501 (January 17, 1974).

[49] At the beginning of February 1974 the CC issued its CD no. 12, an eight-point directive that urged restraint in order to prevent social disruption, noting that it was "strictly forbidden" to organize factions, attack individuals personally, engage in armed struggle, exchange experience (chuanlian , or "link up" with other radical groups elsewhere), display big-character posters in the streets, or stop work in order to hold criticism meetings.

SC , which gainsay any straightforward factional interpretation. In 1973 and 1974 the impression of Hong Kong analysts was that People's Daily took a more radical line than Red Flag , the opposite of what a factional model would lead one to expect.^[50] Even within the same organ quite different construals of a given slogan would sometimes appear on alternate days, or even in different articles on the same day.^[51] For example, in the fall of 1973 certain Red Flag articles interpreted "going against the tide" to mean that subordinates might selectively disobey superior directives if they violated Mao's Thought, obviously a radical interpretation. But other articles in the same journal took a quite different tack:

Going against the tide is completely consistent with observing Party discipline. . . . In the course of the struggle between the two lines within the Party, our great leader Chairman Mao always unwaveringly abides by Marxist-Leninist principles and dares to go against the tide; he also firmly safeguards the Party's organizational principles and observes the Party's discipline. Chieftains of the opportunist lines within the Party, because they want to push the revisionist line, always sabotage and oppose the Party's discipline.^[52]

What can be inferred from this confusion? The absence of clearcut ideological alignments among the media does not belie the existence of elite factionalism, for two clearly different interpretations of the main themes of the campaign were apparent, coinciding with the respective corporate interests of moderates and radicals. The apparently haphazard appearance of these two interpretations implies that all factions with seats on the Politburo probably held legitimate access to the pace-making media, and were entitled to give their views public hearing on the issues

[50] In the February–April period both RR and HQ published their own editorials on the political situation—RR on February 2 and 20, March 15, and April to; HQ (short commentaries) on February 5, March 6, and April 5—reflecting by their disparate schedules an inability to reach a consensus (as in joint editorials). Whereas on February 2 the RR editorial announced that the struggle against Confucianism must be "carried through to the end" (ba pi-Lin pi-Kong de douzheng jinxing dao di ), on March 3 another RR editorial warned cadres that the campaign should not affect spring planting. The plea for unity was put forward by the Short Commentary (xiao pinglun ) in the April HQ and in an article by Xie Zuo in the same issue; side by side with these pieces was however another article by Hong Yuan that criticized the argument that struggle would harm unity, advocating the use of the "four big weapons" in order "thoroughly to expose the contradictions." Not a single mention of "unity" can be found in the April XP . See the article by William Shawcross, FEER 83, no. 9 (March 4, 1974): 32–34.

[51] CNS , no. 514 (April 25, 1974); CNS , no. 515 (May 2, 1974): CNS , no. 518 (May 22, 1974). In the April 1974 HQ , a strong plea for unity was put forward by the Short Commentary and in an article by Xie Zuo, reflecting the influence of Zhou Enlai. In the same issue there was, however, also an article by Hong Yuan, which criticized the argument that struggle would harm unity, and advocated using the "four big weapons" "thoroughly to expose the contradictions" and carry on struggle between them.

[52] Fang Yanliang, "Going against the Tide Is a Marxist-Leninist Principle." HQ , no. 1 (December 1, 1973): 23–27.

of the day. Inasmuch as they were hardly inarticulate, it is likely that the moderates also cultivated their own "writing groups."

Second, regardless of who had operational control of specific media, the "democratic-centralist" decision-making model still appeared to obtain, meaning that all media were expected to reflect whatever consensus the leadership had reached. The selection of "models" for national emulation, for example, reflected this rolling consensus, shifting in the fall of 1974 from young rebels who "went against the tide" of received opinion to expose their parents and teachers to young martyrs of worker/peasant background who sacrificed themselves for the community.^[53] Quite marked differences of line over time may reflect the tugging and hauling of leadership groups with different interests in response to constantly shifting circumstances, but do not necessarily imply that the rules of democratic centralism had broken down.

Third, there were periods of indecision or deadlock in this decision-making process, particularly during transitions from one dominant interpretation to another, when incompatible ideas could be publicly advanced. It is during such periods that factions might attempt to shape the new consensus by floating thematic trial balloons that deviated, subtly but perceptibly, from the previously dominant line. Success in such a consensus-shaping effort depends not only on access to the central media but on communications skills. It is particularly during such transitional phases that control of the provincial media by the provincial Party first secretaries may make a difference,^[54] allowing provinces to sort them-

[53] Zhang Tiesheng of Liaoning, who criticized the newly imposed requirement of university entrance exams for rusticated youth, received national publicity beginning in August 1973. His celebration was followed by that of Huang Shuai, a twelve-year-old who indicted her teacher for suppressing democracy (letter in RR on December 28, 1973); Chai Chunze, a rusticated youth who rejected "back door" aid from his father (letter in RR on January 5, 1974); Zhong Zimin, son of a soldier who rejected "back door" admission to college (letter in RR , January 18, 1974).

From the fall of 1974 until the spring of 1976, the nature of the models subtly changed, now exemplifying obedience, loyalty, and service to the Party. Zhou Risheng of Hebei, Chen Lazhen in Jiangsu, and Gosan Danceng of Tibet were all martyrs who died in service to the people; Wang Yalan, Wei Yixin, and Zhou Shishan were diligent in their work, integrating themselves with the workers and peasants. RR , November 17, 1974; February 9, 1975; May 30, 1975; July 11, 1975; see also Current Scene 13, nos. 3–4 (March–April 1975): 22–26. For a more general discussion of the use of models, see Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977), chapter 6; also Anita Chan, Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation (New York: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 68–69.

