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.