Preferred Citation: Lee, Hong Yung. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1991 1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9n39p3pc/

From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China Hong Yung Lee UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1990 The Regents of the University of California

Preferred Citation: Lee, Hong Yung. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1991 1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9n39p3pc/

To Whakyung 
With love and appreciation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has taken a long time to reach fruition. In the late 1970s, I began my research to answer the simple question of which Cultural Revolution victims would be rehabilitated. Political events in China, however, overtook my original intention. All of the former victims returned to power, where they began to enact sweeping economic and bureaucratic reforms whose long-term consequences are still unclear. My research naturally followed these historical changes, which in turn shaped the contour of the book.

During the process of putting ideas on paper, I changed my institutional base several times, moving from Marquette to Yale, then to the East-West Center, and finally arriving at the University of California. The intellectual and personal benefits I gained from colleagues along the way are too numerous to be fully acknowledged in this limited space. However, I would like briefly to mention a few individuals of particular note.

With his commitment to the understanding of China and his devotion to the scholarly life, Professor Tang Tsou has been a powerful source of inspiration throughout my academic career. Lowell Dittmer read several drafts of the manuscript, providing accurate criticism and warm encouragement. The book benefited enormously from lively discussions with Helen Siu, Marc Blecher, Brantly Womack, and Deborah Davis. I would also like to thank to other scholars who commented on the manuscript, including professors Robert Scalapino, Chalmers Johnson, Frederic Wakeman, Joyce Kallgren, Michel Oksenberg, Kenneth Liberthal, Lynn White, Merle Goldman, and Susan Shirk. Professors Joseph LaPalombara, James Scott, and Jonathan Spence of Yale were unsparing with their time and suggestions. Sheila Levine and Betsey Scheiner went beyond professional obligation in helping me fine-tune my writing.

Research grants from the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Social

Science Research Council, and the Center for International and Areas Studies of Yale enabled me to travel to China and to concentrate on writing this book. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to Jong-Hyun Chey for his generous encouragement. Lee-Jay Cho and Jae Yul Kim have been very supportive of the research.

Finally, this book would not have been written without the support of my family. During the prolonged gestation period, Sonya and Sunyoung have increasingly taken part in editing the manuscript during their growing years in high school and now in college. This book is dedicated to Whakyung whose unfaltering love and confidence have sustained me during agonizing moments. Although I am solely responsible for any shortcomings of the book, its merits should be shared by those who assisted me in various ways.

1
Introduction

This is a study of the structure, personnel, and historical formation of the cadre system in China with an emphasis on the period from the Cultural Revolution (CR) to the post-Mao reforms. More specifically, through a careful analysis of China's cadre recruitment policy, its effect on the operation of the political system at subsequent stages, and its role as a key issue in conflicts among the elite—particularly during the CR—this book traces the transformation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders from revolutionary cadres to bureaucratic technocrats.^[1]

Unlike the Eastern European socialist countries, where former revolutionaries started to co-opt technical experts into the ruling elite immediately after seizure of political power, the elite transformation in China took place over a period of almost three decades after the foundation of the new regime. Moreover, the prolonged and tortuous transition was frequently marked by inner elite conflicts, purges, and rehabilitations. Therefore, this study of the evolving cadre system in China hopes to make sense of complex CCP politics by illuminating four basic issues: (1) the reason for the sustained revolutionary momentum during Mao's era, (2) the intensity of elite conflicts over cadre issues during the CR, (3) the impetus of sweeping reforms after Mao's death, and (4) characteristics of the political system emerging as a result of the reforms.

These four issues can be explained briefly as follows. Recruited from the poorly educated peasant class, the original revolutionaries brought a rural orientation to nation building after 1949: the former revolutionaries continued to recruit cadres after 1949 from lower rungs of the social hierarchy for their political reliability, and they created a structure of the party-state whose effective opera-

[1] The questions addressed in this book are the ones that Barrington Moore left untouched in his seminal work, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), which traced Communist revolutions back to peasant rebellions.

tion largely depended on cadres. Consequently, the cadres owed their ascendency to official positions in the party-state and willingly carried out radical policies according to their leaders' orders; at the same time, they enjoyed enormous power to make decisions directly affecting ordinary Chinese people's daily lives. Their revolutionary eagerness, the Chinese people's resentment of their privileges, and Mao's own ideological vision resulted in the CR, which produced four new groups: initiators, beneficiaries, survivors, and the purged. Each elite group had a different power base, which defined the group's political interests and determined its policies on the issues of purging and recruiting cadres.

Eventually, after many power struggles, almost all the CR victims—the purged—returned to power. Because of their bitterness over their experiences during the CR as victims of the system they had helped to create, the rehabilitated cadres became born-again reformers once they regained power. The shift of the regime's main task from revolutionary change to economic development resulted in a change in the composition and recruitment of the cadres. With the replacement of senior political leaders and a large number of revolutionary cadres by bureaucratic technocrats, China's new political leaders were, and still are, trying to restructure the sociopolitical and economic systems so that they will be able to balance both the political needs of the Leninist party and the structural prerequisites of economic development. However, the market, although essential to economic development, is incompatible with the existence of the Leninist Party and its version of socialism. Continuing tensions erupted into the student democratic movement in the spring of 1989, which the regime ruthlessly suppressed. In the long run, however, the tensions will probably produce an authoritarian regime with a more market-oriented economic system.

Analytical Framework: Cadres and Structure

The analytical framework of this book blends the concept of political choice with a structural approach, thereby rejecting the extreme view of structural determinism on the one hand and the total autonomy of political action on the other. The structure, broadly defined to refer to everything that lies outside a political actor, sets

limits to what is politically possible at any particular time.^[2] In turn, political actors respond to and attempt to modify or change the structure through "dynamic manipulations."^[3]

The cadres serve as a direct link between political choice and structure. A given cadre recruitment policy is chosen within the limits of environmental constraints and as a means of carrying out a specific core task at a given moment. A series of policy decisions on cadres at a given moment produces a cadre system, which in turn decisively influences the structure, orientation, and capability of the political system (which includes the decision-making process, the conflict structure, and the way the party-state interacts with society). Although a political system at any given moment enjoys a certain amount of autonomy in selecting its main task and its subsequent cadre policy, its choices are also constrained by the interests, perceptions, and preferences of the existing cadre corps. The choices made in recruiting cadres thus produce a structure that constrains the policy choices at the next stage. In this sense, the cadres are creators as well as agents of the state structure; the cadres create political, economic, and social structures that largely reflect their ideological vision. Once this basic structure is established, however, it operates as a constraint on the cadres' behavior.

This conceptualization of the cadres is particularly appropriate for the CCP, which has tried to modify its environment first through political revolution, then through social revolution, and now through economic development. This perspective also enables us to visualize the dynamics of Chinese politics fully by focusing on the process of evolving structure.

Cadres: Political Elites and Bureaucrats

Originally developed in the context of the Russian revolution, and then translated into Chinese, the term "cadre" (ganbu ) referred to the backbone of the revolutionary movement—people whose high

[2] For the purpose of this book, the term "structure" includes, among other things, the social or class relationship, the organizational principle of the party-state, and the conflict structures among the top-level decision-makers with the party-state.

[3] William H. Riker, "The Heresthetic of Constitution-Making. The Presidency in 1987, with Comments on Determinism and Rational Choice," American Political Science Review , no. 1, March 1984, 1–16.

level of political consciousness qualified them to assume responsibility for specific political tasks. In this original sense, cadres are the leaders, in contrast to the masses, who are the followers in a revolution. However, after the CCP became the ruling party, the meaning of cadre expanded to include all those who were paid from the state budget but not engaged in productive manual labor.^[4] Thus, the current Chinese concept of cadre includes two analytically distinct categories: the political elite and the functionaries staffing the huge party-state apparatus.

However, the conventional definition of the elite as a small group of leaders at the top of the political system or as a small social stratum in the class structure is not useful in the case of China. First, no social elite (or, using Suzanne Keller's term, "strategic elite") exists independent of the party-state.^[5] A series of campaigns eliminated any source of power in society, whether in the form of class, social institution, or political group; and the party-state imposed its bureaucratic structure on every functional field of society for the sake of the socialist revolution. Consequently, in China, possession of political power because of an official position in the bureaucratic system is what defines elite status. The sole channel of upward mobility for ambitious individuals has been through the bureaucracy—a channel that the party-state has easily controlled through its prerogative over the personnel management of cadres.

Second, to distinguish political leaders from bureaucrats both functionally and structurally within the Chinese bureaucracy is extremely difficult. The idea that politicians make policy and bureaucrats implement it turns out to be invalid even in Western democratic countries, where the two groups have different institutional bases (the first in state agencies and the second in parliaments), career track systems (the first as representatives of the people's will through election and the second as instruments for the state), and social origins (the first from the lower class and the second from the upper class).^[6] No such formal distinction has existed in China up to now. On the contrary, both the Leninist princi-

[4] Xinming Zidian [Dictionary of New Names], no. 5, 1985, 14; Guoji Tongxun 1 (34) (1984): 215.

[5] Suzanne Keller, Beyond the Ruling Class (New York: Random House, 1963), 20.

[6] Joel D. Aberbach, Robert D. Putnam, Bert A. Rockman, Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).

ple of "democratic centralism" and the notion of the "mass line"—which, at least in theory, obliges the party to pay attention to the actual needs and opinions of ordinary people—regard policy-making and its implementation as a continuous process, and when no strong leader such as Stalin or Mao exists, the interests and preferences of low-level cadres frequently influence the policy-making.

Structurally speaking, the political elite in the Chinese bureaucracy includes not only top-level political leaders, but also the "leading cadres" (or "responsible persons") of the various functional units such as economic enterprises and business units (shiye danwei ). Moreover, the leading cadres are stratified according to their rank and position and the administrative status of the units they lead. In other words, an elite group at each level is subject to tight control by its superiors, who have the authority of appointment and removal over it. In addition, leading cadres are usually promoted from among ordinary cadres within a unit, as was the case in traditional China where the path to high political position was through the bureaucracy.

For these reasons elite politics, political conflict, and the bureaucratic system are inextricably interrelated in China. Toplevel politics are shaped by and reflect the power base that each elite group controls within the bureaucratic system. Indeed, the political conflicts frequently center on how to shape the bureaucratic systems.^[7]

Existing studies tend to focus exclusively on one of these dimensions, particularly on the changing profile of the top political leaders as largely defined by the membership of the party's Central Committee, whereas cadre recruitment, conflict over issues, and the resultant impact on the bureaucratic system have been largely neglected.^[8] For instance, Doak Barnett and Harry Harding deal exclusively with the formal structure of the Chinese bureaucratic system, while leaving the issue of the cadres within the bureaucratic machine untouched.^[9] The existing literature on the CR and other

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

[8] Robert Scalapino, ed., Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972).

[9] Harding, Organizing China ; A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).

elite conflicts tends to stress power struggles organized along factional lines, while overlooking the crucial importance of cadre policy as one of the focal points of the dissension. As a result, most existing studies tend to be static, atheoretical, or theoretically excessive; they fail to offer a dynamic macro-view of the CCP's political process.

I have purposely employed the three different modes of analysis associated with elite study, political conflict, and bureaucratic systems, using each mode of analysis as needed. For instance, I analyze elite profiles in order to substantiate the long-term trend of bureaucratic technocrats replacing old revolutionaries; relate the CR elite conflicts to cadre issues and discuss the cadre structure in order to highlight the changing practice of cadre management. My chapters, however, are not explicitly organized around these three topics; rather, the topics are discussed in each chapter in light of relevant theoretical insights drawn from existing studies.

Importance of Cadres in CCP Politics

It has been widely accepted since Mosca and Pareto that a political elite exerts enormous influence in shaping a political system.^[10] This point is particularly true of traditional China where a well-defined elite of scholar-bureaucrat-landlords dominated not only political but economic and cultural life. China's embrace of socialism reinforced historical tradition. A socialist system, with ultimate faith in the rationality of the human mind, substitutes allegedly chaotic market control with decisions consciously made by the political elite located in a hierarchically constructed organizational setting. Because of the centrality of the political elite in the socialist system, many social scientists attribute regime transformation to the rise of a new type of elite, "the new technocratic elite," "the managerial modernizers," or "the technically trained bureaucrats."^[11]

[10] Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology , vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1965); Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965).

[11] M. H. Lowenthal, "Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy," in Chalmers Johnson, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970); W. A. Welsh, "Toward a Multi-Strategy Approach to Research on Contemporary Communist Political Elite: Empirical and Quantitative Problems," in F. J. Feron, ed., Communist Studies and Social Science (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969); and Peter Ludz, The Changing Party Elite in East Germany (Boston: MIT Press, 1972).

Even contemporary debates on the "relative autonomy of the state" focus mainly on the issue of political elites. For instance, some Marxists point to the alleged homogeneity of political and social elites in capitalist countries as key evidence for the lack of state autonomy.^[12] Even the proponents of state autonomy cannot avoid the issue of the political elite. "[The state] refers to all those individuals who occupy offices that authorize them and them alone to make and apply decisions that are binding upon all segments of the society."^[13]

The impact of the personal and idiosyncratic features of a political elite on the nature of structure varies inversely with the degree of institutionalization of the "offices"; the less institutionalization, the greater the likelihood that officials will exhibit personal idiosyncrasies in performing their official duties.^[14] The Chinese political process has never been highly institutionalized for several obvious reasons. First, the idea that rule by man supersedes rule by law has long been a part of the Confucian political tradition. Second, because Communist ideology has never clearly defined the relationship between ideology and organization, the institutionalization of the state has been uncertain.^[15] Third, Mao's belief that all human and social problems are political in nature and therefore should be analyzed from the class perspective denies an autonomous role to rules of procedure, which include administrative laws. Moreover, the question of how far the state should be regulated and institutionalized was the focus of ideological controversy between Mao and his political adversaries.

The political structure set up by the old revolutionaries since 1949 reinforced the crucial importance of cadres in the Chinese political process. What the Chinese call "unit ownership," along

[12] Ralph Milliband, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1969).

[13] Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 11.

[14] For institutionalization of the state, see Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

[15] For the relationship between ideology and organization, see Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

with the practice of organizing each unit to be self-sufficient in meeting most of its members' social needs—the principle known as "big and complete, small and complete" (da er quan, xiao er quan )—has allowed the leading cadres of each unit to make decisions not only on matters pertaining to the unit's tasks, but also on issues relating to the private lives of the unit members "from birth to death."^[16] Official guidelines on any policy have always been broad and ambiguous, giving a great deal of leeway to the leading cadres at each level. Furthermore, allocation of most necessary resources, services, and finances through administrative decisions rather than through the market has minimized the need for communication and interaction among units and among individuals belonging to different units. The little coordination that was necessary was conducted only through a superior authority. The practice of keeping one cadre for a long time in a unit—known as "the life-tenure system"—made it easy for leaders to "privatize" their formal authority. Although local cadres were held accountable to the upper echelon, the mechanisms needed for ordinary members of the unit to supervise their leading cadres have been nonexistent or extremely weak. Mass participation in political campaigns, leadership participation in labor, and criticism and self-criticism have become formalized rituals and empty rhetoric without much impact on the operation of the overall system.

Organization

This study is based on recently available materials published in China as well as information obtained through interviews in Hong Kong and elsewhere. These sources are supplemented by biographical information about top-level leaders that I have been collecting for the past several years. I completed the manuscript before the Chinese student demonstrations of 1989. Except for minor changes, I have attempted no major revisions in light of these tragic events. Organized largely chronologically and partially topically, the book consists of four parts.

Part I describes the background of the party-state by first examining how the CCP developed the strategy of recruiting poorly

[16] Zhengzhi Yu Zhengzhi Kexue (Beijing: Qunzhong Chubanshe, 1983), 95; Jingji Fazhan Yu Tizhi Gaige , no. 7, 1986, 7–12.

educated poor peasants after trying several other methods during the revolutionary period (chapter 2), then by analyzing the cadre policies the former revolutionaries pursued as the political leaders of the bureaucratized party-state in the 1950s and the early 1960s (chapter 3).