[54] In 1966, a decision of the Central-South Bureau of the CC stated: "The first Party secretaries on all levels are responsible for the newspapers; the newspapers should become ever more useful for extolling politics and propagating the Thought of Mao Zedong." Yangcheng Wanbao (Guangdong), February 1, 1966. One provincial Party secretary (Hubei's Wang Renzhong) even had his own writing team. Hubei Radio, February 2, 1970.Thus when a first Party secretary is under a cloud, the provincial newspaper publishes no editorials. See CNA , no. 1070 (February 18, 1977).

selves out on the ideological spectrum in selective response to ambiguous signals emanting from the center.^[55]

In addition to the keen interest they took in the conventional media, the radicals also proved to be highly resourceful in finding microcosmic "models" to embody and bespeak their values. These were ostensibly grassroots innovations which the radicals "discovered" and then highlighted in the media, although considerable attention (including financial subvention) had often been surreptitiously lavished on their cultivation. In contrast to such early model units as Dazhai and Daqing, the emphasis was not so much on production as on political culture and socialization, reflecting the radicals' own consistent focus on the cultural superstructure. In the army, the radicals endorsed the Fanghualian model army unit;^[56] in agriculture, the Xiaojinzhuang-type political evening school,^[57] the Chaoyang model agricultural college, and the May 7 peasant colleges;^[58] in industry, they encouraged establishment of July 21 workers'

[55] An example of such a transitional phase is the period between the fall of 1972 and the spring of 1973, when Lin Biao's political crimes were redefined from "ultra-left" to "apparently 'left' but actually ultra-rightist." The metamorphosis began with vague warnings against a reversion to rightist policies in the fall of 1972 (see HQ , August 7, 1972), the anti-rightist orientation became more explicit in December (HQ , no. 12, 1972), and this formulation was adopted with increasing frequency thenceforth. CNS , no. 453 (January 25, 1973); no. 459 (March 15, 1973). Yet as late as March 1973 only half of China's provincial units accused Lin of ultra-rightism, while the other half remained silent.

A second transitional period was the spring of 1974, when the central media vacillated between struggle and unity. A survey of the provinces indicates that the majority echoed the call for unity; a minority sat on the fence, repeating leftist demands for struggle while also echoing moderate pleas for unity; and Shanghai alone advocated uncompromising struggle. CNS , no. 520 (June 5, 1974).

[56] Fanghualian was a military company in Zhejiang that Jiang Qing (rather fruitlessly) hoped to induce the rest of the PLA to emulate. CNA , no. 986 (January 10, 1975).

[57] Xiaojinzhuang was a brigade near Tianjin in which Jiang Qing took a special interest. All women learned to read and write, and the brigade sponsored poetry competitions (where anti-Confucian poems were written). Aside from promoting agricultural production techniques, the purpose of the political evening school was to teach the peasants how to use their spare time constructively—that is, for political study and "revolutionary recreation" (e.g., songs about the "two shining resolutions of the Party Center" of April 7, 1976)—so as not to become susceptible to the influence of bourgeois thinking.

[58] The Chaoyang model started in Liaoning and was featured in a December 1974 RR editorial. The school adhered to Mao's instruction: "Half-work, half-study; work and study in diligence and thrift, not asking the state for a cent" (Hubei Radio, March 20, 1975). The idea came from a conference on the Chaoyang experience held by the Science and Education Group of the State Council and the Liaoning provincial Party committee in 1974. The school had no set curriculum, adapting courses varying in length to local agricultural needs. Students came from the communes and were expected to return to them. CNA , no. 1001 (May 23, 1975).

colleges.^[59] To rusticated urban youth, they offered correspondence courses.^[60] Here again, although the radicals predominated in the selection and advertisment of such model units, they had no monopoly over the process, as the moderates' selection of Dazhai as a conference site and symbol of their Four Modernizations would demonstrate in the fall of 1975.

Factional Polarization

With the succession to the fading Mao and Zhou looming visibly ahead, all potential successors consolidated factional connections and bureaucratic or mass constituencies: the moderates began actively to mobilize the economic planning and management system by launching the Four Modernizations project, while the radicals made theoretical innovations to justify the mobilization of the masses toward the realization of communism. One of the chief features distinguishing this period from preceding periods is that neither side acknowledged adversary control of a chosen sphere of functional competence. However, each sought to penetrate and undermine the enemy base while defending one's own. Mao's efforts to balance and discipline the two sides continued, but grew increasingly whimsical, irresolute, and ineffectual. Whereas previously the central policy process registered feedback and arbitrated disputes accordingly, steering the ship of state on a zigzag course between obviously untenable alternatives, it now froze into a deadlock between moderates and radicals. The central government and the provincial power structure

[59] The Shanghai Machine-Tool Plant set up the first "July 21 Workers' College" in September 1968, following "Chairman Mao's July 21 directive" for all factories to "train technicians from among their workers." By September 1974 there were 48 factory-run workers' colleges in Shanghai and more than 7,700 workers attended, among whom 2,663 completed their training. By early 1975 there were some 360 such colleges, by the end of the year 1200, and by August 1976 some 15,000, with 780,000 students. RR , July 21, 1974, p. 1. Factories in Liaoning also followed this model, though it does not seem to have spread far beyond that. Such colleges served only to make technology more generally available and not to raise its level, and to some extent the training overlapped with that provided in regular colleges; no degree (or higher wage) was offered, and about a third of the time was spent in manual labor. Lynn Yamashita, FEER 93, no. 35 (August 27, 1976): 26–27; CNS , no. 600 (January 28, 1976).

[60] Study courses were extended to some thirty thousand rusticated youth in five rural provinces: Jilin, Yunnan, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Heilongjiang, lasting from six months to a year. Courses offered were in three categories: political and language studies, agricultural production techniques, medical treatment and public health. The fact that the courses were not sponsored by the State Council's Educational and Scientific Group, but by Shanghai, through its ten institutions of higher learning, suggests special concern on the part of the radical municipal leadership. NCNA, June 6, 1974; CNS , no. 521 (June 12, 1974).

were in effect co-opted into the moderate political base, whereas the central propaganda apparatus and the mass organizations and key educational institutions were integrated into the radical base. The two sides met in the central policy-making forums merely to trade invective and recrimination, yielding only superficially to attempts to impose central discipline.

The first signal of approaching polarization was the almost complete exclusion of the radicals from the central governmental apparatus established at the Fourth NPC. The radicals had expressed keen interest in gaining influential positions in the government after the somewhat disappointing outcome of their power play in the Party, turning first to Mao to plea for his intercession on their behalf. As he ignored their entreaties, they attempted to infiltrate the apparatus from bottom to top, by gaining a preponderant proportion of the delegates to the NPC Presidium via their control of the provincial mass organizations. Their (historically well-grounded) assumption was that the Presidium would comprise the talent pool from which cadres would be appointed to "standing" government positions. Whereas all members of the First through Third NPC Presidiums had been well-known veterans, the radicals succeeded in having forty-five newcomers nominated to the Fourth NPC Presidium, which, along with about forty-six other leftist nominees, comprised a plurality (about 40 percent) of the Presidium membership. This plurality in turn enabled them to wrest control of the Standing Committee, which is directly elected from the floor of the Presidium.^[61] Yet the moderate leadership of the State Council, which nominates its own membership, ignored historical precedent and radical electoral machinations and appointed rehabilitated veterans to most vacancies. Three of the leading radicals, Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, received no appointments whatever; Zhang Chunqiao was made second vice-premier (outranked by Deng), and played a formative role in drafting the State Constitution. The radicals could also claim three other of twelve total vice-premierships (viz., Ji Dengkui, Chen Yonggui, and Wu Guixian), though whether even these would support the Four in a showdown remained to be seen. Both the "Cultural Group of the State Council" and the "Group for Science and Education in the State Council" were disbanded under the pretext of their provisional status, and the radicals lost control of the latter to the moderates, who planned to "rectify" (purge) the education system for integration into their economic modernization project. Of the twenty-nine ministerial appointments, the radicals were

[61] Of the 144 members of the NPC Standing Committee, 87 (61.6 percent) were mass representatives who rose as a consequence of the Cultural Revolution. Y. C. Chang, Factional and Coalition Politics .

able to claim only three: Yu Huiyong, minister of culture; Liu Xiangping, minister of public health; and Zhuang Zedong, chairman of the Physical Cultural and Sports Commission.