Part II analyzes the manipulation of cadre issues by the various elite groups during the CR. The four chapters in this section are organized chronologically. After reviewing the structures of the elite conflicts, chapter 4 promotes the concept of the "situational group" as the most useful tool for understanding the elite conflicts during the ten years of the CR. Lin Biao's power base and his strategy to succeed Mao are discussed in chapter 5. Chapter 6 analyzes the conflict between the Gang of Four and the Zhou Enlai group in terms of their divergent cadre policies. Hua Guofeng's cadre policy is contrasted with that of Deng Xiaoping in chapter 7.

The chapters in Part III, dealing with the current bureaucratic reforms, are arranged in part thematically and in part chronologically. Chapter 8 argues that the personal experiences of having been purged during the CR prompted the old cadres to initiate sweeping reforms when they were rehabilitated after Mao's death. Chapter 9 discusses the basic structural problems of the cadre corps, focusing on its size, age structure, and level of education. Chapter 10 discusses Deng Xiaoping's preparation for the change in leadership by stressing the development of new criteria for cadre recruitment, the development of a special retirement system for veteran cadres (lixiu ), and the purge of the CR rebels from leadership positions. Chapter 11 analyzes the composition of the new leadership in terms of age, education, and possible ideological orientation. Chapter 12 focuses on the CCP's effort to readjust itself to the new task of economic development.

Part IV contains two chapters. The first one analyzes the personnel dossier system, which constitutes the basis for the personnel management system. Chapter 14 discusses the changing role of the party in managing cadre affairs in the context of the current endeavor to separate the party from the government and other functional authorities and the shifting locus of decision-making authority on personnel matters within the party-state bureaucracy. In chapter 15 I summarize my basic arguments and speculate on the characteristics of the political system now in the making.

PART I
POLITICAL ELITES OF THE PARTY-STATE

2
Recruitment of Revolutionaries: The Future Political Elites

Originally founded by a handful of intellectuals, the CCP struggled for almost three decades in pursuit of political power, frequently adjusting its revolutionary strategy to fit the changing political environment. During this period, the party's perception of its environmental constraints and its main task at a given moment largely determined the criteria used for membership recruitment. After the urban-oriented revolutionary strategy supported by Moscow failed miserably, Mao shifted the focus of membership recruitment to the rural peasant. The task of fighting the invading Japanese and its concomitant united front strategy enabled the party to recruit its members from diverse social groups—including intellectuals and the middle peasants, who worked their own land without hiring laborers.^[1] But with Mao's assertion of ideological orthodoxy in the Yanan rectification campaign and the initiation of land reform as a preparation for the forthcoming civil war, the previous tendency of stressing class background in cadre policy reemerged, intensifying until Mao's death in 1976.

This chapter, which surveys the growth in the number of CCP members during the revolutionary period, helps us understand the process by which the revolutionary elites who dominated Chinese politics after 1949 were recruited.

[1] "Intellectuals" in China refers to those with some education, in contrast to those with no formal education. Initially, all those with a middle school education were called intellectuals. But as the number of educated people increased, the term came to refer to those with a college education. Because of the limited number of college graduates in China, the term "intellectual" is also used to refer to those in certain occupations—usually those with professional careers. Although intellectuals do not constitute a class in a strict sense in China, they are treated almost like a class.

During the Great Revolutionary War

The CCP was born out of the crises that China encountered in the 1920s. Concerned with China's survival in the face of foreign pressure, warlordism, and social disintegration, thirteen intellectuals, representing fifty-seven members of the various regional Marxist groups, set up a national organization of the Communist Party.^[2]

These thirteen were from the best-educated group in China at the time. Five of them had studied abroad, and all but two, who were high school graduates, had college-level educations. They were very young, with an average age of twenty-nine. None of them appears to have studied natural sciences, concentrating instead on the humanities and social sciences, so that they resembled Lasswell's "symbol manipulators." Although there is little available background information on the fifty-seven original party members, a Chinese source reports that all but four of them were intellectuals.^[3] Thus, the founders of the CCP belonged to the May 4 generation of intellectuals who had been searching for the solution to China's political, economic, and social problems.^[4]

Although they learned from Marxism-Leninism the importance of organization as a tool for their political actions, the founders did not quite know how to create a revolutionary party. The platform of the First Party Congress (1921) was vague and broad: it did not require any specific class background for membership. "Anyone who is willing to accept the party's platform and policy and agrees to be loyal to the party" could join the party with an introduction from a party member.^[5] Even members of bourgeois parties had

[2] Cao Yunfang and Pan Xianying, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang Jiquan Fazhan Shi (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Dangan Shi, 1984), 11–20.

[3] For "symbol manipulators," see Harold Lasswell and Daniel Lerner, eds., World Revolutionary Elites (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965). Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 2, 1981, 65; Zhonggong Dangshi Cankao Ziliao , 1982, 5:163. Another Chinese source reports that the CCP had fifty-three members when it was founded. The occupations of forty-seven of them were as follows: seven professors and teachers, seven editors and reporters, one lawyer, one leftist KMT member, six primary school teachers, thirteen college students, five middle school students, and two workers. Zhu Chengjia, ed., Zhonggong Dangshi Yanjiu Lunwen Xuan (Changsha: Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), 1:212.

[4] Jerome B. Grieder, Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative History (New York: Free Press, 1981).

[5] Zhongguo Gongchandangzhang Huibian (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1979), 1–4, 41.

only to sever their ties to join the Communist Party. Instead of the probation period adopted later, the rule specified two months of investigation.

But when the Second Party Congress decided to join the Third International in 1922, the party made requirements for membership more strict in order to make itself a "proletarian revolutionary party."^[6] Admission of any candidate from outside the working

[6] The resolution adopted at the Second Party Congress declared: "We are neither lecturing intellectuals, nor fanatic revolutionaries. We don't want to enter universities, research institutes, or libraries. Since our party is the fighting party of the proletariat, we have to go to the people and organize a 'mass party.'" Zhonggong "Dangde Jianshe" Yuanshi Wenjian Huibian (Taipei: Sifa Xinzhengbu Diaochaju Bianyi, 1979), 2:15.

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

class now had to be approved by the central organs; workers could be admitted by district party committees.^[7] Later the CCP further tightened up the recruitment procedure. Joining the party required two letters of recommendation from members of longer than six months' standing. The application procedure required the approval of two additional upper-level organs—one from the local committee and another from the district (qu ) committee. Also introduced was the idea of a probationary period: three months for laborers, six months for nonlaborers.^[8]

[7] Ibid. 1:43.

[8] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 2, 1981, 69.

Socioeconomic conditions, however, were not conducive to a working-class party. Despite the rapid spread of the workers' labor movement in 1922–23, when the Third Party Congress was held in June 1923, it was still a party of disgruntled intellectuals: although 25 percent of party members were workers, none held a leading position in the party.^[9] When the second plenum of the Third Party Congress was held on 24 November 1923, the number of party members had increased by merely 100 persons in the preceding five months.

After the first united front with the Kuomintang (KMT), the CCP's recruitment policy changed: the party decided to make itself "a true mass party" by rapidly expanding its membership. Accordingly, the probation period was reduced to one month for workers and peasants and a mere three months for intellectuals.^[10] Chen Duxiu was particularly enthusiastic about the new policy direction. Declaring that "not increasing the number of party members is a kind of sabotage and a counterrevolutionary activity," he developed a plan to bring the number of party members to 40,000 by the Fifth Party Congress. A recruitment quota was set up for each area.^[11]

The new direction in the recruitment policy coincided with the Nationalists' northern expedition and the May 13 movement. Between 1925 and 1927, party membership jumped from 950 to 58,000 (see table 2). As can be seen in table 3, the increase was largely due to an influx of workers, who constituted the majority of all party members in 1926 and 1927, while the percentage of peasant party members declined.^[12] The surge also reflected a successful military operation by the Nationalist northern expedition forces. As the Nationalist forces approached and the warlords' forces disintegrated, peasants began to rise against the landlords—totally spontaneously according to Mao's famous "Hunan Report," but more probably with the help of revolutionary organizations and army

[9] Ibid.

[10] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 49; Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 3, 1982, 37.

[11] Ibid., 49.

[12] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 2, 1983, 38; Harold Isaacs reports that more than half of the party members—53.8 percent—were workers at the time of Zhiang's coup. Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 440.

officers. In any case, the CCP was in a position to mobilize the peasants and exploit their enthusiasm. The CCP made the greatest gains in those areas captured by the northern expedition forces. In Hunan, which Nationalist forces entered in July 1925, the CCP's membership registered a quantum leap from a mere 702 in October 1925 to 4,570 by December 1926, and then to 13,000 by July 1927, with a recruiting average of 100 new members per week.^[13]

Chiang Kai-shek, probably alarmed at the CCP's rapid spread in areas his troops had liberated from the warlords' forces, moved against the CCP when his troops entered Shanghai in April 1927. His coup almost completely destroyed the party's previous four years' work, reducing CCP strength from 57,000 to 10,000.^[14] Seriously affected were worker party members; their share of the total party membership dropped to about 10 percent, and no single healthy party branch remained among industrial workers.^[15] Despite the party's renewed efforts to recruit them, the percentage of workers in the party steadily decreased. By 1929 workers accounted for only 3 percent of members, and by 1931 the figure was approaching zero (see table 3).^[16]

The CCP responded to Chiang's "double cross" with an extreme leftist policy closely paralleling the Comintern line. Qu Qiubai, the newly elected leader, blamed Chen Duxiu's rightist opportunism for the disaster and decided to make the party "Bolshevik" by replacing the nonproletariat intellectuals in the leadership with members from worker and peasant backgrounds.^[17] Quotas of cadres with working-class backgrounds were instituted for each level of the party organs. The party began to attach primary importance to class background (jieji chengfen ), favoring workers while downgrading the role of the intellectuals who had founded the party.^[18] As contemporary Chinese historians argue, "rightist op-

[13] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 2, 1982, 32.

[14] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiangyi (Liaoning: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 1984), 57.

[15] Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution , 440.

[16] Shin Wujun, Zhonggong Dangde Jianshe Lilun Zhi Yanjiu , M.A. thesis, National Political College of Taiwan, 1978, 264.

[17] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 76.

[18] At that time some party leaders reportedly insisted that "since intellectuals are no longer useful, [it is therefore necessary to] completely restructure the party [by] removing [intellectual leaders]." Shin, Zhonggong Dangde , 297.

portunism" was replaced by the equally erroneous "leftist adventurism."^[19]

Even after the Sixth Party Congress (PC) held in Moscow deposed Qu Qiubai for his "leftist adventurism," the leftist tendency continued, moving in an even more radical direction. The party constitution adopted by the Sixth PC increased the importance of class background in joining the party.^[20] Depending on class backgrounds, different numbers of recommendations were needed: one for workers; two for peasants, artisans, intellectuals, and low-ranking staff persons; and three for high-ranking officials of the various organs. The congress also decided to concentrate its recruitment effort on industrial workers in order to reconstruct party organs in industrial areas. As a result, "many intellectuals with abundant practical experience such as Liu Shaoqi and Yun Daiying" were replaced by workers.^[21]

Whether or not it was because of the stress placed on recruiting workers and peasants or other reasons, the CCP rapidly regained strength after the Sixth PC. By 1930, the party had recovered from the 1927 setback with 60,000 members.^[22] This rapid recovery was largely due to new membership in the Soviet area, over which the party center, now dominated by Li Lisan, did not have control. But the party was also recovering in urban areas. The labor movement was reactivated in major cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, and Wuhan, and the total number of worker branches increased to 229.^[23] According to Li Lisan's report, in the latter six months of 1929, the party recruited 13,000 workers.^[24]

The party, however, was still far from having the numbers needed to stage urban uprisings. On 22 March 1932 Li Lisan issued an order, which specified the minimum quota of workers for each province to recruit during April and May. Local party organs were instructed to report recruitment results by June 1930, with a reminder that their work would be evaluated by their fulfillment of the

[19] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 72.

[20] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 1, 1986, 53.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 104.

[23] Zhonggong Dangshi Jianyi , 76.

[24] Zhonggong Zhongyang Guanyu Gongren Yundong Wenjian Xuanbian (Beijing: Dangan Chubanshe, 1984), 2:9.

quota.^[25] Li's effort proved futile when his effort to initiate "an urban uprising and concentrated Red Army attacks on the big cities" ended in disaster.^[26]

Though criticizing Li Lisan, the new leadership, which was dominated by twenty-eight Chinese students who had just returned from training in the Soviet Union, basically continued his policy, attaching even more importance to class background and adding "international standards" to their program in order to recruit more industrial workers, as in the Soviet Union. Among peasants, only "hired laborers and poor peasants" would be considered for party membership. Wang Ming, the leader of the returned student group, relied on an organizational approach to supervising recruitment work and set up "inspection teams," which frequently visited the lowest level branches, gathering information, helping lower-level cadres, and supervising the cadres' implementation of official policies. Each party member living in an industrial sector was required to recommend at least one person for the party every month with the aim of bringing worker membership to about 10 percent of the total party membership.^[27]

In his desire to recruit more industrial workers, Wang Ming stepped up discrimination against intellectuals. He suspected that the majority of the central Soviet's leading bodies were in the hands of intellectuals. In an allegedly ruthless purge of intellectuals (which included executing fifteen hundred people), Zhang Guotao publicly declared, "If worker cadres make mistakes, the party can understand; but if intellectuals make mistakes, the punishment should be tripled." Kang Keqing succinctly recaptures the mood of the time: "Only if you have a fountain pen in your front pocket do you face the danger of being persecuted as an intellectual; only if you wear eyeglasses do you encounter difficulties."^[28]

In retrospect, the party's strategy of focusing exclusively on

[25] Ibid., 26–30.

[26] On 10 June, the CCP Politburo adopted the now famous resolution, "The new revolutionary tide and victory in one or a few provinces." Zhonggong "Dangde Jianshe," 3:87–98.

[27] Ibid., 2:122–82.

[28] Fuyang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao , no. 4, 1984, 32–41.

industrial workers and utilizing them for armed uprisings was doomed to failure. Even if Chinese workers had acted as an ideal proletariat from the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, willing to forego immediate economic interests for long-term political ones, conditions in China were still not favorable for an urban revolution. The size of the working class was too small, and the Nationalist repressive capability in urban sectors was too strong. Such CCP leaders as Qu Qiubai, Li Lisan, and Wang Ming, however, had largely overlooked this simple point either because of their orthodox view of Marxism-Leninism or because of the Comintern's domination. For them, Marxism-Leninism operated as "an ideology acting as a higher authority, which stripped individuals of freedom in action except that of submission to it."^[29] In brief, they pursued an unrealistic option dictated by a Soviet interpretation of Marxism, while overlooking a feasible alternative based on actual conditions in China.

Mao's Strategy and the Anti-Japanese War

Mao was developing a different strategy based on the concrete conditions of China's reality: because of a paucity of industrial workers Mao focused recruitment on peasants. This shift raised theoretical and practical problems. First, the CCP was not powerful enough to revise the tenets of Marxism-Leninism to fit China's reality and pressure from the Comintern to conform continued. Peng Zhen lucidly described the CCP's dilemma:

According to the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, "the party should be reformed on the basis of an industrial branch," "only the industrial branch can be the foundation of the party," "the street branch [jiedao zhibu ] is only an auxiliary organization." If we want to follow these principles, what should we do? We cannot afford not to have any organizations. Our branches should be organized according to administrative areas. Villages are the primary units of our revolutionary bases, and they are everywhere.

[29] Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 92.

What could be done? Peng answered:

Therfore, we cannot automatically guarantee the social background [shehui chengfen ] and the class character of our party by relying on branch organizations. Only by relying on the class backgrounds of the leaders of the branches, making the workers, the hired laborers, and the poor peasants a majority among the branch members, and educating those branches, can we ensure [the class nature of our party].^[30]

Second, even if the peasants—the poor peasants—had already demonstrated ample revolutionary potential in their willingness to revolt against the existing order, there were obvious basic differences in both economics and politics between industrial workers and peasants. Mao resolved this problem by emphasizing political and ideological education for the peasants. Through education, peasants would obtain a "proletarian political consciousness," thereby transcending their peasant mentality. The Confucian tradition of emphasizing education thus reinforced the CCP's practical need to instill peasants with workers' political consciousness. But despite the enormous stress placed on political education, the CCP very much remained a party imbued with a peasant mentality throughout Mao's era.