Throughout the summer and early fall of 1975, the moderates sought to augment their control of the central governmental apparatus by steadily rehabilitating cadres who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution. At least thirty-five important posts in the Party, army, and government were filled by purged cadres during this period.^[62] At Zhou's banquet soiree preceding National Day on October 1, forty-nine of the seventeen hundred guests listed were pre-Cultural Revolution officials who had not publicly appeared since then. Military officers, particularly Deng's old army subordinates, were among those rehabilitated.^[63] With only a few exceptions (e.g., Shanghai, Liaoning), the provincial Party and government apparatus remained securely in moderate hands.

Not until the death of Zhou Enlai and the virtually simultaneous abdication of Deng Xiaoping in January 1976 were the radicals able to make any headway at all in gaining government positions. Whereas at the Fourth NPC the Ministry of Culture was allotted no vice-ministers (others ministries receiving as many as ten), within two months of Zhou's death Jiang had succeeded in having two of her protégés, Hao Liang and Liu Qingtang (both Beijing opera performers), nominated vice-ministers of culture. At the same time, Lu Ying became editor-in-chief of People's Daily , filling a post that had been formally vacant since the purge of Wu Lengxi at the outset of the Cultural Revolution (probably due to the inability of competing factions to reach agreement on a successor).^[64] With the purge of Zhou Rongxin as minister of education shortly before Zhou Enlai's death, Zhang Chunqiao instructed Chi Qun to take over the education ministry and set up a "temporary leading group"—as Zhang had no authority to name a new minister (and did not trust Deng or Hua to do so), he relied on informal arrangements.^[65] After the fall of Deng, there were attempts to implant Party secretaries in the various military units as well, despite the fact that the military units already had Party

[62] Kenneth Lieberthal, "Strategies of Conflict in China during 1975–1976," Contemporary China 1, no. 2 (November 1976): 7–14.

[63] These included alternate Politburo member Su Zhenhua (former Navy commissar and shortly to reemerge as the Navy's first commissar), deputy army chiefs of general staff Li Da and He Zhengwen, Air Force commander Ma Ning, commander of the Xinjiang MR Yang Yong, senior PLA General Logistics Department commissar Guo Linxiang, and Chen Xilian.

[64] Bartke, CA , April 1976, p. 140. In the years after the Cultural Revolution, a total of five "responsible functionaries" had run RR , including former editor Wu Lengxi (rehabilitated in 1972), former assistant editors Chen Jun and Wang Yi, and Pan Fei, former director of the International Press. Lu Ying was the only one who did not belong to the old team.

[65] CNA , no. 1096 (October 14, 1977).

committees within them, with the apparent intention of supplanting mediated Party supervision with immediate political control by the left.^[66] But generally speaking, although the radicals induced accelerated recruitment of many young activists, their attempts to gain a controlling influence at the middle or local levels of the power structure came to nought, succeeding only in raising the hackles of the veteran incumbents. And this failure (among other things) deprived them of a cooperative local support structure for their later campaigns.

They seemed on the verge of more substantial success in their efforts to colonize the auxiliary organizations. No sooner had the Fourth NPC adjourned than preparatory meetings for future convention of the Ninth All-China Congress of Trade Unions, the Tenth All-China Congress of the CYL, and the Fourth All-China Congress of Women were held in Beijing. Work reports were drafted, the revision of charters and the apportioning and selection of delegates were discussed. The press confirmed reports on June 3 that national congresses for these organizations would be convened soon to elect a new central leadership.^[67] Between March and the summer of 1975, one province after another held joint meetings of the three mass organizations and announced forthcoming national congresses, also selecting preparatory committees (usually dominated by the radicals)^[68] for projected national organizations. But, mysteriously, national congresses were never convened, national organizations never established—until after the arrest of the Gang of Four.

The political advantages of nationwide vertical organizations coordinated by a headquarters and national officers in Beijing are so obvious that one wonders why the process leading to this outcome was left hanging in abeyance. One is tempted to infer that the process was stymied by moderate adversaries at the center. At least equally likely, however, is that the radicals themselves simply lost interest: centralized hierarchical organizations after all contravened radical organizational principles, which emphasize informality and grassroots autonomy, and in any case the establishment of national hierarchies would have only led to centralized Gleichschaltung by their Party superiors. Similarly, the radicals argued with Deng in favor of decentralization of the economy in 1975,

[66] CA , September 1976, pp. 434–36.

[67] Oskar Weggel, CA , April 1974, pp. 171–81.

[68] Young activists emerging from the campaigns of the Cultural Revolution found unusually good prospects for upward mobility in the new mass organizations. Among the 571 officials whose backgrounds had been identified as of 1975, none had held their posts before 1966. Two-thirds were political neophytes—i.e., their names appeared for the first time. The other third were known because they held posts on provinical RCs and Party Secretariats, or were members or candidate members of the CC. Martin and Bartke, Massenorganisation , pp. 145–54.

seeking to detach organizational sectors from hierarchical control so that they could more easily respond to radical propaganda initiatives.