There is not much information about Mao's policy on party building during the time he spent in Jinggangshan and Jiangxi, the period from 1927 to 1935. Nonetheless, we know that party growth was quite rapid. By 1930, almost one-third of the 300,000 party members were in Mao's central Soviet area. Although we do not know the precise class composition, it is obvious that most of these 100,000 members were peasants, including some middle peasants. According to a contemporary Chinese historian, during this period Mao changed the party from a "proletarian party to a mass party" by recruiting "a large number of members from revolutionary elements among the peasants and petty bourgeoisie."^[31]

The fact that Mao allowed many middle peasants to join the party can be indirectly substantiated by the change in his land re-

[30] Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji Bianqu Dangde Gongzuo He Juti Zhengce Baogao (Beijing: Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1981), 200.

[31] Ma Jipin and Zhou Yi, eds., Mao Zedong Jiandang Sixiang Yu Dangshi Yanjiu (Changsha: Hunan Renmin Chubanshe, 1984), 167.

form policy. In Jinggangshan, Mao initially followed the Comintern's hard line on that subject. The land reform law of December 1928 declared the confiscation of all lands and put them under state ownership. Every peasant, regardless of sex and age, was given an equal amount of land to cultivate, though not to own. Land sale was strictly prohibited.^[32] This radical policy was modified in Jiangxi. The new land reform law confiscated land only from landlords and clans. Moreover, the new policy promised "not to strike down the rich peasants, and not to cause any loss to the middle peasants." It recommended mere adjustment, "using the original cultivating land as a basis, and adding more and taking less." Even in implementing this adjustment, "the rich and middle peasants were allowed to keep good land for themselves, and less fertile lands were given to others."^[33] For this rich peasant line and "narrow empiricism," Mao was criticized by—and eventually lost power to—the twenty-eight returned students.^[34]

As shown in table 2, CCP membership suffered a major setback in the mid-1930s when the CCP was forced by the Nationalists' fifth encirclement campaign to embark on the Long March. Altogether, 300,000 started the march, but just over one-tenth (40,000) arrived at Yanan. This group of dedicated Communists, "steeled by the epic experiences of the Long March," proselytized with amazing success during the anti-Japanese war. Under Mao's leadership, it eventually became strong enough to defeat the Nationalists.

Many factors contributed to the CCP's success, and many Western scholars have advanced different explanations depending on their theoretical perspective.^[35] Mao, however, attributed the success to the "three treasures": the united front, armed struggle, and party organization.

The past eighteen years' experience tells us that the united front and the armed struggle are the two basic weapons with which to defeat the enemy. The united front means a united front of armed struggle.

[32] For Mao's policy see Zhonggong Dangshi Jiangyi , 75.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Zhu Chengjia, ed., Zhonggong Dangshi , 2:324–26.

[35] Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962); Lucian Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971); Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).

The party organization is the heroic soldier who, using two weapons, can defeat enemies. The three are interrelated.^[36]

The united front not only relieved the CCP base areas from Nationalist military pressure, but it also legitimized the party as a de facto government in the "red" areas. The Japanese strategy of advancing rapidly with their forces, while leaving only small garrisons to hold urban areas, created a power vacuum that the CCP's guerrilla forces could easily exploit. By 1939, the number of soldiers in the Red Army jumped from 40,000 to 500,000, controlling 150 counties inhabited by a total population of about 100 million.^[37]

The CCP had to set up a new power structure in these newly liberated areas, but it did not have enough reliable party members and cadres. To deal with this shortage of manpower (renhuang ), the party decided to expand as rapidly as possible by admitting "activists during the anti-Japanese war—workers, hired laborers, leftist intellectuals in urban areas, and leftist KMT officers." Admission procedures were also relaxed. For instance, the probation period for workers and hired laborers was abolished, and it was reduced to one month for poor peasants and artisans and three for leftist intellectuals, lower-level employees (xiao zhiyuan ), and noncommissioned officers of the KMT. Others had to go through a six-month probation period, although this could be shortened, depending on the circumstances.^[38] The new policy enabled various base areas to increase their membership as rapidly as possible.^[39]

The united front led the CCP to moderate its land reform policy even further. In Yanan, the party decided not to confiscate rich peasants' property, and in the case of redistribution, rich peasants were entitled to the same share as poor or middle peasants.^[40] Even landlords with family members in the Red Army were exempted from confiscation.^[41] At other revolutionary bases such as Jin-Cha-Ji,

[36] Shin, Zhonggong Dangde , 306. Also for the united front policy, see Lyman Van Slyke, Enemies and Friends: The United Front in Chinese Communist History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 59.

[37] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 161.

[38] Hunan Shida Xuebao , March 1985, 25–29.

[39] For the CCP's resolution of March 1938 to "recruit party members on a large scale," see Zhonggong "Dangde Jianshe," 2:192.

[40] Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 97.

[41] Ibid., 99.

a policy of "reducing rents and interest rates" eventually replaced land reform, allowing landlords to continue to exist.^[42] The moderate land reform policy made it possible for middle peasants and rich peasants to join the party.

The CCP also changed its mind about intellectuals. To correct the "erroneous view" that "intellectuals can remain revolutionary only for three days and that recruiting them is very dangerous," the party decided to recruit intellectuals on a large scale. Insisting that the Chinese revolution was also anti-imperialist (a position that appealed to intellectuals), the decision, reportedly drafted by Mao, flatly declared that "without the participation of intellectuals, a Chinese revolution is impossible to achieve."^[43] Party members recruited in 1938 were known as the "38-style cadres," a group that included a large contingency of intellectuals.

The CCP's united front policy appealed to patriotic Chinese intellectuals, many of whom had migrated to Communist-controlled areas in order to fight the Japanese. The party welcomed them "as long as they are pure, firm, and willing to accept hardship, regardless of age, sex, occupation, and educational level." Many of them eventually joined the party.^[44] Among the intellectual groups migrating to Yanan during this period, the best known is the December 9 group, which derived its name from the December 9 student movement in 1935 that protested Chiang Kai-shek's policy of "first eliminating the Communist bandits and then resisting the Japanese invasion."^[45] As the best-educated people in the CCP, many members of this group rapidly moved up the hierarchy after 1949. Women members of the group later married such party leaders as Lin Biao and He Long. However, when the CR started, the group suffered greatly because of its complex relations with the KMT before the move to Yanan.

During the united front period, the CCP decided to obtain the release of party leaders in Nationalist prisons. On instruction from the central authorities, Liu Shaoqi authorized these leaders,

[42] For the details of the rent and interest reductions in Jin-Cha-Ji border areas, see Xu Yi, ed., Jin-Cha-Ji Bianqu Caizheng Jingjishi Cailiao Xuanbian (Tianjin: Nakai Daxue Chubanshe, 1984), vol. on agriculture, 1–244.

[43] Hunan Shida Xuebao , March 1985, 25–29.

[44] Dangshi Tongxun , March 1984, 46.

[45] John Israel, Student Nationalism in China, 1921–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).

through secret channels, to write false confessions, which the Nationalist authorities demanded as a precondition to their release. Many of these leaders later became important, but they too were attacked during the CR for having surrendered to the KMT.^[46]

The Red Army was instrumental in building up the party quickly. From the beginning it was organized to fight as well as to propagate the party line and to mobilize the masses. To ensure that "the party controls the gun," it had penetrated the military.^[47] According to a Chinese source, all officers above the rank of battalion commander—90 percent of company and platoon leaders and 20 percent of all regular soldiers—were party members by the beginning of the anti-Japanese war.^[48]

After tightening its control, the CCP relied on the military to expand the party. As early as 1930, Mao flatly declared that since "the experience of the Red Army is richer than that of the local party," they "should therefore endeavor to help local party committees and train local party cadres." When the Eighth Route Army left Yanan to penetrate the territories occupied by the Japanese, Mao specifically told Chu De, the commander, that the "Sino-Japanese war is the best opportunity for our party to expand. Our policy is to spend 70 percent of our efforts on expansion, 20 percent on our compromise [with the KMT], and 10 percent on fighting the Japanese."^[49]

When a Red Army unit entered an unfamiliar village for the first time, it usually employed the following methods to establish a new power structure and party branch.^[50] First, military representatives used "administrative methods" by ordering the leader of the village to convene a villagewide mass meeting. Even though he was appointed by the KMT, the leader was compelled to call for a mass meeting and formally to introduce Red Army representatives. The representatives would explain the need to set up a mass organization against the Japanese. Sponsorship by the power elite in each locality helped to legitimize the representatives and to break the ice

[46] Shin, Zhonggong Dangde , 304.

[47] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 145, 167.

[48] Ibid., 144.

[49] Shin, Zhonggong Dangde , 306.

[50] Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji , 134–44. Subsequent quotations are from this source.

in establishing contact with the masses. According to the CCP, this method was necessary because of "the peasants' dependency and conservativism" prior to their mobilization.

Second, membership in the anti-Japanese organization was open to almost anyone in the village, including "speculators, class enemies, and alien elements [yiji fenzi ]," because "the task facing the party was enormous and urgent, whereas the available manpower was very limited."

Third, the CCP representatives skillfully nursed the anti-Japanese organizations, letting them gradually take over functions previously performed by village leaders, which created a "dual power structure." The official guidelines contained specific instructions to avoid the forcible removal of the village leader; instead, he was to be drawn into the anti-Japanese mass organization so that whatever legitimacy he had could be transferred to it.

Fourth, once the umbrella anti-Japanese mass organization had set up offices in charge of different projects, party representatives kept a careful eye on the active workers, hired laborers, and poor peasants who appeared to have the trust of the masses and who demonstrated leadership ability. Once potential candidates were selected, the party representatives told them to set up peasants' and workers' associations. Naturally, when these organizations were formed, the activists assumed leadership.

Fifth, the representatives led the associations to discuss current socioeconomic conditions in the village, often explaining Marxist theory along with CCP's policy on these problems. These specialized associations eventually demanded reduced rents, increased wages, and shorter working hours. As class-conflict-related issues arose, some of the former activists from the economically better-off groups withdrew. Vacancies were filled by persons with good class backgrounds whose interests were tied to the CCP program.

Sixth, those original leaders with questionable motivations and backgrounds were replaced by more reliable elements who had proven their activism, dedication, and leadership ability. This replacement ensured that each mass organization—including the original united front organization—would operate as the party wished.

Seventh, in selecting the cadres, the most reliable people were

approached, tested, and given the option of joining the party. If they responded positively, they were groomed as members. After joining the party, each person was sent to a higher level to receive training. Then, he or she was returned to the native area to recruit other members.

In this way, the CCP developed layers of organizations. At the outer rim was the anti-Japanese association, whose membership was open to all; then came the peasants' and workers' associations, with membership largely determined by economic position. At the core was the party branch, which the CCP staffed with carefully selected people from a hired laborer or poor-peasant background. The party branch controlled mass organizations through the cadres. In building up these layers, it exploited the prestige and ability of the existing elite to establish mass organizations, while taking over the organizations by introducing more reliable elements and getting rid of unreliable ones.^[51]

As a result of this program, CCP membership grew at an amazing rate in the first few years of the second united front. The total number of members increased by twenty times in a mere three years—from 40,000 in 1937 to 800,000 in 1940.^[52]

There is not much information on the class composition of the mass organizations and party branches. What fragmented information that is available, however, indicates that although poor peasants dominated party branches, rich and middle peasants were tolerated in both the united front organization and the formal government structure, which was staffed by equal numbers of communists, noncommunist leftists, and middle-of-the-roaders (a structure known as the 3:3:3 system). Table 4 breaks down the social and economic backgrounds of low-level government functionaries elected through the 3:3:3 system.

Table 4 shows that the higher one goes up the administrative hierarchy, the more educated people, rich peasants, and middle peasants were elected. Also, the table indicates a crude correlation between the level of education and class background; undoubtedly

[51] Ibid.

[52] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 139, 161; Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji , 142.

the rich and middle peasants were better educated.^[53] In contrast to the heavy representation of the rich and middle peasants in the elected government position, hired laborers and poor peasants constituted a majority in the party membership.

Table 5 gives credence to Yang Shangkun's report that poor peasants made up between 60 and 83 percent of the entire party and that intellectuals constituted about 5–10 percent—even 25 percent in some units.^[54] One must also notice the significant presence of middle peasants. However, when the CCP intensified the class struggle after 1945, the middle peasants' chances of joining the party diminished.

[53] Shaan-Gan-Ning Bianqu De Jingbing Jianzheng (Beijing: Jiushi Chubanshe, 1982), 113.

[54] According to Yang Shangkun, only 2 percent of party members were female. Zhonggong "Dangde Jianshe ," 1:104.

Although politically reliable, most hired laborers and poor peasants were illiterate or had a minimal education, which prevented them from becoming cadres. The majority of cadres, particularly at the county level and above, were composed of intellectuals. Chen Yun, director of the central organization department, reported that, as of November 1939, "eighty-five percent of the middle-echelon cadres of the party and government are intellectuals. During the anti-Japanese war [we] absorbed some intellectuals, and later the political cadres, except for the old Red army, relied on that group, who were from these 38-style cadres."^[55] Table 6 also indicates that middle peasants had a better chance of joining cadres at the county and district levels, while the percentage of poor peasants dropped from 72.5 percent at the branch level to 10 percent at the county level.

Local cadres during the anti-Japanese war were made up of two groups—intellectual cadres at the middle level and poor-peasant cadres largely limited to the lower level. One official document of the Shaan-Gan-Ning border government reports on the problems of these two groups:

More than 90 percent of the district- and village-level cadres were activists in the local area. They are very familiar with local conditions, can maintain good relationships with the ordinary people,

[55] Chen Yun, Chen Yun Wenxun , 145. Quoted in Fuyang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao , no. 4, 1984, 32–41.

and usually carry out their responsibilities. But their level of education is very low and their attachments to place and family are very strong.

Most of the county-level cadres were of peasant origins; the proportion of those with primary school and junior high school educations came to about 40 percent; they have had much experience with the practice of revolutionary struggle, but their theoretical level is low, and their cultural level is insufficient. They often work from the narrow perspective of empiricism and cannot handle new, complex situations; they lack innovative attitudes because they have been working in the same positions for long periods of time.

The report continues:

More than 70 percent of the district cadres are revolutionary young intellectuals; they are rich in fresh perception, enthusiastic about their work, and active. Unfortunately, they lack practical experience as well as the attitude of seeking truth from the facts. On the whole, the cadre corps are good, but there remain some problems with corruption, particularly at the district, county, and village [xiang ] levels.^[56]

When the general political and military situation worsened around 1940, the CCP responded with a policy of retrenchment; its recruitment strategy shifted from "emphasizing quantity" to "emphasizing quality," with the slogan of "firmly and cautiously, paying attention to details" as if "carving with care." At the same

[56] Shaan-Gan-Ning Bianqu , 113.

time, the party started to attach increasing importance to class background in its recruitment. This was not a surprise because even during the heyday of the united front, Marxist bias had persisted. Many CCP leaders, particularly those closely associated with the twenty-eight returned students, had insisted that the ratio between workers and peasants in the party should increase. Knowing that most intellectuals joined the party because of its resistance to the Japanese rather than its commitment to the socialist revolution, they stressed the need to cultivate "intellectuals from poor economic categories" for cadre positions.^[57]

Another reason for the renewed emphasis on class background was a practical one, although it was based on Marxist assumptions. The CCP had already formed the habit of relying on class background to determine loyalty—a practice that continued until the recent past. Party leaders knew that landlords, merchants, and rich peasants were cooperating with the party because of its coercive power. Despite their outward support of the CCP, these classes hoped for its failure. When the base area was vulnerable to infiltration by enemy agents and the final battles with the Japanese and the Nationalists were yet to come, the political loyalty of members to the party was crucially important.