The radical attempt to establish the workers' militia as a sort of radical storm troop was equally inconclusive. The new "armed" workers' militia began as an experiment in late 1970 at the Shanghai No. 21 Cotton Mill, where Wang Hongwen (who had served as a petty-functionary cadre at the mill) may have had a hand in its development. The new organization was conceived as an "armed defense group" merging groups responsible for civil defense, firefighting, and policing activities. The organization was sanctioned and spread throughout Shanghai in April 1971, and the "Shanghai experience" was nationally advertised in a joint editorial in September 1973. Beijing and Tianjin followed suit in establishing the new militia, as did Anhui and Guangdong provinces. Rather than the militia's being directed by the PLA People's Armed Department (renmin wuzhuang bu ) as in the past, its command was to come under the direct leadership of the municipal Party committee and participate actively in the movements of the day. Deng reportedly opposed this politicized conception from the beginning, emphasizing the militia's civil defense and production tasks and the exclusion of "class struggle."^[69]

In the end, it proved impossible to separate the militia from the army, for two reasons. First, even when the Party committee had nominal "command," the PLA remained in charge of training and staffing. Thus different emphases could be detected in different reports, sometimes stressing Party leadership, sometimes the PLA's continued training role, betraying uncertainty over chain of command. Second, militia participation in mass campaigns opened deep cleavages within the militia when the mass movement split, exacerbating the intensity of the conflict by providing weapons to the contending factions. The Hangzhou Militia Command, for example, was established early in 1974, at a time of factional rivalry between the so-called Mountain Top and Mountain Base factions, which it was meant to control. But the command split into rival militia units coaligned with the rival factions, and armed clashes occurred in Hangzhou, Wenzhou, and Jinhua. The militia was officially disbanded there in March 1975, yet hostilities continued until July, when Deng sent in regular army units to disarm militiamen and maintain production in the factories.^[70] By September 1975 there was no mention anywhere of the second anniversary of the founding of the workers' militia, and Ni Zhifu and other city militia commanders kept a low profile. The militia regained face somewhat as a result of its contribution to the suppression of the Tiananmen rioters in the spring of 1976,^[71] but

[69] China Topics , YB600 (September 1976).

[70] Ibid.

[71] Richard von Schirach, CA , May 1976, pp. 210–21.

it remained under the control of the PLA in all but a few places, and received little publicity for its role in alleviating suffering during the Tangshan earthquake that summer.

In consolidating their hegemony over the cultural-propaganda apparatus the radicals were more successful. Jiang Qing chaired the ad hoc campaign committee established in January 1974 to lead the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius, presiding over a network of pi-Lin pi-Kong offices paralleling Party organizations at all levels; and Wang Hongwen utilized his position as Party vice-chairman to convene two ten-thousand-person "mobilization rallies" in late January, putting the full authority of the center behind the campaign. By the end of 1974 the radicals had gained effective control over People's Daily using a campaign to "criticize the unhealthy influence" in order to eliminate those who had been involved with the paper's 1972 critique of ultra-leftism and place their own lieutenant, Lu Ying, in editorial control. All the major media organs, including Enlightenment Daily , the Central Broadcasting Administration Bureau, New China News Agency, and Beijing Television, were to feel the influence of the radicals. So too would the publication of literary and artistic magazines, university journals, books, and pamphlets in the publishing centers of Beijing and Shanghai.^[72] Among these were Philosophical Studies and Historical Studies , both revived with Mao's approval in 1973 after a seven-year suspension, initially under the aegis of the Philosophy and Social Sciences Department of the Academy of Science, but then (on June 14, 1974) taken over by Zhang Chunqiao's colleagues on the Science and Education Group of the State Council (and ultimately by Liang Xiao), "because the [Social Sciences] Department was unable to do the work."

To engage in polemics in China it is not enough to have a target, for the identity and actual faults of the target cannot be disclosed until its political destruction. It is also necessary to have a didactic historical or literary theme in which the target may be respectably clothed until the appropriate time for its exposure. For help in concocting scholarly allegories, the cultural radicals were able to draw upon a talent pool of ambitious young intellectuals who had been politicized by the Cultural Revolution. Thus the campaign to criticize Confucius got its start in the Philosophy Department of Beijing University, where the class of 1970, the first graduating class since the universities began to reopen, produced a critically annotated version of the Analects as its graduation exercise. But a more permanently organized brain trust was needed. In 1972, Zhang Chunqiao began to recruit able "pens" to write articles.^[73] In due

[72] China Record 1, no. 11 (November 1976).

[73] Han Suyin, My House , p. 579.

course numerous "writing groups" (xiezuo zu ) were formed, each with one or more distinctive pseudonyms, each usually attached to specific publication outlets. In Shanghai, Luo Siding, pseudonym of the writing group of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, dominated SC and seven other major journals;^[74] in Beijing, Liang Xiao, penname for the "Great Criticism Group of Beijing and Qinghua Universities," dominated Historical Studies , the Beijing University Journal (a fortnightly inaugurated on February 20, 1974), and contributed to Red Flag .^[75] Other contributors to Red Flag included Chi Heng, a group attached to the Red Flag editorial board; Tang Xiaowen, the writing group of the Central Party School;^[76] Jiang Tian and Chu Lan, both pseudonyms for the writing group of the State Council's Cultural Group (wenhua zu );^[77] and Hong Zhansi, the writing group of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. From the time of their formation until their abrupt demise in 1976 (Liang Xiao was among the first arrested, on the same night as the Four), these writing groups had a prolific and relatively high-quality output, which was consistently left of center. Their research extended to highly sensitive current issues as well as historical allegories; for example, reference materials on foreign trade and on the ship-building industry collected by

[74] The Shanghai Municipal Party Committee writing group was established in July 1971 at the suggestion of Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan. The head of the group was Zhu Yongjia, and vice-chairmen were Wang Zhichang and Xiao Mu. In addition to Luo Siding, the group used more than a dozen other pseudonyms, publishing more than a thousand articles in XP , Jiefang Ribao , Wenyi Bao , and other Shanghai publications. The group also controlled Shanghai's culture and education, science and technology, wielding influence over industry, even over part of the army. For a comprehensive account of the writing groups, see Hua Yang, "Wenge moqi Zhonggong de xiezuo banzi" [The Chinese Communist writing groups at the end period of the Cultural Revolution], Zhonggong Yanjiu , January 1981, pp. 138–50.

[75] Liang Xiao was formally established in October 1973, under the leadership of the chairman and vice-chairman of the Beijing University RC, Chi Qun and Xie Jingyi, with Feng Youlan acting as academic adviser. During the 1973–76 period, using the name Liang Xiao (or one of its dozen other pseudonyms) the group wrote 219 major articles, of which 181 were published, concerning history, literature, art, education, science and technology, economics, and international politics. Hua Yang, ibid.; for a participant-observer's account, see Yue Daiyun and Carolyn Wakeman, To the Storm (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

[76] Tang Xiaowen was organized at the Central Party School by Kang Sheng in 1972; when Kang retired in June 1973, Jiang Qing and Chi Qun assumed control. Hua Yang (see n. 74 above).

[77] Chu Lan, which had a total of twenty-eight different pseudonyms (including Xiao Qiu, Xiao Luan, Hong Tu, Fang Jin, Su Yan, Wang Pu, Cai Yue, and Jiang Bo), was founded in 1972; the group wrote a total of 165 articles over the next four years, all but 9 of which were published. Hu Yongnian and Xu Wenyu, "Exposing Chu Lan," Anhui Wenyi [Art and literature] (Hefei), no. 12 (December 1977): 3–11. Whereas Luo Siding wrote on a broad range of topics in literature, philosophy, science, history, education, politics, and economics, Chu Lan confined itself for the most part to fine arts and cultural topics.

Luo Siding facilitated a well-documented radical critique of moderate trade and investment policies.^[78]

This control over media outlets and intellectual inputs gave the radicals hegemonial control over the media system by the end of 1975. Upon Zhou Enlai's death, Yao Wenyuan could reduce newspaper coverage to one page of commemorative photos (from a proposed four) and effectively mute his commemoration by Chinese radio and television, in the face of a reported 1,000 telephone calls and 130 letters urging this.^[79] As Yao Wenyuan noted without demur in a diary entry dated February 26, 1976:

The foreigners all say: "The propaganda instruments are in the hands of the leftists, 'propagating Mao's line' and the 'theory of continuing revolution,' while those who do 'economic work are the pragmatists.'" When can economic work be done under the leadership of genuine Marxists?^[80]

This formidable accumulation of intellectual capital and media outlets could hardly be said to have resulted in a cultural renascence. Control over media channels was tightly centralized: in 1960, 1,330 official periodicals had been published in China; in 1966, the number was cut to about 648, and by 1973, it had been further reduced to about 50.^[81] Mass entertainment was essentially reduced to Jiang Qing's "ten great theatrical productions," and the songs, movies, and productions in local dialect that could be derived therefrom. The cultural and informational policy of the radicals was to pursue intellectual "monolithicity" (yiyuanhua ), meaning that a narrowly orthodox conception of truth should prevail. Justified among other things was the transformation of the educational system into intellectually sterile vocational institutions qua labor camps and the banishment of every cultural artifact that did not fit the radical Procrustean bed.

Yet despite the disintegration of the central policy-making process in the course of this factional polarization, procedural rules apparently continued to place certain limits on radical exploitation of the media for partisan purposes. Many critiques (and no defenses) of Deng Xiaoping were published between his unofficial retirement in early February and his official purge on April 7, for example, but few of them were editorials

[78] Lishi de Jilu [The historical record], ed. by Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, August 1, 1973), p. 3; as cited in Fenwick, "The Gang of Four," chapter 4.

[79] The disproportion presumptively owes to the fact that phone calls may be made anonymously, avoiding possible retaliation. GM , January 12, 1977, as cited in CNA , no. 1070 (February 18, 1977).

[80] Quoted in CD no. 37 (1977), trans. in IS , vol. 14, no. 11 (November 1978): 98–110.

[81] Helen F. Siu and Zelda Stern, eds., Mao's Harvest: Voices from China's New Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. xlv–xlix.

or commentaries, suggesting that the latter presuppose a Politburo consensus.^[82]

The moderates lacked the command of the media that might have permitted them directly to confront the radicals in the public arena, but with the Four Modernizations campaign they were able to seize control of the national political-economic agenda and to generate widespread bureaucratic support under the pretext of convening planning meetings. The Fourth NPC was only the beginning of this type of mobilization of the moderate constituency. Deng alone attended at least seven national conferences between March and October 1975, each of which convoked hundreds, sometimes thousands of Party, administrative, and non-Party professional cadres. These included a Conference of Representatives of the Iron and Steel Industries (May 29), an enlarged Military Affairs Commission meeting (July 14), a Conference of "National Defense Industry Key-point Industries" (probably in early August), the first "Learn from Dazhai" conference, a Conference of Party Secretaries from Twelve South China Provinces (in September-October), a Conference on the Work Plan of the Academy of Science (September 26), and a National Coal Conference (October 30–November 11). Deng is also known to have convened other conferences—for the secretaries of national industies, on rail transport (both in March), and in state accounting. These conferences greatly enhanced the visibility and influence of Deng and his colleagues, who read reports and gave speeches for national dissemination and "study." Each national conference was followed by an upsurge of smaller meetings, regional post-conference information transmission meetings (chuanda huiyi ), symposia, individual speeches, and preliminary reports and articles (usually published internally and in the regional media).

The policy import of these meetings was partly to prepare for the Fifth FYP (due to commence at the beginning of 1976), but beyond that to draft documents for the more ambitious long-term developmental plan that was to guide all work over the next twenty-five years. The three key documents for this master plan were "On the General Program

[82] Many articles by the cultural radicals appeared in RR , GM , HQ , but at most eleven of these were signed by individuals or criticism groups, and only a few by low-level official organizations within the formal apparatus. Between January and March 1976, the only editorial on the anti-Deng movement was an RR editorial on February 24, which devoted equal space to the need to criticize capitalist-roaders and to the promotion of spring farming. In contrast, when the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius was launched in February 1974, or the campaign to study the theory of proletarian dictatorship in early 1975, or even the campaign to study Water Margin in August 1975, there were many RR editorials and HQ commentaries. Central Documents were reportedly issued for the campaign, however, though their contents have not been disclosed. Guizhou Radio, February 17, 1976.

for All Work of the Party and the Nation," prepared in the summer of 1975 under Deng's guidance and completed in draft form on October 7; a twenty-point "Decision Concerning Certain Problems in the Acceleration of Industrial Development," promulgated in August and September; and "Report Outline for the Academy of Sciences," designed to guide the nation's scientific-technological establishment. By September these draft documents were ready for formal approval and promulgation at forthcoming national conferences and through the media. Educational policy had also been under assessment throughout the summer, and in early October the results were to be formalized in a policy planning document.

All of these documents gave pride of place to economic development, reconstruing cultural or ideological concerns to coincide with developmental priorities. Radical efforts to "continue the revolution" that did not jibe with these priorities were due to be squelched. Already in the Fourth NPC Constitution public security organs were granted greater discretion to arrest Chinese citizens, and later documents made the identity of the likely targets fairly transparent:

These persons, completely ignorant of politics and totally inexperienced in production, are cavilling and carping, doing nothing but purging others, chanting bombastic words, while doing nothing concrete, and constantly tagging others with the labels of "restoration of the old," "retrogression," "conservative force," and "only pulling the cart ahead without looking at the road" to suppress the initiative of the broad cadres and masses. . . . All those who use "rebellion" and "going against the tide" as assets to stretch out their hands to the Party demanding Party membership or official posts will be denied satisfaction—not only will their demand be denied but they will be criticized. . . . Egalitarianism will not work now, nor will it work in the future.^[83]

By the fall of 1975 the plan to get rid of radical troublemakers had already been initiated in some places. In the "Study Dazhai" campaign that followed the conference, many cadres—most of them young radicals—were sent down to the countryside, leaving older cadres in the cities to keep the offices running. For example, 80 percent of the cadres in the Hangzhou area were sent down to the countryside in this connection.^[84]

The extent to which the administrative apparatus had become polarized into rival factional networks (and who belonged to which network) tended to become manifest in response to agenda-setting initiatives

[83] "Some Problems in Speeding Up Industrial Development" (September 2, 1975), compiled as reference material for further discussion after a special meeting convened by Deng on May 18, 1975, later revised into the "twenty points." Trans. in IS , vol. 13, no. 7 (July 1977): 90–114.