The party thus adopted a "Resolution Regarding the Investigation of Party Members' Class Background" in November 1939.^[58] In order to consolidate the party, the resolution called for it to check the class background of members very carefully, expelling all alien elements (yiji fenzi ), landlords, rich peasants, merchants, speculators, and enemy spies. Various localities reported the expulsion of between 2 to 3 percent of their members.^[59] Party members with a middle-peasant background were reassigned from party leadership positions to other mass organizations, while poor-peasant members were promoted to branch leadership. Intellectuals from areas controlled by either the KMT or the Japanese ("white" areas) were also subjected to careful scrutiny by the party. Through this method, Dingbei county reduced the percentage of middle-peasant

[57] Zhonggong "Dangde Jianshe ," 1:210–15.

[58] Ibid., 195–205.

[59] Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji , 158.

members in the party branch leadership from 70 to 24 percent and Tang county from 50 to 24 percent.^[60]

By 1943, the CCP had launched a counterattack and recovered many base areas, resuming party expansion.^[61] When the collapse of the Japanese military became imminent, the CCP convened the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945. Attended by 547 delegates, the congress symbolized the triumph of the CCP, which had expanded from 40,000 members after the Long March to 1.2 million, powerful enough to challenge the KMT. It also epitomized Mao's personal victory: his peasant-oriented strategy was vindicated. The congress decided, among other things, to expand party membership as fast as possible and eventually to have an open party construction in the liberated areas.^[62]

During the Civil War

In the four years between 1945 and 1949, when the CCP was engaged in its final battles with the Nationalists, membership jumped from 1.2 million to over 4.4 million. This increase was due to the party's conscious decision to push its growth as rapidly as possible. That decision may or may not indicate that the CCP was expecting a military confrontation with the KMT. However, by the time the CCP decided to carry out land reform in May 1946, it had certainly realized that military confrontation was unavoidable. The party must have calculated that land reform would create social groups that would support it in the forthcoming civil war. Land reforms also enabled it to recruit a large number of activists. Together, party expansion and land reform were intended to strengthen the party's mass base for the civil war, which put an end to the united front and intensified class conflict.

The party publicly declared its new criteria for membership:

The anti-Japanese war is already over, and now class struggle will become the important issue. . . . What kind of people should be recruited? In recruiting new members, special attention should be

[60] Ibid., 155–56.

[61] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 170.

[62] For the composition of delegates to the Seventh CC, see Peter Vladimirov, Yenan Diary , cited in Shin, Zhonggong Dangde , 327.

given to class backgrounds. The main targets are workers, coolies, hired hands, poor peasants, and young intellectuals who have determination, are politically pure, and have actually participated in the struggle. Since today's struggle is mainly a democratic struggle against feudalism, the conditions are not the same as during the anti-Japanese war. Therefore, our party's class background should be more pure. But this does not mean that all with good class backgrounds can join the party. Only those proletariats and semiproletariats convinced of the need for struggle can join the party.^[63]

Party documents gradually rounded out the criteria for membership. The first prerequisite was "pure class background," as stated above.^[64] The second requirement was a clean history—no one who had joined the KMT or collaborated with the Japanese, for example, was eligible. Good class background alone was no guarantee, however, for even people with such backgrounds collaborated with the Japanese or the KMT. The third condition was political expression as proven in various mass struggles—"class struggle, struggle against the enemy, struggle against renegades, and struggle for production." Among soldiers, "those who have proven themselves in investigating deserters and renegades," that is, those who had betrayed their friends to the party, were considered more desirable.

Three groups of people were never to be recruited. In the first were people with undesirable class backgrounds, lumped together with those who had served in either the Manchu puppet government set up by the Japanese or the KMT. The second group included members of religious groups. The third group consisted of those who had been making a living "in immoral ways"—speculators, hooligans, and opium smokers.^[65]

As usual the required procedure for joining the party differed according to class background. The probationary period was six months for workers, coolies, hired hands, poor peasants, and the urban poor; one year for middle peasants, white-collar workers, free professionals, and intellectuals; and three years for others.^[66] Party members on probation could not act as sponsors, but because

[63] Jiandang (Harbin: Heilongjiang Danganshi, 1984), 82–83.

[64] Ibid., 19.

[65] Ibid., 91–92.

[66] Zhongguo Gongchandangzhang Huibian , 48.

of the shortage of old party members, reliable new members with good class backgrounds could be authorized to recommend new recruits. Candidates with desirable class backgrounds were approved by a district party committee; the others had to be approved by county-level party committees.

The rapid increase in the number of party members was largely due to large-scale recruitment in Manchuria. When the party adopted the policy of "defending the south and expanding to the north," the CCP dispatched 100,000 troops with 20,000 cadres headed by one-quarter of the Politburo to Manchuria.^[67] Eventually, they established party networks throughout Manchuria, thus increasing the total size of party membership to 3 million by 1948.

The national trend of the growth rate varied year by year during the period from 1945 to 1949. The low growth rate of 1946 reflected the uncertainty about the CCP's future strategy and the fluid political situation. However, once the CCP shifted its land policy from "reducing rents" to "distributing land to the tillers," party building gained momentum. The expansion slowed down in 1947 when the party launched a rectification campaign. By 1949, when the CCP was sealing its victory, it started openly to recruit new members for the first time. An approximate 1.2 million new members were admitted in the final year of the civil war.

Fluctuation in party expansion largely corresponds to the stages of land reform in Manchuria. In the first stage, from December 1945 to June 1946 (i.e., before the beginning of land reforms), the Heilongjiang provincial party committee adopted a strategy of "careful and controlled development," because the main task at that moment was the struggle against renegades; land reform had not yet started. Originally, 301 cadres—including some nonparty members—entered the area right after the Japanese surrendered. In the first year they recruited 618 new party members, mostly from military and municipal organs. This left the vast rural areas without any party organizations or members.^[68]

The second stage started right after the June 1946 conference, which decided how land was to be distributed. The provincial par-

[67] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 184.

[68] Of 618, 289 were in the military, 223 in municipal organs, and 106 in rural areas. Jiandang , 50–53.

ty committee moved to set up party organizations as fast as possible, sometimes even circumventing existing regulations. It sent work teams of 933 members to rural areas where there were no party members. The work teams recruited 2,566 new members (in 206 branches) to act as "seeds" in developing the rural party organizations. In other areas, the party expanded more rapidly. Songjiang province reports that membership increased by 600 percent in the four months after the May 4 decision. During this period, many individuals made extreme efforts to gain new members: one cadre recruited 140 people in three months, averaging 1.5 persons per day.^[69]

The third phase of recruitment started after October 1946 when

[69] Ibid. After 1945, the CCP set up five provinces and one special municipality. They were Songjiang, Hejiang, Heilongjiang, Nenjiang and Suijiang (later, Mudanjiang) provinces. By 1954, all of them were combined into the present Heilongjiang province.

the campaign to "cook raw rice" started. In this campaign, hired hands and poor peasants became the dominant political force, and activists from their class were recruited on a large scale by a policy of "actively and cautiously increasing party members" initiated by the Heilongjiang provincial party committee. In the Beian district, 260 old party members recruited 2,141 new ones, many of whom were immediately promoted to leadership positions. In the entire province, a total of 11,842 new members was promoted to cadres, bringing the total number to 22,387.

In the fourth stage, between November 1947 and January 1948, the movement began dividing the land. During this period, party recruitment temporarily stopped, and rectification started. After finishing the distribution of land, the recruitment drive resumed.^[70] Before the beginning of open party building in August 1948, the total number of members had increased to 8,154—a 50 percent increase compared with the previous figure—and every county, district, and village had established a party branch.^[71]

The last phase was open party building. By August 1948 when the Red Army was winning the civil war, the party felt safe enough to begin membership recruitment openly so as to set up party branches in every village by March 1949. This time, not the work teams, but the county and district party committees took responsibility for recruiting members and setting up basic organs.

The open party building followed well-defined stages. First, the party launched a vigorous propaganda campaign to dispel all kinds of erroneous views.^[72] Then the county and district party committees set up a plan for recruitment and trained "organization persons" (zuzhi yuan ) whose main job was to interview and evaluate candidates for party membership.

In mass meetings, party leaders explained the purpose of open party building. Then anyone who was interested in joining the party made a self-report (zibao ), in which he reported his own candidacy. The public then discussed the qualifications of those who had nominated themselves. If they passed the public debate, they were finally screened and approved by the appropriate party

[70] Ibid., 86–105.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji , 142.

organs. About one-quarter of the self-nominated candidates were accepted.^[73]

During the four years between 1945 and 1949 the party grew dramatically in Manchuria. A small number of old members recruited new ones with amazing speed. In Mudanjiang province, sixty old members who had moved into the area recruited 4,000 new members, who totaled 0.45 percent of the population in the area.^[74] In Nenjiang province, 772 old members recruited 16,254 people (or 0.6 percent of the total population). Heilongjiang was reported to have recruited 9,768 new members in the three months from September through November 1948, 8,774 of them in 517 rural party branches.^[75]

To ensure that party branches were set up in every village, a recruitment quota for each area was usually assigned.^[76] The counties in the Jinsui base area were instructed to increase party membership by 33 percent in three months.^[77] Each area authorized individual members to recruit a certain number of people.

Not surprisingly, use of the quotas for party expansion had many undesirable consequences. In some areas lower-level units blindly tried to meet the quota by accepting unqualified persons. Some units tried to overpass "internally decided targets" and "complete the work before the timetable," thereby sacrificing standards of quality. Since only members could recruit new members and many localities did not have any branches, there was much corruption and inefficiency. If a recruiter was corrupt, his new members would often be unfit for membership. One party member who had concealed his class background was made chairman of a peasants association because of his activism during the land reforms. When the party told him to recruit seventy new members, he personally recruited forty persons, including a "policeman, a spy, and a former bandit."^[78] One of his relatives also recruited twenty candidates, many of whom were unsuited for membership. Recruiters tended to look for candidates only among personal ac-

[73] Jiandang , 33.

[74] Ibid., 232.

[75] Most of the information in the following discussion is from Jiandang , and from experiences of Party building in the former five provinces.

[76] Jiandang , 44.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Peng Zhen, Guanyu Jin-Cha-Ji , 142.

quaintances or people with whom they had something in common. For instance, some members only recruited new members from the same province. One member from Shandong province recruited only Shandong people, and when there were no more hired hands and poor peasants to recruit, he approached "bad elements." Some people followed the organizational ties of the anti-Japanese associations, and when there were no good people in the anti-Japanese associations, they accepted bad ones. Others recruited only school classmates and colleagues.^[79]

Moreover, even those recruited from the good classes did not have the appropriate "political consciousness" in the eyes of the Chinese leaders. They suffered from a "peasants' diffused conservativism." Some members flourished economically after the land reforms and wanted to become rich. Such thinking weakened the party members' ties to their classes. It was hoped that rectification would solve all these problems.

Moreover, as the land reform movement developed, it directly threatened the interests of cadres from the exploiting class, whereas the poor peasants' demand for land increased.^[80] The well-known case of Pingshan county was typical. There, pressure from the peasants forced the party to purge its local party. Pingshan was an old liberated area, but the local leadership was allegedly under the control of "liu-mang , landlords, and rich peasants," who resisted the poor peasants' demand for a thorough redistribution of land. Even work teams sent down by the higher level could not resolve the conflict between the poor peasants and the local party committee. Eventually, the committee had to be reorganized in a public meeting where nonparty poor peasants were allowed to participate.

From the beginning, the party knew that rapid expansion would introduce many undesirable elements. It instructed local committees to use the "wave style" in recruiting members: to "recruit some, immediately train them, and then recruit another group." This pattern of expansion, immediately followed by a rectification campaign, was a well-established procedure.

On 17 July 1947 a meeting chaired by Liu Shaoqi reviewed land

[79] Ibid.

[80] Jiandang , 79.

reform works and decided to carry out the rectification. Mao agreed. Its objective was to check "class backgrounds, ideology, and work style," while consolidating organization, ideology, and work style.^[81] Party members from such exploiting classes as landlords, rich peasants, and degenerates were to be expelled.

Among these three objectives, determining class background was the easiest task for lower-level party leaders to carry out. Various methods were used. "In some areas, the determination of class status was based on individual report and public discussion; in other areas, each individual was required to write down his class background on the form; in other areas, the decision was made at a meeting where poor peasants participated."^[82]

Once their class status was determined, party members with undesirable class backgrounds were under great pressure, even though the official policy was supposed to take into account their actual political performance. By contrast, those with desirable class backgrounds demanded revenge on the other classes. Some units under the leadership of poor peasants advanced such simplistic slogans as "organize the poor peasant party members into a 'small group of poor peasants,' unify the middle-peasant cadres, and attack the cadres of the landlord and the rich peasant class," and "poor and hired peasants conquered the world, and they will control the world." As has happened many times in China, once the official policy was set, social groups with vested interests in the policy pushed it to an extreme.

Thus, a leftist tendency appeared, pushing land reform in a radical direction by violating the rights of the middle peasants and emphasizing class background over political performance. Deng Xiaoping reportedly wrote a letter to the center, pointing out that class background should not be overstressed in party rectification; instead, "standpoint" should be considered. Deng also said that in some areas party members from the landlord and rich-peasant classes were being indiscriminately expelled. Mao agreed with this view by publishing "On Our Current Task," which criticized the leftist trend.^[83] Central party leaders allegedly corrected the leftist

[81] Cao and Pan, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang , 199.

[82] Jiandang , 84.

[83] Ibid.

tendency but did not uproot it. They could not do so because the leftist tendency originated from hired-laborer and poor-peasant backgrounds, the political elite, and for this reason the leftist tendency reasserted itself again and again.

Legacy of the CCP'S Revolutionary Experiences

The preceding discussion demonstrates that the party's major expansion took place only when it had strong military forces to protect its operation.^[84] The CCP's membership grew rapidly during the first united front in the areas which the KMT forces physically controlled, and then in the Jiangxi Soviet area, where the party set up a state within a state. After the Long March, the enhanced military capability of the CCP, operating in the power vacuum created by the Japanese invasion, facilitated a large increase in party membership. During the civil war, the party again expanded most rapidly in Manchuria, which it controlled militarily. This reliance on the military to create a political atmosphere conducive for implementing party policies has had a long-term effect on Chinese leaders' view of political power.

The crucial role played by the military, however, does not diminish the organizational skill and capability that party leaders demonstrated. Without superb organizational capabilities, party leaders could not have exploited the political, economic, and social grievances of various classes and groups in China while adjusting their programs and policies to the changing situation. As Roy Hofheinz rightly concludes, neither "contextual" nor "motivational" theories that do not take into account the behavior of the Chinese Communists themselves can explain the success of the CCP.^[85] Without the flexible and skillful leadership of the party, whatever revolutionary potential Chinese society had would have remained as mere potential.

One of the CCP's remarkable organizational capabilities was its

[84] For the latest publication on this issue, see Yung-fa Chen, Making Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).

[85] Roy Hofheinz, "The Ecology of Chinese Communist Success," in A. Doak Barnett, ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington, 1969), 3–77.

adaptability to the changing socioeconomic conditions of China and its ability to restructure itself in line with a new task. When the pre-Mao era leaders insisted on building the proletarian party exclusively on the working class, their policy was doomed from the beginning, not because of any logical flaws in Marxism-Leninism, but because they overlooked China's concrete conditions. Under Mao's leadership the party shifted its focus to rural problems, adopted a mild land reform policy, and recruited party members from a broader segment of the population. The united front allowed the party to utilize the expertise and knowledge of intellectuals while minimizing the potential resistance of landlords and rich peasants. However, when the CCP renewed class warfare in rural areas for land reform in 1946, it shifted the focus of recruitment to poor peasants and hired hands, while discriminating against intellectuals, most of whom came from the well-to-do social class. In this sense, the revolution was made by the counter-elite rather than "coming by itself" out of the structural conditions of China.^[86] Any explanation of the CCP's success in political revolution has to take into account Mao's role in selecting a "feasible alternative" revolutionary strategy.

The most amazing organizational skill that the CCP leadership demonstrated during this period was not their success in building a dedicated revolutionary party along Leninist principles, but their masterful development of several layers of organization that still kept the party at the core. They set up the anti-Japanese mass organizations, peasants associations, workers associations, and other types of mass organizations, while maintaining the party's control over them through dedicated party members. By keeping the membership requirements for each mass organization broad and general, but preserving the strict requirements for its membership, the party mobilized different social groups, while maintaining control over them. This concept of a layered organization appears to be at the heart of Mao's political strategy; even when he stressed the need to be "unified with 95 percent of the people," the implicit assumption was that a core leadership existed. Although the notion of auxiliary organizations first came from Lenin, Mao

[86] Theda Skocpol, State and Social Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

used it very effectively, thereby compensating for the deterministic thread of thinking in original Marxism.