[84] David Zweig, "A View from Beida," unpublished seminar paper, University of Michigan, 1978.

emanating from the center. Whereas during the Criticism of Lin Biao and Confucius the worker-peasant Mao Thought propaganda teams continued to support movement activities, even receiving reinforcements in June 1974 in order better to maintain order and prevent confrontation between movement participants and authorities,^[85] these teams were apparently withdrawn from the 1975–76 campaigns. In consequence, mass response to central media initiatives became increasingly fragmented, depending on whether the vertical network to which the masses in question were attached was under moderate or radical leadership.

This differentiation first clearly manifested itself in the aftermath of the Dazhai Conference. The Party Committees of most provinces responded promptly, sending out large numbers of propagandists to explain the meaning of the conference (Anhui province, for example, sent out one hundred thousand propagandists). Whereas only four provincial Party secretaries appeared at concurrent meetings at which the "capitalist-roaders" were criticized, a large number of Party provincial leaders appeared at similar meetings in support of the Dazhai program.^[86] A few months later, when the radical campaign in defense of the "new-born things" was launched (late November 1975), the provincial authorities fell mute and the radical constituency was activated: Xiaojinzhuang Brigade's political evening school, July 21 Shanghai Lathe Factory-type universities, Chaoyang-type colleges, the Beijing and Qinghua University student bodies (now consisting preponderantly of worker-peasant-soldier students, who owed their access to higher schooling to radical education policies) all participated in the upsurge. The Preparatory Committee of the Ninth National Congress of Trade Unions published an article criticizing Deng, and some provincial GTUs convened conferences to criticize him.^[87] Within the formal Party-state regional apparatus, Shanghai and Liaoning were most active; other provinces remained tepid, with few reports of Party meetings, mass rallies, or editorial comment.^[88] From the PLA there came virtually no response at all.^[89]

[85] URS , vol. 74, no. 7 (January 22, 1974): 86; vol. 76, no. 2 (July 5, 1974): 11.

[86] CNA , no. 1028 (January 23, 1976); CNA , no. 1035 (April 2, 1976).

[87] CNA , no. 1087 (July 22, 1977).

[88] From January 1, 1976 to the end of March, only two provincial and one municipal Party committee convened plenary sessions, and only one prefecture and one municipality convened Party Congresses—only one of which had anything to do with the campaign. Jilin held a Party committee plenum on January 9–19, whose purpose was to carry out the "spirit" of the National Conference on Learning from Dazhai. The Nanjing Municipal Party committee held a plenum to criticize "taking the three instructions as the key link." Jiangsu Radio, February 23, 1976. Anhui Provincial Party committee held a plenum March 8–15, at which First Secretary Song Peizhang, alone among provincial leaders, denounced the "unrepentant capitalist-roaders."

[89] Aside from three articles on February 21 signed by one deputy squad leader and two ordinary soldiers from the sixth company of a certain unit in the Beijing Garrison, there was no manifestation of military support for the campaign.

As the formal administrative structure became polarized into opposing factional networks, each with its own agenda, constituency, and resources, both sides resorted to political espionage to penetrate and expose enemy plans, also using counterintelligence to deter such penetration. If the moderates shut the radicals out of their Four Modernizations conferences, the radicals would stage "walk-ins." Jiang Qing was not invited to make a speech at the opening ceremonies of the Dazhai Conference, for example, but she launched a "surprise attack" by speaking anyhow (about Water Margin and the danger of capitulationism), even requesting (unsuccessfully) that the text of her speech be published and distributed along with the conference documents. At a rural planning conference in July 1976 some radicals attended under the auspices of the Criticism of Deng campaign, availing themselves of the opportunity to criticize the cadres present. The leading radicals also utilized their official access to documents and minutes of the meetings of the State Council, the CC Military Affairs Commission, and the National Defense Ministry office (Jiang Qing once boasted that she read more documents than anyone) to collect and edit a large quantity of "black material" in order to bring charges against their opponents, "leaking" this material through such channels as NCNA, People's Daily , or one of their writing groups.^[90] They endeavored to insert investigative reporters into the organizational networks controlled by their opponents at both central and provincial levels to intercept and publicize incriminating materials.^[91] They utilized internal communications channels to circulate messages among faction members, disregarding accepted routing procedures.^[92] The moderates complained on procedural grounds, and were sometimes successful in bringing disciplinary sanctions to bear.^[93]

In attempting to counter the radical hegemony over the levers of

[90] CD no. 24 (1976), trans. in IS , October 1977, pp. 79–112.

[91] Kenneth Lieberthal, "Introduction" in Central Documents and Politburo Politics in China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies Monograph no. 33, 1978), pp. 1–111; see also David Bonavia, Verdict in Peking : The Trial of the Gang of Four (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984), pp. 57–60.

[92] They allegedly sent letters and materials to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Liaison Department of the CC, the Air Force Department of the MAC, the National Defense Science Commission, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Chemical Defense Company of unit 2081, the "wide prospects and far room" commune, among others.