These layered organizations helped the CCP achieve two seemingly conflicting tasks in eastern and central China during the anti-Japanese war: building an effective administrative hierarchy at all levels while allowing peasants at the basic level to seize power almost spontaneously from the traditional local elite, the two concomitant processes that, according to Yungfa Chen, eventually led the CCP to its final victory.^[87] They also provided the CCP with the organizational channels necessary for effective use of the mass line, mass mobilization, and mass campaigns.

By the time the CCP captured political power, it had accumulated thirty years of revolutionary experience with almost 4.5 million seasoned party members. Most were poorly educated young people from the most disadvantaged social groups.^[88] For instance, among 18,903 party members in Heilongjiang province, the family background of 21 percent was worker, 49 percent hired hand, and 25 percent poor peasant. These three categories comprised 95 percent of the party membership.^[89] Fifty-one percent of the Heilongjiang party membership was illiterate, and 23 percent "could barely recognize the characters," the sum of the two amounting to 74 percent. Those who had attended primary school constituted 23.4 percent, whereas only a mere 2.4 percent attended middle schools.^[90] The overall educational level of CCP members in 1949 was much lower than that of their counterparts in the Soviet Union in 1927.^[91]

Although we do not have national aggregate data showing the percentage of party members holding cadre positions, it is fair to assume that the rate was very high at that time and that those without official positions became cadres after 1949. For instance, in a Heilongjiang county with 600 party members, the "cadres-party members" constituted 95 percent.^[92] These figures are extremely

[87] Chen, Making Revolution .

[88] Among all the party members of Heilongjiang, 37 percent belonged to the 18–25 age group and 54.4 percent to the 25–40 age group. Jiandang , 59.

[89] Ibid.

[90] Ibid.

[91] Jerry Hough, Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1980), 28.

[92] Jiandang , 119.

high for a time when only 0.65 percent of the rural population and about 0.2 percent of the urban population were party members.^[93]

Heilongjiang may be an extreme case. However, in every sense, the party members were from the least educated and the most disadvantaged social groups in the rural area. Nonetheless, they served the party well when its main task was fighting a guerrilla war. The type of leaders needed by the party at that time was a heroic, selfless guerrilla fighter dedicated to the cause, rather than an educated professional with specialized knowledge or administrative skills. An effective guerrilla commander had to take care of all the needs of a given base area's members by mobilizing the support of the available sources. The peasant youth could readily provide these leadership qualities.^[94]

To summarize, the type of leadership, the policy goals of the CCP, the organizational setting, the techniques of mass line and mass mobilization, and the practice of recruiting political leaders from poor peasants—all these factors complemented one another in helping the CCP to achieve its political victory in 1949. However, some of these factors, ironically, turned out to be constraints when the CCP faced its new task of state building and economic development. Among the many revolutionary experiences that influenced the CCP's political process after the foundation of the People's Republic of China, the most obvious continuity consisted of the former revolutionaries who first founded the new regime, then ruled China for the next thirty years, most remaining as generalists, except for a few working in the economy.^[95]

[93] In 1948 already 40–45 percent of all cadres in Heilongjiang province were party members. Ibid.

[94] James Scott identifies geographical isolation, pervasive personal ties, the absence of a division of labor, self-reliance, millenarian idealism, and egalitarianism as prominent features of a peasant society. "Hegemony and the Peasantry," Politics and Society , no. 3, 1977, 267–96.

[95] Of course, there were exceptions. For instance, Yao Yiyuan and Zhao Ziyang became experts on economics and finance. For those who developed a speciality in economics, see Kenneth Liberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Bureaucratic Politics and Chinese Energy Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1986).

3
Staffing the Party-State, 1949–66

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

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

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

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

Staffing the Party-State Apparatus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[5] Harding, Organizing China , 35.

[6] Ibid., 36.

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

[8] Harding, Organizing China , 37.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 38.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[14] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

[17] Oksenberg, "Individual Attributes."

[18] Ibid.

[19] Harding, Organizing China , 20.

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

Party Membership Recruitment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[30] Renda Fuyin , February 1985, 53.

[31] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Antirightist Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[40] Dazhong Bao , 25 August 1957.

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

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

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

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

[43] Wenhui Bao , 24 September 1957.

[44] Teiwes, Politics and Purge .

[45] Qingdao Ribao , 14 September 1957.

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

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

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

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

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

[46] Ibid.

[47] Guangxi Ribao, 1 August 1957.

[48] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the Antirightist Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[59] Dazhong Bao , 14 May 1958.

[60] Renmin Ribao , 1 May 1958.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[64] Renmin Ribao , 4 July 1964.

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

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

Political Implications of the Cadre Policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[73] Ibid.

[74] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART II
ELITE CONFLICTS
AND CADRE ISSUES DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

4
Conflict Structures

Historically speaking, by the time of the CR, the cadre system had displayed many structural weaknesses. Although it was originally conceived as an instrument for revolution, social transformation, and control over society, the cadre corps developed an identity different from that of the masses. Comfortably entrenched in the bureaucratic apparatus, they exercised enormous powers as agents of the party-state, enjoying many privileges. At the same time, opportunities for entering privileged positions were decreasing as the expansion of the party-state's bureaucracy and overall economic growth slowed down and competition for educational opportunities, the first step toward upward mobility, intensified.^[1] All these factors produced accumulated but suppressed tensions in the society, which affected intraparty debate.^[2]

The cadre system itself became the focus of elite conflicts. Worrying that the cadres were becoming a new ruling class, negating the very ideal of the revolution, Maoist leaders saw the need to redistribute scarce goods, including educational opportunity and political power, as a remedy. In contrast, Liu Shaoqi and his followers were more sensitive to the interests of the cadres and were willing to co-opt middle-class intellectuals into the cadre corps because their skills and expertise were needed for economic development, which would in turn expand the chance for upward mobility. To the Maoist leaders, accepting professional elites into the ruling structure was a betrayal of the revolutionary goal of raising

[1] Jonathan Unger, Education Under Mao (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.); Stanley Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Canton ) (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982).

[2] James Townsend, "Intra-Party Conflict in China: Disintegration of an Established Party System," in Samuel P. Huntington and Clement H. Moore, eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 284–310.

the status of peasants and workers, who were the backbone of the Chinese revolution.

Political considerations also entered into the ideological dispute. Mao was losing his control over the gigantic party-state bureaucracy largely because of his hostility toward the bureaucratization of the cadre corps. By contrast, Liu Shaoqi was gaining popularity with his pragmatic policies and his respect for the vested interests of the cadre corps.^[3] The highly centralized cadre system further intensified the competition for control over the corps; any elite group that controlled the cadres could control the party-state. Moreover, the absence of a retirement system and the monopoly of political power by cadres made it a life-and-death matter for each individual cadre to maintain his or her position.^[4] In brief, the rigidity of the cadre system further aggravated the inner elite conflict.

When Mao initiated the CR by removing the party-state's control over society and mobilizing the masses against the elites, a multitude of social conflicts that the party-state had previously suppressed surfaced, allowing the divided elites to exploit them for their own political interests. How to deal with the issues that the unprecedented scale of mass mobilization constantly raised further divided the elites and masses. Each phase of the CR raised new ideological and political questions. And each decision made to resolve these difficulties produced new groups that either benefited or suffered from the official decision, thereby changing the existing conflict structure.

The Purge Pattern

At the initial stage of the CR, the question of who should be purged was decided in the process of mass mobilization, not by the party organizations with due authority. The Chinese masses in every unit split into numerous factions, often forming alliances with mass organizations outside their units. The bureaucrats also manipulated the question to protect themselves or to lead the movement in the direction of their choice. Of course, official policy was

[3] For Liu Shaoqi, see Lowell Dittmer, Liu Shao-Ch'i and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974).

[4] Michel Oksenberg, "Exit Patterns from Chinese Politics and Its Implications," China Quarterly , no. 67, September 1976, 501–18.

to purge only the "powerholders taking the capitalist road." But often the chaotic and factionalized mass movement could not make a distinction between cadres who followed the alleged revisionist line and Maoist cadres who followed the "proletarian road."

As chaotic as the decision on a particular cadre might have been, the basic cleavage between the radicals and the conservatives, which cut across the horizontal demarcation line of the elite and masses, shaped the outcome of the purge. Each side had its own ideology and policy preferences, which were largely determined by the characteristics of each side's membership.^[5]

The radical forces, represented by the Jiang Qing group at the top and recruited largely from discontented social groups—which existed primarily outside the locus of power in the Chinese ruling structure—saw their interests best served by drastic political change. They consistently pursued a radical policy, defending the reforms of the CR or even demanding further reform. They used the basic goals of Marxism and the political principles as defined in Mao's thought to justify their challenge to the structural legitimacy of the party organizations.

In contrast, the conservative mass organizations, mainly consisting of better-off social groups and supported by the military establishment, shared the party organization's interest in maintaining the status quo. The conservative forces tried to limit changes to a minimum or to reverse the radical reforms implemented during the CR. By stressing the structural legitimacy of the party organization in the name of Leninist tenets, the conservative forces emphasized the organizational principle in order to defend the correctness and legitimacy of decisions reached by due process. Each camp, of course, justified its position in ideological terms. But they were also more than willing to push their views to the extreme for maximum political gain.

Differences between radicals and conservatives crystallized over the questions of who should be purged and how to evaluate the cadres. Maoist radicals tended to emphasize the horizontal cleavage between the masses and the elite as the demarcation line be-

[5] For details of the conflict along the cleavage, see Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).

tween participants and targets. The Liuist leaders stressed the vertical cleavage between those inside and those outside the party. As a result, the scope of the purges expanded gradually from "bourgeois academic authorities," to "black gangs" (who protected the academic authorities), to "monsters and freaks," and finally to "powerholders taking the capitalist road within the party." The radicals pushed for a more comprehensive purge, while party leaders endeavored to keep it as narrow as possible. When the Maoists pinpointed more categories to purge, the party organization responded by attempting to restrict the targets to those specifically mentioned. Consequently, the party organization was continually one step behind the Maoist leaders.

Over the question of how to evaluate the cadres, the Jiang Qing radical group stressed the cadres' political performance over class background, political action over intention, and performance records in "the fifty days" (at the early stage of the CR) over the past seventeen years' records. By contrast, the conservatives stressed class background, party membership, and past records, while condemning the radicals as anti-Communist elements simply exploiting the CR to vent their resentment of the CCP.

We do not know how the two conflicting views determined the actual outcome of the purge. But since we know who was purged during the two years of mass mobilization between 1966 and 1968, tables 10–15, constructed with biographical data on individual cadres, allow us to glimpse the purge pattern (from which we can infer the CR conflict structures).

Table 10 demonstrates the devastating impact of the CR on the formal authority: about 60 percent of the top political leaders lost their positions in the CR. Particularly affected were party and government organizations, whereas the impact on the military was the least. Although the elite conflict was not organized along institutional lines, the differential impact was due to the different functional areas for which each institution was responsible and the different political powers each institution wielded. Not only was the military least affected, but it also aggrandized its political influence by default.

Although the career background of each individual cadre is not exactly the same as the type of organization he belonged to, table 11 shows that the leaders whose careers had evolved around poli-

tical works suffered the most, and 67 percent of the specialists lost their positions. By contrast, professional soldiers suffered the least. This again indicates that the mass movement was squarely directed against the powerholders. In table 12 the 70 percent purge rate of central leaders (in contrast to only 54 percent of local leaders) indicates that the impetus to radicalism came from the center, and the Gang of Four's influence was quite limited at local levels.

Kang Sheng allegedly condemned eighty Central Committee

members; of whom sixty-six were purged, only fourteen surviving (table 13). This indicates that Kang Sheng—and by inference the Gang of Four—exerted enormous influence in selecting who was to be purged. The surviving fourteen must have been leaders with their own political influence who were powerful enough to protect themselves or people who were protected by Mao. The fact that thirty persons who were not accused by Kang were purged indicates the complexity of the conflict at the top level. Although not being accused by Kang does not necessarily mean that they were protected by the radicals, it is obvious that the radicals' influence on the matters of purge and survival was not total.

Table 14 shows that field army affiliation was clearly correlated

with the rate of purge. Former officers of the Fourth Field Army fared much better than those of other field armies. The rise of Lin Biao might have reduced the possible charge against the former Fourth Field Army officers, whereas the purge of the leaders of other field armies (Peng Dehuai, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yi) made their officers more vulnerable. Or Lin Biao might have protected his field army officers, who would otherwise have been toppled. That 42 percent of the former Fourth Field Army officers were purged, however, indicates that the conflict in the CR was not exclusively along the line of field army affiliations.

Table 15 demonstrates that seniority affected the political fate of the military officers; the older they were, the more likely they were to be purged. Obviously, the CR centered conflict among the

senior party leaders with substantial political power. Even most of the purged Fourth Field Army officers were senior ones with political status independent of Lin Biao. They either refused to join Lin's group, thus forfeiting his possible protection, or he might have actively tried to remove them as obstacles to his rise to power. Whichever was the case, Lin Biao's strategy was to protect the junior officers who had affiliations with his field army, thereby reinforcing the existing ties by renewing their indebtedness to him. The CR offered the younger generation an opportunity to be promoted, with less room for the older generation of officers, who had already reached top positions. Actually, 57 percent of the third to eighth generations were promoted whereas only 16 percent of the first generation of military leaders were promoted during the CR. On the whole, my biographical data indicate that the purge rate among high-ranking cadres was higher than among low-ranking cadres. Particularly vulnerable to the purge were those who had enjoyed rapid promotion before the CR and those who held multiple positions at the time of the CR. Also, of the ninety-four persons who had studied abroad, about 64 percent of them were purged, with only 36 percent surviving.

This purge pattern reveals that the CR destroyed the formal authority of the party-state because the powerholders or leading cadres represented the formal authority when the degree of institutionalization was low. As the powerholders defended themselves by invoking the structural legitimacy of the organization, the rebels rejected the organizational norms, rules, and procedures in the name of the higher authority of Mao's thought.

The only political authority that was formally accepted as a standard for judging all political conduct was the radicalized version of Mao's thought and his personal decisions, frequently known as "great strategic decisions." Every political actor claimed to follow Mao's line and ideology, but each political group interpreted the meaning of Mao's thought and his specific instructions in light of their particular political interests. Almost anyone, regardless of position and organizational affiliation, was vulnerable to the charges of anti-Maoism from some quarter. That one was following an order coming through the regular channels of authority neither guaranteed safety nor implied that one was a good cadre. On the contrary, those who stuck to the Leninist organizational principle

were condemned as "docile tools" with a "slave mentality." Colleagues often blamed one another, and subordinates challenged superiors, quite often disguising their political ambition in the name of the revolution. The mass movement challenged the moral and ethical foundations of the entire political community.

As a witch-hunt atmosphere permeated the entire society, the choice available for each individual was either to purge or to be purged, and people quickly learned that it was better to accuse before being accused. There were many grounds for accusation and persecution: opposing Mao's line, having a bad class background or blotted political record, and so forth. Caught in the dilemma between what they really believed to be right and what they saw as politically advantageous, some people refused to compromise their conception of basic human decency, but the more opportunistic were willing to go against their own conscience by laying false charges and providing concocted evidence. Others were compelled to do so under coercion and torture.

As the mass movement created terror and chaos, which resulted in struggle, dispute, and policy changes, and exposed most cadres to the charge that they made some errors (according to the criteria used at any given moment), only personal trust allowed people to share their inner feelings and maintain confidentiality.^[6] Usually trust came from personal ties based on friendship, belonging to the same unit, or sharing the same birthplace, but even these bonds provided no security against betrayal. The CR offered many temptations for the self-interested to betray trust. In brief, the importance of informal ties increased in inverse proportion to the weakening of the formal authority.