[93] "All the documents sent to the lower levels should be issued under the name of the center, not individuals," Mao reproached Jiang Qing. "For example, don't issue such things in my name, I would never send any materials." Apparently deterred by such criticisms, Jiang told her supporters at Xiaojinzhuang: "I dare not send materials to you, because sending materials also constitutes a criminal offense. My sending out some materials for criticism of Lin Biao and Confucius was an open act, not a secret, but [etc.]" Mao's letter to Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen is cited in CD no. 24 (1976), pp. 80–110; Jiang's talk at Xiaojinzhuang (August 28, 1976), in CD no. 37 (1977), trans. in IS , February 1979, pp. 94–111.

propaganda and culture, Deng Xiaoping abandoned Zhou Enlai's subtle tactics of sidestepping or reconstruing radical rhetoric in more innocuous terms in favor of a more openly belligerent, uncompromising stance. On January 6, on the threshold of his appointment as CPC vice-chairman and first vice-premier (acting premier) of the State Council, Deng sent for an unnamed "theoretician," said to have been a former collaborator of Liu Shaoqi (and who can now be identified with reasonable certainty as Hu Qiaomu, a veteran philologist, educator, and journalist, who had been purged along with Liu and Deng in 1968 and since rehabilitated); Deng told him that there were "many questions" that "the broad masses at home and abroad urgently want systematically resolved," and discussed plans for preparation of a suitable ideological climate for the Four Modernizations program. He should write a series of articles, Deng suggested: "Look for help from more people. Recruit more disciples, and organize a writing team." He added pointedly: "What we have talked about today has not been discussed by the Party CC and the State Council, and is just an informal exchange of views." Six months later Deng asked Hu to "gather materials related to the implementation of the policy of 'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend' in the fields of culture, education, science and publishing." In this connection he also directed He Long's daughter, one He Jiesheng, to recruit informants to make a clandestine investigation of Jiang Qing's administration of the field of art and literature.^[94] It was precisely at this time that Deng proceeded to rehabilitate cadres previously active in the cultural and propaganda sector, with the apparent intention of restoring them to high positions in that sector where they might prove useful to him.^[95] By the fall of 1975, applications had been sent out to the post offices for subscription to a new moderate theoretical journal equivalent to Red Flag or Study and Criticism . Only the January 1976 eclipse of Deng and the burgeoning criticism campaign against him prevented its inauguration.^[96]

All this seems to have been part of a centrally concerted counterattack

[94] David Bonavia, FEER 93, no. 32 (August 6, 1976): 18–20; also see Ming Bao , August 6, 1981, p. 3.

[95] Of the forty-eight rehabilitated cadres to reappear on National Day in 1975, more than 20 percent were previously active in the culture and propaganda sector. These included four former vice-ministers of culture, two vice directors of the CC Propaganda Department, two assistant editors of HQ , a vice director of the propaganda department in the PLA General Political Department, and three former cultural functionaries in the Shanghai Party committee.

[96] When subscriptions for reviews were being accepted at the end of 1975 for the following year, one could subscribe to a new review entitled "Ideological Front" (Sixiang Zhanxian ), advertised to appear beginning in April 1976. By that time, of course, the tables had turned and no more was heard of this publication. CNA , no. 1044 (June 18, 1976).

upon the predominating influence the radicals had gained over culture and propaganda in the past several years. The results of moderate espionage qua "research" indicated that the radicals had been excessively rigorous in their definitions of ideologically acceptable cultural fare, with a concomitant decline in creativity. This line of attack coincided with the moderate appeal to the interests of specialized professional groups in greater functional autonomy (as well as with broader audience desires for more varied entertainment). A series of cases in which the radicals had, for allegedly petty and vindictive reasons, censored the appearance of some promising movie or book was raised in inner-Party councils and simultaneously leaked to the public in the form of "rumors" (inasmuch as the moderates lacked publication outlets), replete with verbatim quotations of relevant in camera conversation snippets.^[97] In response to this well-orchestrated chorus of complaints, radical culture minister Yu Huiyong mobilized his own staff and writing groups, publishing an investigation report in early September that purported to document that the number of novels published in the three years following the advent of the Cultural Revolution exceeded those published in the previous three years (not, however, mentioning the subsequent three years), and that aggregate indices of cultural productivity remained high.^[98]

In addition to such bureaucratic infighting, both sides prepared to take recourse to their factional networks for more clearly illegitimate expedients if worst came to worst. The radicals seem to have been first to engage in conspiratorial discussions and informal pooling of efforts, perhaps due to their lack of a strong foothold within the formal organizational structure and/or "radical" contempt for established procedure. Their factional activities, however, were perhaps no more than a politically ineffectual mirror image of the activities of their opponents. There is evidence from as early as the fall of 1974 that the moderates had begun to caucus informally in preparatory meetings for the Fourth NPC (from

[97] In March 1975, the movie "Chuangye" (Pioneer) was criticized on ten grounds and barred from production. On July 25, Mao wrote Zhang Tianmin, script writer for the film, that "this film contains no great mistakes. Recommend that it be accepted for publication. Don't demand perfection." Copies of his letter were provided to the Department of Culture and the parent unit of the recipient, and Jiang Qing beat a retreat. In another case, Zhou Enlai approved the movie "Haixia" (Sea clouds) in the spring of 1975, but the radicals sought to bar its appearance, allegedly for petty reasons: "They did not send it to me to preview, but first to Deng Yingchao and her group to see," Jiang Qing complained. CD no. 37 (1977), trans. in IS , vol. 15, no. 3 (March 1979): 87–107.

[98] The report indicated that by the end of September 1975, more than fifty-one kinds of literary and artistic publications had been published at the central, provincial, municipal, and autonomous regional levels. But only four of these appeared at the central level, with the remaining forty-seven emerging from the provincial, municipal, and autonomous regional levels. Yu Huiyong, "Investigation Report" (September 9, 1975), in CD no. 37, trans. in IS , vol. 15, no. 2 (February 1979): 94–111.

which they excluded the radicals), initiating the discussion of cabinet formation that would prompt Jiang Qing to try to assemble a rival "slate." Zhou's retirement to the hospital in the spring of 1974, by making him inaccessible except on an informal basis, may have contributed to this tendency to resort to factional networks, much as Mao Zedong's later withdrawal from public activity restricted access to the Chairman to those who could claim personal intimacy.

As both Zhou and Mao faded from the scene their arbitrating capability vanished with them, and factional polarization proceeded apace. The moderates first contemplated eliminating their radical rivals (necessarily a factional aim) while at the height of their power in the fall of 1975, according to surviving moderate Zhang Pinghua:

The October 6 action the year before last [i.e., the arrest of the Four] was by no means an accident. About two or three months before Premier Zhou's death, many of us realized that if we did not make a desperate effort to deal with the Gang of Four, the resulting situation would have been hard to imagine.^[99]

Later, after Deng was again purged from all formal positions, it was his turn to rely upon factional ties and clandestine schemes—including, when push came to shove, some of those once considered by Lin Biao. Zhang continues:

After the Tiananmen Incident, Vice-premier Deng went to the south under the escort of Commander Xu. Marshal Ye also returned to Guangdong shortly thereafter. . . . Deng once said at Conghua, "If we win, everything can be solved. If we lose, we can go up to the mountains as long as we are still alive or we can find protection in other countries to wait for another opportunity. At present, we can at least use the strength of the Guangdong MR, the Fuzhou MR, and the Nanjing MR to fight against them." . . . At that time the Gang of Four used to send secret agents everywhere, and the responsible persons of the center in Guangzhou, Conghua and Shaoguan were consequently forced to hold meetings secretly. Once, when Vice-premier Deng decided to go to Meixian to see Marshal Ye, he could not go there by car. To escape notice, Commander Xu used a paddy wagon, all the windows of which were closed.^[100]

That the period immediately before and after Mao's death was one of frantic radical plotting has been generally acknowledged, and thus the details need not be reiterated. But parallel conspiratorial activities on behalf of Deng, geographically based in the South China MRs and organizationally coordinated by Xu Shiyou and Ye Jianying, have hitherto received less attention.^[101] The reason has to do with the moder-

[99] "Chang P'ing-hua's Speech to Cadres on the Cultural Front" (July 23, 1978), trans. in IS , vol. 14, no. 12 (December 1978): 91–119.