Situational Groups and Rehabilitation

The purge pattern indicates that the conflicting groups during the CR do not fit neatly into any of the conflict groups suggested in the standard literature. They were too complex to be explained as "tendency groups," those people with a similar ideological pro-

[6] S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons, Clients, and Friends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

pensity that leads them to take similar positions on various specific issues.^[7] Nor can they be called "opinion groups," which are issue-specific, because the elite conflicts were too intense, severe, and well structured. Although the conflicts involved institutional cleavages among the party, the government, and the military, the formal authority of Mao, which all institutions accepted, and the diffused power bases of the various conflict groups limited the applicability of "institutional groups" on which the theory of bureaucratic politics has developed. Many informal groups based on personal ties were active in the CR, but it is difficult to ascertain to what extent they became political groups actually affecting the outcome of the conflicts. It is a "faction" concept that has been most widely used in analyzing the dynamics of the CR. By definition, a faction is very limited in size and capability, and, therefore, factional politics result in "immobilism."^[8] The idea of a micro-group such as a faction is of limited use because the CR conflicts involved almost all Chinese, including both the masses and the political elite. The CR conflicts, moreover, caused many ideological and policy disputes, which frequently ended in real changes in these areas—a situation that runs counter to the meaning of a faction.

Because of the large number of political groups that emerged during the chaotic process of the elite conflicts and mass mobilization, the numerous issues over which they clashed, and the constantly forming and changing coalitions, it is extremely difficult to identify convincingly the factors that led to the CR. Instead, looking at how conflicts were structured in terms of the various groups that came into existence as a result of the mass mobilization, I propose to use the concept of "situational group," referring to the

[7] Franklyn Griffiths, "A Tendency Analysis of Soviet Policy-Making," in Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffiths, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 335–77.

[8] For the factional model, see W. Whitson, "The Field Army in Chinese Communist Military Politics," China Quarterly , no. 46, 1963, 668–99; Andrew Nathan, "A Factional Model for CCP Politics," China Quarterly , no. 53, 1973, 34–66; Tang Tsou, "Prolegomenon to the Studying of Informal Groups in CCP Politics," China Quarterly , no. 65, 1976, 98–113; Lucian Pye, The Dynamics of Factions and Consensus in Chinese Politics (Santa Monica, Ca.: Rand Corporation, 1981); Ralph W. Nicholas, "Faction: A Comparative Analysis," 55–74, and James C. Scott, "Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia," 123–46, both in Steffen W. Schmitt, James Scott, Carl Lande, and Laura Guasti, eds., Friends, Followers, and Faction (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).

position in which a group finds itself as a result of a particular state policy.^[9] This concept is particularly appropriate to Chinese revolutionary politics, which relies heavily on political power to change the entire social structure. Because of the decisive and omnipresent role of the party-state in China, many groups—for example, the poor and the unemployed, which in Western countries would be labeled sociological groups—are more accurately defined as situational groups. The members of a situational group may or may not have a common group identity, but they are keenly aware that their situation is the result of state policy.

One situational group was composed of victims of the CR—the purged. Although they were off the political stage for a while (depending on when they were rehabilitated), they constituted a coherent political group, and after Mao's death they became the "rehabilitated cadres" who regained power. Among them were different subgroups. Some were officially denounced as "renegades, spies, and traitors" and then expelled from the party (e.g., Liu Shaoqi). Others were condemned as "powerholders taking the capitalist road," imprisoned for a while, and then released (e.g., Deng Xiaoping). There was also a group of cadres who were criticized and put aside by the masses. Their cases were never officially concluded. This situational group had many personal reasons to challenge the validity of the CR. They recognized Mao's mistakes, while holding the Gang of Four and Lin Biao responsible for the hardships they had suffered.

A second group consisted of leaders who were criticized but never officially purged or demoted; despite the profound crisis, this group of cadres managed to survive. As purge and counter-purge continued, they became more important in the overall distribution of power. Three examples are Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian, and Ye Jianying. Although they enjoyed close personal relations with Mao, they had ample sympathy for their less fortunate comrades whom the CR victimized. They had no reason to defend the CR other than protecting Mao's position in Chinese history.

A third group included cadres who occupied middle-echelon positions in the party-state at the beginning of the CR and who were promoted upward (regardless of their desires) as the purges

[9] William Gamson, Power and Discontent (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1968).

created vacancies at the top. As the de facto beneficiaries of the CR, they developed a deep personal loyalty to Mao, although they may have had personal reservations about some of his decisions. They tended to defend the CR on the whole, while rehabilitating some of its innocent victims as long as Mao's overall reputation was not undermined. Hua Guofeng and Wu De are examples of this type of cadre.

The fourth and last group consisted of those who initiated the CR and spurred the mass movement. Within this group were two subgroups: the Gang of Four, who controlled propaganda, and Lin Biao's group, which consisted mostly of military officers. Both used Mao's thought to initiate the CR, and both contributed to the development of Mao's personality cult. They had every reason to defend the CR while resisting the rehabilitation of cadres, particularly senior ones, whose return would threaten their own power position.

Analyzing the CR elite conflicts in terms of situational groups offers several advantages that the other types of conflict groups cannot. First, the situational group can accommodate ideological differences among the elites. Broadly speaking, the victims of the CR were on the right of the ideological spectrum, whereas the initiators of the CR were on the left. The survivors and the beneficiaries were between the two extremes. Second, the situational model can deal with the problem of size in conflict groups. Since the CR involved all the cadres as well as a large number of ordinary Chinese, the factional model based on personal ties cannot fully explain its dynamics and outcome. Moreover, unlike the factional model, the situational group does not assume that major elite conflicts are organized along cleavages based on informal ties, thus avoiding the question of formal and informal authorities. At the same time, the situational group differs from an opinion group—in which one can change one's position depending on the issue—because its members' positions are largely determined by their own political interests. In addition, the situational group possesses more group cohesiveness than the tendency group.

Most important, with this concept one can effectively address the question of rehabilitation, the issue around which elite conflicts centered. Understandably, all members of each situational group saw their crucial personal interests at stake in this issue.

The practice of allowing purged cadres to return to the political scene seems to be unique to the CCP, contrasting sharply with Stalin's policy.^[10] The traditional Chinese belief that man is fallible and yet also malleable through education provided the philosophical justification for cadre rehabilitation. Mao strengthened this traditional belief by emphasizing the need to reeducate cadres who made mistakes and, by departing from some Leninists' view that the Communist Party is infallible.^[11]

Rehabilitation, when fairly used, can perform several positive functions. It can work as a mechanism for administering justice and for allowing cadres to ask for reviews of their cases. Without such minimal protection, no political system can survive for long. At the same time, rehabilitation helps the decision-makers to correct their mistakes, assuage their guilt, and learn from their experiences. For ordinary Chinese citizens, the existence of rehabilitation can act to sustain their faith in the sincerity and, therefore, the legitimacy, of the party. Rehabilitation also benefits the Chinese political system by serving as a vehicle for keeping the cadres united by bringing back those who have strayed from the correct path. In addition, the political system can make good use of disgraced cadres' experiences.

Ideally, rehabilitation should be decided on the basis of the correctness or incorrectness of the original decision. But many political factors influenced each decision. First, whether the original decision was right or wrong depended on both subjective political judgment and the official line at a given moment. Since declaring a decision was wrong also raised the question of the decision-makers' culpability, those who made the decision usually defended it; the opposition, of course, capitalized on any problematic decisions.^[12]

Most important, whom to rehabilitate, particularly among

[10] In Chinese, "rehabilitation" (pingfan ) implies the overthrowing of an original disciplinary decision. The reasons most often cited for such reverals include false accusations, calumnious evidence, or excessively severe punishment. Rehabilitation usually entails the restoration of honor, the reinstatement of the disgraced cadre in his original position, and the payment of the wages he would have received during the period of his disgrace.

[11] Pingfan Ziliao Huibian (Guangdong, 19 January 1968), in Hongweibing Ziliao Huibian (Washington D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Material, 1978), 5010–5022.

[12] For this point, see Hong Yung Lee, Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution .

upper-echelon political leaders, had (and always has) profound ramifications for the distribution of power as well as for policy. For this reason the distribution of power at a given moment decisively influenced cadre rehabilitation, and whenever a major change occurred in power distribution, the demand for rehabilitation increased.

From the beginning, the CR was concerned with who should be purged and who should be protected or rehabilitated. Although all cadres were attacked in one way or another during the mass movement, some of the attacked managed to survive or to be liberated at early stages of the mass movement. More cadres were liberated when Mao proceeded to set up a new power structure in the form of a revolutionary committee. The three-in-one formula offered some cadres opportunities to join the new power structure as "revolutionary cadres." But who was qualified to be a "revolutionary cadre" was heatedly disputed, and every faction tried to maximize its power position in the new revolutionary committee by supporting the cadres of its own choice. Generally, PLA representatives in each unit, who had access to cadres' dossiers, made personnel decisions on cadres. The Jiang Qing group exerted its influence in the units with which it was concerned—generally those at central and provincial levels. However, at these high levels, the group could find only a few "revolutionary cadres," and worse still, most of them happened to have "other political problems."^[13] The radicals' influence over the formation of revolutionary committees at lower levels was further diluted because decisive authority came from the provincial revolutionary committee, which was dominated by local PLA leaders with the support of conservative mass organizations.

Large-scale "liberation" took place in 1968, when Mao launched the campaign to purify class ranks. Part of this campaign was known as "settling cases" (dingan ) by rendering official judgment on each cadre. At that time the cadres' status was uncertain: almost

[13] For instance, Liu Geping of Shansi, Wang Xiaoyu of Shandong, and Pan Fusheng of Heilongjiang joined the rebels. However, almost all such cadres had disappeared by the Ninth Party Congress (1969), probably because their "political problems which—referring to past mistakes"—made them vulnerable to attack by conservative forces.

all of them were criticized by the masses, but they were neither removed from their posts nor formally reinstated.

Unlike the case in earlier phases, this time new formal authorities—the revolutionary committees, Workers Mao's Thought Propaganda Teams, or the Military Affairs Commission—investigated each cadre, particularly focusing on class background (i.e., whether the one in their dossier was correct or not) and any suspicious past problems. Final decisions were supposed to be made impartially and objectively, but because of rampant factionalism, simplistic charges abounded, and even a single accusatory letter from the masses or an accusation in a mass meeting could trigger a lengthy process of investigation. As a result, many (what were later called) "false accusations," "mistaken decisions," and "trumped-up charges" were produced in the campaign.

After two years of chaotic mass mobilization, it was not easy to determine who was good and who was bad. All the decision-making bodies were split between radicals and conservatives, who violently disagreed even on basic standards of right and wrong. Moreover, two years of prolonged struggle exposed the weaknesses of every cadre. The chaos of the mass movement made it difficult to separate cadres who sought only their own interests from those who pursued what they believed to be the public good. Some cadres stood firmly for what they considered the right course, but unfortunately they turned out to be on the wrong side—at least from the Maoist viewpoint. Other cadres found in Mao's call to criticize powerholders a chance to vent accumulated resentments against their superiors. Still others were wholly opportunistic and unprincipled, changing their allegiance to whichever side seemed to be winning.

Another group of cadres, known as "wanderers" (xiaoyao pai ), withdrew from the whole movement, adopted an indifferent attitude, and tried to enjoy themselves. Many cadres who honestly reported their class origin and political history to the party were victimized because of "bad records"; those who managed to keep their records clean by lying claimed to be true revolutionaries. Dedicated Communist cadres who had faithfully carried out official policies prior to the CR drew heavier criticism from the masses than the "old good persons" (lao hao ren ). There was a compelling

need to untangle things and bring some semblance of justice and order to the situation. Veteran revolutionary cadres, who had led the Chinese revolution to success, came under fire from former KMT partisans. Many opportunists, who had compromised with the Japanese, the KMT, and the CCP, also surviveed the CR without having passed a "soul-searching test."

To make matters even more complex, the official definition of those to be purged was ambiguous and constantly changing. At the initial stage, the official target was defined as the "bourgeois academic authority." Then it expanded to include "powerholders taking the capitalist road," but the radicals and conservatives disagreed on how to define "capitalist roaders." The radicals insisted on purging all the cadres guilty of "the bourgeois reactionary line" (which suppressed the spontaneous mass movement). However, since almost 90 percent of the cadres had carried out the wrong line, the official policy changed to distinguishing between people who had willingly carried out the mistaken line and those who had simply followed orders coming down through regular organizational channels.^[14] Eventually, even those who were guilty of the bourgeois reactionary line were allowed to repent when the official description changed to "stubborn powerholders who took the capitalist road, but refused to reform."^[15]

Eventually the official category to be purged was reduced to "renegade and spy." Capitulating to the enemy by revealing party secrets and by selling out comrades, even when captured by the enemy, is against the principles of Leninism. To call a cadre a renegade is the most effective tactic for discrediting any party cadre in the public eye. Unlike other political mistakes, whose seriousness diminishes over time and with the introduction of different interpretations, being a renegade is an almost unforgivable sin. For this reason, Liu Shaoqi was labeled a renegade. Once applied, these labels substantially decreased anyone's chance for a verdict reversal, even when the political atmosphere changed drastically. In fact, those who had been condemned as renegades—mostly those from the "white" areas—were the last to be rehabilitated.

[14] Gongren Zaofan Bao , 10 April 1969.

[15] Renmin Ribao , 1 January 1964.

Figure. 1. 
Distribution of Rehabilitation by Years
Source . Sample includes all persons who served on any 
of the Eighth to the Twelfth Central Committees.

The concept of situational groups, their coalitions, and their conflict over the issue of rehabilitation are powerful tools in explaining the process and outcome of elite conflicts (see fig. 1).

Despite two years of mass mobilization, many old cadres managed to survive under the protection of Zhou Enlai. They represented continuity for the regime. Mao did not have either the capability or the will to purge all the old cadres. Besides their continued existence, there was the Lin Biao incident, which further weakened the political forces who had initiated the CR. The incident also deprived the Cultural Revolution Small Group, dominated by Madam Mao and her followers, of a powerful coalition partner, with whom it shared a common interest in safeguarding the accomplishments of the CR.

Immediately following Lin's death in 1971, a large number of senior cadres were rehabilitated (see figure 1). This intensified the Gang of Four's (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) conflicts with the survivors, in spite of Mao's effort to make the two groups cooperate. The Jiang Qing group renewed the mass campaign under the excuse of criticizing Confucius and Lin Biao in order to promote the CR rebels and to strengthen their power positions, while accusing the senior cadres

of attemping to "reverse the achievements of the CR." During this period of intensifying conflict, 1975–76, the rate of rehabilitation dropped substantially.

The Gang of Four even failed to form a coalition with the CR beneficiaries, whose political interests lay in limiting the number of rehabilitated cadres. Instead, the Gang's political ineptitude pushed the beneficiaries to form a coalition with the CR survivors—a coalition which eventually moved against the Gang. However, by cutting a potential partner, the CR's beneficiaries left themselves vulnerable. Moreover, they could not persuade the survivors of the CR to refrain from rehabilitating their old colleagues. As shown in the figure 1, the number of rehabilitated senior cadres increased in 1977 and 1978. When Deng Xiaoping, returned to power in 1978 and almost all the CR victims were reinstated, the de facto beneficiaries were doomed.

After easing out Hua Guofeng, Deng formed a broad coalition with the rehabilitated and the survivors, both of whom had suffered greatly. Since the winning coalition had no vested interest in the CR, it could totally repudiate it and initiate political and economic reforms. While inducing the rehabilitated cadres to retire through a special retirement system (see chapter 10), Deng Xiaoping promoted the younger generation of technocrats to the highest positions in the Thirteenth Party Congress.

5
Lin Biao: Military Man

After two years of mass mobilization that almost paralyzed the formal authority of the party-state, there were three contending situational groups at the top level. One was Zhou Enlai, the leader of the government functionaries, to whom not only the surviving cadres and the beneficiaries but also the purged leaders increasingly looked for leadership. The Lin Biao and Jiang Qing groups were the initiators of the CR; the former controlled the "gun" while the latter controlled the "pen." Mao had close personal relationships with these three groups. One could even say that Mao was using Zhou Enlai to handle the administrative function of the party-state, the Gang of Four to mobilize the masses and ideologically justify the CR, and Lin Biao to control the military, on which he increasingly depended to maintain social order.