[100] Ibid.

[101] Dittmer, "Bases of Power," pp. 26–61.

ate conspirators' greater discretion and more broadly based factional network—and, of course, their ultimate victory.

Conclusion

Two aspects of the late Cultural Revolution's impact upon structure may be distinguished: first, there was the attempt to construct less aversive emergent structures, thereby facilitating a transcendence of the impermeable barrier between inner and outer, permitted and forbidden, and so forth. Second, there was the drive to continue to smash the structure of "counterrevolution" as a way of sustaining the revolutionary animus.

The attempt to construct new and less aversive structures went through three stages. In the first stage, incipient experimentation with organizational innovations such as the RC in the context of chaotic factional violence that seemed otherwise uncontrollable led rapidly to the subordination of such experiments to that organization most capable of reestablishing order: the PLA. A structureless situation thus gave way to the imposition of a structure more rigid and absolute than before. And this political structure became attached to a viable but relatively inefficient economic platform. Widespread aversion to such a prompt restoration of the worst features of the pre-1966 structure may have played some role in the ouster of Lin Biao, albeit probably subordinate to elite power-political considerations.

During the second phase, the prospect of erecting new and more ideal structures was abandoned in favor of the more modest objective of achieving a personnel balance within the existing structure among representatives of various functionally significant groups. Two different formulations for the allotment of quotas were tried, the first based on professional specialization (the military, the revolutionary masses, and rehabilitated civilian cadres), the second based on generation (the old, the middle-aged, and the young). Yet neither formula was able to prevent rehabilitated civilian cadres from gradually reestablishing their dominant position in the formal hierarchy and reducing representatives of other groups to parliamentary tokens. Radical affirmative action recruitment policies had a significant and enduring impact on the periphery of power, where they were able to promote upward mobility for young people, women, and the relatively disprivileged classes, and to establish organizational vehicles disconnected from the center that would link their own interests to those of these client publics. But the increasing weakness of radicals at the center outweighed these peripheral gains in the power-political calculus, tending to discredit the strategy of affirmative action recruitment.

In the third phase, structural innovation and balanced recruitment

policies gave way to an intense effort to organize, expand, and protect factional networks and to penetrate and discredit opposing networks. Factional loyalties usurped loyalty to the central policy process, and faction leaders remained practically impervious to central discipline. Marginally legitimate espionage, counterespionage, and public mudslinging activities were conducted within the formal organizational structure; obviously illegitimate coup plots were discussed and elaborated through factions. Although structural innovation was by this point completely eclipsed by more pressing tactical considerations, a novel structural configuration coincidentally emerged, consisting of a functionally differentiated sort of "dual rule" in which organization and ideology operated at cross purposes. The formal political apparatus, except for a brief surge of activity following the Fourth NPC in 1975, became paralyzed: whereas Lieberthal was able to document the convention of 271 centrally sponsored and organized meetings between March 1949 and August 1966, he could find evidence for just 26 equivalent centrally organized events between August 1966 and January 1977, only 9 of which occurred after October 1968.^[102]

Conceptualization of the revolutionary target structure abruptly reverted under Lin Biao from the tendency to conflate residual and emergent structures during the early Cultural Revolution to a focus on the residual (prerevolutionary) class structure, thereby reviving the pre-1966 conception of frames. This conceptualization, however, conflicted not only with the radical emphasis on ideology as a determinant of class but with the moderate need for functional experts of dubious class background to run the economy. Following the death of Lin Biao, the radicals reverted to emergent ideological criteria for their conceptualization of the opposing class structure in order to mobilize popular discontent against the reestablished Party-state apparatus, whereas the moderates in self-defense sought recourse in residual criteria that justified all (military and civilian) cadres.

Fragmentation of structure in the final period resulted in elite controversy and mass bewilderment over conceptualization of the residual structure. Both radicals and moderates became concurrent frame-builders and frame-smashers: the moderates sought to rebuild the organizational frames, railing against the Inquisitorial sterility of radical thought control; the radicals for their part seized every opportunity to encourage the smashing of organizational frames, only to impose even more severe constraints on intellectual mobility. Both sides actually shared the value premise that truth is exclusive and inherently intolerant in the long run. The contest between them created constantly oscillating

[102] Lieberthal, Central Documents .

opportunities for repression on the one hand and anarchic revolt on the other.^[103]

Structurally considered, the impact of a decade of Cultural Revolution was paradoxical, leading to a collapse of the old distinction between emergent and residual structures, while demonstrating the folly of any facile attempt to merge the two. The old distinction became untenable as much due to the unblinkable salience of problems deriving from the emergent socialist structure—problems such as bureaucratic stagnation, arrogance, corruption, secrecy-mongering—as because of the cumulative discrediting of the notion that all social ailments could be traced to the pre-Liberation class structure. Yet the attempt to merge residual and emergent structures into a target for continuing revolution foundered on the theoretical difficulty of distinguishing this target from those features of "proletarian dictatorship" still to be protected and preserved.

[103] It is not entirely fair to claim that the Four fomented anarchism, for they did take some pains to distinguish theoretically between "proletarian revolutionary" leaders (such as themselves) and representatives of the "capitalist road," but these distinctions were often based on circular reasoning and were in any case too subtle to be understood by the broad masses. Thus, in effect , the radicals did give rise to anarchistic tendencies. During the 1973–74 period of balance when both sides remained responsive to the central policy process, this endowed the movements they promoted with a yo-yo-like dynamic, in which the masses would be aroused by a centrally initiated publicity blitz, encouraged to link central slogans to local political grievances, and permitted to mobilize until they came into conflict with local authorities or rival factions. When the movement reached a threshold of violence or property damage, the authorities would proceed to suppress it. During the 1975–76 polarization, as rival fractions became unresponsive to the central decision-making process, this dynamic threatened to escalate unremittingly.