The political interests of the three groups converged and clashed. At the beginning of the CR in 1966, the Jiang Qing group and Lin Biao shared common interests. Both wanted to remove a large number of central political leaders to create vacancies within the bureaucracy for their own followers. Furthermore, cultivating Mao's personality cult served the interests of both groups, which were close to Mao.

However, the two groups had disparate support bases. The core members of Jiang Qing's group were the ideologues whose political interests lay with the mass mobilization of the disadvantaged social groups and who wanted to change the existing power structure. By contrast, Lin Biao's support came from military officers, whom he skillfully protected and then promoted to leadership positions during the CR. Although Lin's formal position was second only to Mao's, he lacked Mao's charisma, his contact with the masses was very limited, and his influence over the civilian bureaucracy was minimal. Lin Biao's political aim, therefore, was not to mobilize the masses and then modify the existing system but

to take over the system from within. Lin used his formal authority to develop a factional network by promoting his personal followers to key positions in the military and expanding the military's influence over the civilian bureaucracy. Perceived as Mao's faithful disciple and as a close collaborator of the Gang of Four, Lin Biao had to produce a continuous flow of rhetoric.

The political interests of the two groups diverged when local mass organizations clashed with local military leaders. The Jiang Qing group, mostly composed of what the Chinese call "petty intellectuals," wanted to use the masses to seize military power at the local level, whereas Lin Biao had to be sensitive to the institutional interests of the military, particularly those of local military leaders. Lin thus found himself under opposing pressures: pressure from the Jiang Qing group to support the radical Red Guards and pressure from local military leaders to defend the PLA's interests. Caught in this dilemma, he cooperated with the Jiang Qing group against the senior leaders, at the same time competing with the radicals to fill vacancies created by the purges with his own people.^[1]

Zhou Enlai must also be factored into this uneasy relationship between the Jiang Qing and Lin Biao groups. Whether it was because of a lack of personal ambition or his skillful maneuvering, Zhou succeeded in building a public image as an impartial premier honestly trying to carry out Mao's policy within objective constraints. He protected the party and government leaders as far as his power and influence allowed, but when it became impossible to do so without a serious confrontation with other elite groups, he publicly dropped his defense and acted as a conciliator and moderator rather than as an advocate of any partisan position. Apparently, he used universal criteria rather than particularistic ones in selecting targets and defending victims. Perhaps he did not need to engage in factional politics because his administration of the government was essential to the daily life of the society. The combination of political skill, a consistently moderate position, high prestige among the entire cadre corps, and Mao's trust caused

[1] For this point, see Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiusuo, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Tebie Fating Shenpan Lin Biao, Jiang Qing Fangeming Jituan Zhufan Jishi (Beijing: Falu Chubanshe, 1982); and Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huiyilu (Beijing: Jiefangjun Chubanshe, 1984), vol. 3.

even the Jiang Qing group to respect him, at least publicly, although privately the radicals regarded him as the "third headquarters" commanding the cadres' loyalty—a man who somehow managed to survive the CR's turbulence.

Zhou and Lin were both opposed to the Gang of Four's stragtegy of mass mobilization, and both had very practical views on policy. If they could have formed a coalition against the Gang of Four, it would have been very powerful.

Power Base

Selecting the Ninth Central Committee

The three groups clashed over the issue of who should be promoted to the Ninth Central Committee. The Gang of Four wanted to promote the CR rebels—"those who have proven themselves in the CR"—while removing "all the hidden class enemies in the party."^[2] The Zhou Enlai group tried to strengthen cadre representation in the new Central Committee, whereas Lin Biao was in favor of giving a large share of political power to military leaders.

When the twelfth plenum of the Eighth Party Congress was convened in October 1968, only forty Central Committee members out of ninety-seven (ten had died), less than a quorum, were allowed to attend. The meeting, therefore, first decided to promote ten alternate members in order to reach a quorum. In addition, some leaders of the revolutionary committees and some PLA leaders also participated with voting rights.^[3] The meeting expelled Liu Shaoqi as a traitor and renegade.

Since local party committees had not yet been restored, each provincial revolutionary committee selected delegates to the next National Party Congress. Tension along the border after a brief clash with the Soviet Union caused the national delegates, instead of directly attending in person, to select a presidium that would

[2] For reconstruction of the party, see the untitled monograph [Materials on Party Reconstruction], in Hongweibing Ziliao Huibian [Washington D.C.: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 1978], 5029–42.

[3] Zhonggong Zhongyang Wenxian Yanjiushi, ed., Guanyu Jianguo Yilai de Rugan Lishi Wenti de Jueyi (Beijing: Renmin Ribao Chubanshe, 1983), 389.

exercise authority in the name of the congress. The presidium first chose its own leaders and then made basic decisions on how to select new Central Committee members: it limited the number of full and alternate members to 250 and the number of Eighth CC members to be reelected to 53, and it also specified the groups whose members would be automatically "elected."^[4]

Each provincial delegation nominated candidates to the CC and forwarded their names to the presidium. After collecting all the names, the presidium first voted on the lists of names, most of which had more candidates than could be elected, and then reviewed the qualifications of each candidate. The discussion developed into a heated clash among Zhou Enlai, the military, and the Gang of Four, which wanted to bring in many rebels.^[5] After negotiating about each name to appear on the final list, members of the presidium each cast one vote for or against the list. It was approved unanimously. "Because there were too many nominees from the military and the mass representatives," 279 members were elected to the CC, exceeding the limit set up by the presidium. It took almost ten days for the presidium to select the CC members.^[6]

As table 16 demonstrates, the PLA was the group that gained the most from the CR. Its local representation at the Ninth CC also increased substantially as a result of the loss of leaders from the central party and the government, a sign that power had become decentralized. But the gains made by local leaders did not benefit provincial party leaders, for the local leaders were PLA members who took power at the expense of their civilian counterparts. According to my preliminary estimate, out of 225 provincial party secretaries at the time of the CR, only 98 (43 percent) managed to survive. By contrast, of the 8 regional PLA leaders at the Eighth CC, only 1 was permanently purged.

Conflict over the selection of Politburo members was more intense. Mao reported to the congress:

[4] Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Dangshi Jiaoyan Ziliaozu, ed., Zhonggou Gongchandang Lice Zhongyao Huiyiji (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1983), 2:242; Zhongguo Zhongyang Dangshi Yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang Lice Daibiao Dahui (Beijing: Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1983), 66–72.

[5] Zhongguo Zhongyang Dangshi Yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang .

[6] Ibid.

I have faith in some of my old comrades who made mistakes. Originally there was a long list of twenty people [of old cadres], and I considered it good to make all of them Politburo members. Later someone advanced a shorter list of ten people, and I thought the list was too short. Most [of the old cadres] are middle roaders, and [I] am opposed to the long and the short lists and favor a medium size list of about twenty persons.^[7]

The twenty-person Politburo included eight new members. Six of them turned out to be from Lin Biao's group; the Jiang Qing group obtained four seats.^[8]

Lin Biao's Followers

Tables 17–19, constructed on the basis of biographical information that I have collected, attempt to identify Lifts power base by analyzing those purged with him. Lin's political influence in the Ninth CC was quite modest: only 16 percent of its members were purged with him. Moreover, his modest political influence was largely limited to the military; forty-nine of sixty-six members purged with him were military men (constituting 40 percent of all military representatives in the committee), whereas only 5 percent of the mass representatives and 16 percent of the cadres failed to make it into

[7] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue Cankao Ziliao; Wenhua Dageming Shiqi (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xueyuan, 1983), 4, no. 4 (1983): 278.

[8] The Lin group include Ye Qun, Chen Boda, Huang Yongsheng, Qiu Huizuo, and Wu Faxian. The Jiang Qing group members were Xie Fuzhi, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan.

the Tenth CC. Despite his impressive array of formal titles, his political influence in the Chinese bureaucracy was rather limited. As a professional military man, he had no experience to help him as the head of a civilian bureaucracy. Nor did he possess any charismatic qualities, either physical or intellectual.

Even within the military, Lin Biao drew his supporters largely from former Fourth Field Army officers (see table 18). Moreover, as shown in table 19, most of his supporters were from the second (32 percent) and third (27 percent) generations of military leaders, whereas his influence on the first generation of senior military leaders was quite limited (18 percent).

This skewed distribution of Lin Biao's followers within the military demonstrates that his control was very tenuous, and the military was not free from factional, regional, and organizational rivalries. Furthermore, Mao, as chairman of the Military Affairs Commission, was not about to give him a free hand.

None of the most senior leaders (except Chen Boda) was implicated in the Lin Biao affair. Many of them apparently did not take him seriously, as indicated by Luo Ruiqing's remark: "I never though that guy would fill the position [of Defense Minister]."^[9] Even during the CR, when Lin's power was rapidly increasing, many senior military leaders looked at his political maneuvers with contempt and tried to distance themselves from him and the Gang of Four. Lin could not pressure them to join his informal group because they had direct access to Mao, which they used to clarify their status.^[10]

Lin Biao's most loyal followers were from the second echelon of military leaders, mostly from the former Fourth Field Army, which had been close to him for a long time. These followers were Huang Yongsheng, former commander of the Guangdong military region (who was promoted in 1968 to be chief of staff), Qiu Huizou, director of the quartermaster department, Li Zuopeng, commander of the navy, and Wu Faxian, commander of the air force. All of them helped Lin purge Lo Ruiqing by secretly collecting incriminating information against him. During the CR, Lin enhanced their dependency on him by personally protecting them at the most crucial moment—when they were criticized as powerholders by the masses. In return, these former Fourth Field Army officers de-

[9] Interview in Beijing, 1988.

[10] Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huiyilu , vol. 3.

veloped personal loyalties to Lin, regarding him not only as a formal superior but also as an informal leader.

In addition to these high-level leaders, Lin Biao also cultivated a group of loyal followers among junior air force officers, with whom he did not have any direct work relations. The key link between Lin and these personal followers was his twenty-one-year-old son, Lin Liguo, who was a physics student at Beijing University when the CR started. Lin Biao first asked Wu Faxian to take care of his son during the initial stages of the CR. Later he instructed Wu to make his son deputy director of the air force's management office and operational department so that Lin Biao himself could help the development of air defense strategy through his son. Wu was more than willing to oblige. He convened the party committee of the air force, which decided that "every matter in the air force should be reported to Lin Liguo, and everything should be under his control and command." In addition, the political department of the air force adopted five measures: "Think of Lin Liguo all the time, ask him about everything, protect him everywhere, take him as our leader, sincerely comply with his demands and his every command."^[11] Under the protection of Wu Faxian, Lin Liguo gathered together a dozen middle-level air force officers.^[12]

The Lin Biao group closely approximates an archetypical faction. First, its key membership included a few former Fourth Field Army officers and second- and third-generation military officers from other field armies who owed their promotion to him. They developed very close personal ties, which resulted in complex mutual obligations. For instance, Lin Biao protected Wu Faxian, and in return Wu accepted Lin's son into the air force, helped him get promoted into key positions, and tolerated his factional network within the air force.

Moreover, the second layer of Lin Biao's group, which consisted of ambitious air force officers, whom his son recruited through the secret channels of patronage, also approximates the typical factional model: the faction was based exclusively on personal ties, the officers were motivated by ambition, and they were dedicated to

[11] Yan Jiaqi, Wenge Shinian Shi (Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1986), 341–42.

[12] For the Lin Liguo group, see ibid., 319–97; Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiusuo, ed., Zhonghua Renmin .

their patrons without much consideration for formal rules. Because they did not have their own power base, they were willing to engage in factional activities, deeply involving themselves in preparing the 571 program (wu chi yi , a Chinese homonym with armed uprising). Obviously, they expected to be rewarded if their plan succeeded.

However, Lin Biao's senior military followers—Huang Yongsheng, Li Zoupeng, Wu Faxian, and Qiu Huizuo—were not directly involved in the conspiracy, according to available data revealed during their trial. They behaved circumspectly during the critical period; although they apparently knew Lin Liguo's plan, they neither actively participated in it nor exposed the plan to an appropriate authority. At the same time they gave Lin Liguo all the support they could mobilize through their formal authority and transmitted to Lin Biao the content of the speeches that Mao made during his trip to military regions. Probably their positions were too high for them openly to participate in obvious antiparty activities.^[13]

This pattern of behavior again reveals a complex and subtle mix of formal and informal ties in Chinese politics. Because of a strong tradition of formal bureaucracy, incumbents of formal organizations tend to use their discretionary powers to help their factional interests, but not so far as to jeopardize their formal authority.

Rehabilitation

At the Ninth Party Congress Mao emphatically stressed the need for unity. Lin Biao also endorsed a policy of moderation. He urged that only cadres of the three categories be purged and that "good people who made the mistake of following the capitalist road" be set free, "if they raise their determination and if the masses are willing to forgive them."^[14] Thereafter, the news media began to publish articles discussing cadre rehabilitation. However, instead of urging large-scale rehabilitation, these articles simply reported some experiences of rehabilitated cadres to prove a general point.

[13] Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiusuo, Zhonghua Renmin .

[14] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue , no. 4, 1983, 278.

On the question of how to evaluate cadres, an article about an experience in Shanghai suggested that the regime should (1) consider each cadre's major characteristics and actions rather than minor ones; (2) look at the circumstances and historical conditions in which cadres made mistakes (and forgive those whose mistakes resulted from following instructions passed down through organizational channels); (3) survey the entire history and work of each cadre, not just his work during the CR; (4) evaluate each cadre's performance throughout the CR, not just during a particular period; and (5) take into account the cadre's attitude toward his own mistakes. This formula represented a clear victory for the moderates and a setback for the radicals, who insisted on using cadres' performance records from the early stages of the CR as the major criterion for rehabilitation.^[15] When the entire work record was used as the principal criterion, most cadres passed the test and were consequently liberated.

A statement accompanying the liberation of Liu Bing, former deputy secretary of Qinghua University, shows how the five conditions worked in one case.

Liu Bing joined the revolution in his youth. Having investigated and researched his record after 1949, particularly after he came to Qinghua in 1956, everyone came to the following conclusion. He had a very close relationship with a handful of counterrevolutionary revisionists, but this relationship derived from his work [rather than from personal ties]. Liu Bing never took part in counterrevolutionary activities. In his work, he followed the counterrevolutionary education policy, but never with the intention of restoring capitalism or of opposing Chairman Mao's revolutionary education policy; and he never took part in any criminal activity. Because of the insufficient transformation of his bourgeois worldview, he spread rightist views, but he did not violently attack the party or socialism. By his failure to put proletarian politics first, he overemphasized "functional work" and employed a few bad persons. Yet he never surrendered to the renegades.^[16]

Newspaper discussions also offered some examples of "good cadres who made mistakes." For instance, before the CR a Shanghai cadre set up three mottoes to observe personally: (1) not to be economically corrupt, (2) not to lead a decadent life, and (3)

[15] Renmin Ribao , 3 March 1969.

[16] Ibid., 1 June 1969.

not to pursue fame. Despite this cadre's personal integrity, he implemented the bourgeois reactionary line during the CR.^[17] Obviously this type of cadre was regarded as a "good person who had made mistakes." Another criterion used to determine whether a cadre was good or not was class background. Any cadre who came from a family who had suffered exploitation was presumed to be good.

Newspapers also addressed the subject of the masses' opposition to cadre rehabilitation. There was still strong resistance to rehabilitation from mass organizations because the masses were afraid of retaliation from cadres against whom they had once struggled.^[18] And the lingering effects of CR factionalism often made those in charge of cadre rehabilitation unable to reach a consensus on a particular cadre.

Although we do not know how these model cases were applied to each individual cadre, we know that most of the cadres liberated before Lin Biao's fall were specialists whose expertise was greatly needed to help units function smoothly. A preliminary count has revealed that only thirteen provincial-level cadres, but a much larger number of government leaders, were liberated before Lin Biao's purge. Most of the 127 ministerial-level government cadres freed by June 1971 were former vice ministers.^[19]

It is very likely that the Gang of Four would have opposed rehabilitating any cadres, if possible, whereas Zhou Enlai would have brought back as many cadres as possible. Documentary evidence about Lin Biao's attitude toward cadre rehabilitation is contradictory; he was accused, on the one hand, of having opposed it and, on the other, of having schemed to use the grievances of purged cadres in his own move against Mao.^[20] His real position seems to have been between these two extremes; he was willing to rehabilitate lower-level cadres, but he refused to allow the return of high ranking cadres because they would have posed a threat to his position. In fact, most of the cadres at the basic production level were liberated prior to Lin Biao's fall.^[21]

[17] Ibid., 28 March 1969.

[18] Ibid., 14 April 1969.

[19] For instance, see Zhonggong Yanjiu 4(9) (July 1972):42–51.

[20] Ying-mao Kau, The Lin Biao Affair (White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Science Press, 1975), 84; Daily Report , 21 June 1976.

[21] China News Analysis , no. 311, 8 May 1969; no. 315, 12 June 1969; Hong Qi , no. 6, 1978.

Political Strategy

Although Lin Biao is known as a brilliant military strategist, he rose to power primarily because he actively encouraged the cult of Mao. He introduced Mao's approach of "politics in command" to the PLA and succeeded, to a certain extent, in restoring that body's sagging morale after the purge of Peng Dehuai. During the CR, he pushed Mao's personality cult to new heights. "Every sentence in Chairman Mao's work is a truth. One single sentence of his surpasses 10,000 of ours. . . . We must carry out not only those instructions we understand, but also those we fail to understand for the moment, and in the course of carrying them out, we must try to understand them."^[22]

Lin Biao's thought pattern, aptly labeled a "barracks communism" by Lowell Dittmer, shows the traits of a military man, particularly in his penchant for reducing complex and ambiguous matters to simple propositions.^[23] During the CR, he divided the leading cadres into two categories: those who paid attention to important matters and those who were preoccupied with minor matters. Although we do not know whether he undertook any serious study of Marxism-Leninism or any other theoretical literature, he left several boxes of cards containing excerpts from various Marxist writings, organized under such headings as "relations between superior and subordinates," "cadre policy," "seeking truth," and "dialectics."^[24]

Although Lin Biao rose to be Mao's official successor during the CR, as vice chairman of the CCP, his real power was precarious because his influence was overshadowed by Mao, who was too powerful and unpredictable to be trusted. Lin knew about Mao's habit of using confidants and then dropping them.^[25] Although he was fourteen years younger than Mao, his poor health made it doubtful that he would outlive him.^[26] As defense minister he was legally subordinate to Premier Zhou Enlai, his for-

[22] New China News Agency (Beijing), 23 January 1968.

[23] Lowell Dittmer, China's Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949–1981 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

[24] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue , no. 4, 1983, 336.

[25] Ying-mao Kau, Lin Biao Affair .

[26] Hu Hua, "Marching on a Tortuous Road and Socialist New Victory During New Line" (unpublished paper), 1987, 24.

mer teacher at Whampao Military Academy. In the propaganda field he had no reliable partners except for the Gang of Four, over whom he did not have any formal authority.

With his power base limited to military officers, largely from the Fourth Field Army and those from the second and third generations, Lin attempted, first, to strengthen the political authority of the military, second, to obtain formal authority over the bureaucracy as chairman of the state, and, third, to mobilize his factional followers for a coup attempt.

Using The Military

Although Mao had to rely on the military to restore any semblance of order after two years of chaotic mass mobilization, the elite groups' interests in the military's deep involvement in politics diverged. For Mao, who invented the phrase "the party controls the gun," military involvement was a temporary measure to control the mass movement. The Gang of Four saw that their interests lay in weakening the military's political influence while increasing that of the rebels in the newly established power organs at the local level. Zhou Enlai shared Mao's view, regarding use of the military as an expedient measure to prevent civil war.

Given Lin Biao's heavy reliance on the military for his support, it is clear that he benefited from the institution's increasing political influence during the crisis of the CR, although he did not totally control it. For example, as vice chairman in charge of the daily operations of the Military Affairs Commission, he could legitimately interfere with the operations of the military control commissions that were imposed even on some central government ministries.

The rising tension along the Sino-Soviet border in 1969 helped the military to maintain its active involvement in politics. After the armed clash in Chenbao island, Lin Biao expanded the military's control over industry at the expense of the State Council under Zhou Enlai.^[27] Using the need to prepare for war as an ex-

[27] On the border clash, see Thomas Robinson, "The Sino-Soviet Border Dispute," American Political Science Review , vol. 66, December 1972, 1175–1202. For Lin Biao's exploitation of the incident, see Jingji Jihua Yanjiu , 20 November 1983.

cuse, he extended the military's authority over many industries at the expense of the State Council.^[28] He also gave the military jurisdiction over small industries that could produce small weapons, and he planned to set up an "independent and complete national defense industry" under his control. Furthermore, Lin Biao reportedly intervened in the work of the economic planning agency by ordering it to replace "balance" as the main guiding principle of economic planning with "the battle perspective." Subsequently, the military share of the national budget increased by 34 percent in 1969, by 15 percent in 1970, and by 17 percent in 1971. In these years, defense industry and science received more than 11 percent of the total reinvestment of the state (in 1968 it had received only 9 percent). The state bureaucracy under Zhou Enlai was losing its jurisdiction over a large portion of industry.

Lin Biao reportedly issued Order no. 1 on 18 October 1969 "behind the [back of] Chairman Mao." Under the pretext of "strengthening war preparation to prevent the enemy's sudden attack," this order put the entire military on alert, set up command structures, and appointed officers to command posts.^[29] After Order no. 1, Lin's followers dispersed old senior leaders to different parts of China.^[30] The objective was to remove them from the decision-making process at the center and to prevent them from forming a coalition against Lin. It was easy to keep close surveillance over them through the reliable local military units, and Lin took the precaution of forbidding these older leaders from communicating with one another.^[31] Only on 19 October did Lin Biao report to Mao (by telephone recording), "following the practice of first beheading and then reporting," therefore forcing Mao to acquiesce in his decision. Upon hearing the report, Mao's first comment was that the order should be burned.^[32]

Not surprisingly, after Lin Biao's death all his decisions made in the name of war preparations were reversed. All industry was returned to the control of the State Council. In contrast to Lin's

[28] Jingji Jihua Yanjiu , 23 November 1983.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huiyilu , vol. 3.

[31] Ibid.

[32] The implication of Mao's comment was that the order should be regarded as if it had not been issued. Ibid.

strategy of preparing for war, which inevitably increased the power of the military, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai opted for the goal of overcoming China's diplomatic isolation by improving Sino-American relations. In addition, Mao attempted to limit the power of the military: he later reduced its involvement in local politics by sending soldiers back to their barracks and transferring political authority to provincial party committees. "At the moment [our military] promotes politics [wen ], but does not promote military affairs [wu ], and it has already become a cultured army [wenhua jundui ]."^[33] By February 1971, the center decided to transfer the authority to investigate May 16 elements to the national committee headed by Wu De, thus depriving the local military of the chance to use this investigation to increase their political influence.^[34]

Issues of State Chairmanship

Lin and his followers tried to overcome his weakness in the civilian bureaucracy by making him the formal head of the state, as chairman of the PRC, the position that was abolished with Liu Shaoqi's purge.^[35] The Gang of Four apparently wanted to exploit the issue in order to weaken Zhou Enlai's position.^[36] Viewing the revision of the state constitution as "an opportunity for the redistribution of power," the Gang of Four argued that the new constitution should include an article stating that "on the basis of the Central Committee of the CCP's nomination, the premier and members of the State Council will be appointed and dismissed." According to this draft, the chairman of the CCP would concurrently be "a head of the proletarian dictatorship," whereas the premier would also be a "first minister" in charge of management offices under the chairman.^[37]

Mao, probably happy with the three groups conflicting and cooperating under his authority, expressed several times his objection to restoring the state chairmanship. Zhou Enlai was

[33] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue , no. 4, 1983, 301.

[34] Ibid., 298.

[35] For Lin's maneuver at Lushan, see Zheng Derung and Zhu Yang, eds., Zhongguo Gongchandang Lishi Jiangyi (Jilin: Jilin Renmin Chubanshe, 1982), 181–93.

[36] Chen Hefu, ed., Zhongguo Faxian Leibian (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1980), 353.

[37] Ibid.

more than happy with Mao's opposition. But Lin Biao pushed the issue. He made an unauthorized move by stating "Chairman Mao is a genius," and the "chairmanship of the state should be established" in his opening speech at the second plenum of the Ninth Party Congress held in August 1970 in Lushan. Lin's followers endorsed his speech, demanding that it be distributed and studied.^[38]

Mao counterattacked. Declaring "it is unprecedented for a few persons to attempt to confuse 200 Central Committee members," he personally convened a Politburo meeting, which decided to stop discussion of Lin Biao's speech, to cancel the central-north China group's report prepared by Chen Boda, and to order Chen to submit to self-criticism. A few days later, Mao wrote "My Opinion," which repudiated Lin's and Chen's theories of genius. In addition, probably alarmed at Lin's move, Mao took several additional measures to weaken Lin's position. He ordered the PLA to rectify its work style (zuofeng ) by initiating the campaign "against arrogance and complacency" and by placing Zhou Enlai in charge of the campaign. Mao also dispatched Ye Jianying to work in the management section of the Military Affairs Commission in order to let "some air in" and reorganized the Beijing military region by transferring the Thirty-eighth Field Army, which was suspected of being loyal to Lin Biao, out of Beijing—the strategy Mao himself described as "digging out Lin's wall."

Coup Attempt

After the Lushan conference Lin Biao realized not only that his plan for peaceful succession had failed but that he had also exposed his purpose so fully that he was in political trouble. He thus concluded, "Struggle by words will not do; only using weapons can work." Knowing Mao well enough to realize that he would probably move against him at the forthcoming third plenum of the Ninth Party Congress (planned for September 1971), Lin thought it

[38] According to the official interpretation, proclaiming Mao's genius was intended to achieve two objectives for the Lin Biao group. First, it would discredit Zhang Chunqiao, who failed to recognize Mao as a genius. By criticizing Zhang, Lin Biao could seize hegemony over ideology from the Jiang Qing faction. The second objective was to establish the triumvirate of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, with a parallel triumvirate of assistants—Engels, Stalin, and Lin Biao. Hu Hua, "Marching on a Tortuous Road."

would be better for him to move first. His son and his factional followers developed a secret contingent coup plan of the 571 program.^[39]

Not sitting idly by, Mao was maneuvering to further isolate Lin Biao politically. From mid-August to 12 September 1971 Mao traveled around the south talking with leaders of the big military regions, provinces, and municipalities. In his talks, he made his displeasure with Lin Biao amply clear: "A certain person is impatient to be the state chairman; he wants to divide the party and seize power. . . . Making one's own wife the management office chief is not appropriate." With regard to his role in Lin Biao's rise, he said, "Of course, I have some responsibility."^[40]

After being informed of Mao's move by means of two different sources, Lin Biao ordered the activation of the 571 program.^[41] Lin Liguo's group busily discussed possible methods of assassinating Mao, ranging from using napalm and rockets to destroy Mao's train to sending assassins to murder him. Probably because he had been informed of "some abnormal action" on the part of Lin Biao's followers, Mao changed his travel schedule and immediately returned to Beijing.^[42] When the Lin Liguo group discovered that Mao had left for Beijing, they changed their coup plan and decided to escape to Guangdong. In Canton, they planned to convene a meeting of cadres above the divisional level and then to use the radio broadcast system to declare the establishment of a separate regime. Reportedly, they planned to ask for help from the Soviet Union.^[43]

"A comrade in the central management office" (probably Wang Dongxing) informed Zhou of Lin Biao's plan to escape to the Soviet Union.^[44] Zhou ordered that no plane take off without the joint approval of Mao, Zhou, Huang, Wu, and Li Zuopeng, commander

[39] Lin Liguo called his secret group a "fleet" in admiration of the Japanese naval spirit as depicted in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! For the most detailed information on his coup plan, see Yan Jiaqi, Wenge Shinian Shi , 356; Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiushi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin .

[40] Jiefangjun Bao , 25 November 1980.

[41] Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiushi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin , 112.

[42] Hu Hua reports that Zheng Shiqing, the head of Jiangxi province, informed Mao at Nanchang (at the end of August) of Lin Liguo's activities. Hu Hua, "Marching on a Tortuous Road."

[43] Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiushi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin , 142–49.

[44] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 3, 1981, 59.

of the navy, who was responsible for airport security. Nonetheless, at midnight, Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo decided to escape, probably because they had heard about Zhou's suspicions. Around 2 A.M. , when Lin's plane was getting close to the limits of Chinese air space, Wu Faxian asked Zhou whether or not to shoot the plane down. Zhou went to Mao for a decision. Mao said, "Heaven wants to rain, and a woman wants to marry. Let him go."^[45] On the afternoon of 14 September, Zhou received a report from the Chinese embassy in Mongolia stating that the plane had crashed. We still do not know why.^[46]

[45] Ibid.

[46] Some speculate that the plane was shot down; others guess that the plane ran out of fuel. Hangkong Zhishi , no. 9, 1981, 26–29.

6
The Gang of Four: Ideologues

Lin Biao's fall reduced the contending political groups to radical ideologues and bureaucrats, the latter headed by Zhou Enlai. Mao tried to bring the two warring groups together, relying on the ideologues to maintain a revolutionary momentum, while counting on the bureaucrats to preserve order and run the economy. However, the two groups were bound to clash on many issues created by the Lin Biao incident. The innocent victims of Lin's conspiracy had to be rehabilitated. But thorny issues were who the innocent victims were, how many of those purged should be rehabilitated, and who should fill the power vacuum created by the purge of Lin's followers and the military's return to barracks. Understandably, Zhou's group wanted to reinstate disgraced cadres in order to correct Lin Biao's mistakes and to remedy the "absolute shortage of experienced cadres," whereas the Gang of Four wanted to promote CR rebels in order to establish their power base within the party-state apparatus.

Power Base

The official news media often referred to the CR radicals as "the Gang of Four's factional system" (xitong ), which "had its own platform, line, policy, theory, and supporting members." The two contradictory terms "faction" and "system" accurately capture the complexities of the CR radical group. The behavior of the four radical leaders—Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen—displayed all the characteristics of a faction. Thanks to close personal ties with Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan became members of the Cultural Revolution Small Group in the initial stage of the CR and then were promoted to the Politburo with her. Wang Hongwen, a leader of the radical workers organization in Shanghai, probably owed his rise to

Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, who must have recommended him to Mao. United by friendship, the four radicals thought as one on every issue, and each of them developed complex factional networks involving subleaders and their followers. They frequently gathered followers into "study groups" or "writing groups," which acted as confidential networks for their factional activities.^[1]

But the Gang of Four was more than a faction because it had developed a well-defined ideology and political program. It regarded itself as representing "Chairman Mao's proletarian headquarters" at the central level and the "new, rising political forces" at the mass level. Often the Gang of Four managed to make official its radical ideology, program, and policy so that they were implemented at the organizational level. It mobilized disadvantaged and discontented social groups against the existing political authority. The recruitment of such well-known followers as Zhang Tiesheng and Wen Hongsheng was based not on narrowly defined personal ties but on what they had done and stood for during the CR. Only after recruitment did followers become close to the Gang of Four. The well-known followers represented a certain type of person rather than unique individuals. The Gang of Four's power base both reflected and shaped its cadre policy.

Selecting the Tenth Central Committee

Immediately after the Lin Biao incident, Zhou Enlai, who was delegated by Mao to manage the daily work of the center, took a moderate domestic and international course for China.^[2] In dealing with the chaotic domestic scene, he demonstrated his political acumen, deftly compromising with the radicals in order to restore a semblance of political stability.

Thanks to Zhou's willingness to compromise with the Gang of Four, the two sides apparently reached an agreement on how to convene the Tenth Party Congress at an extended Central Commit-

[1] Daily Report , 29 June 1977, p. E2; Hong Qi , no. 11, 1977; no. 5, 1979.

[2] In the rural area, Zhou initiated a moderate policy of paying attention to the needs of collectives and individuals, and in the foreign policy arena, he diffused military pressure from the Soviet Union by inviting President Nixon to Beijing.

tee meeting held in May 1973. Qualifications for delegates to the congress included "good political performance during the CR," a criterion that the radicals may have insisted on. As for old cadres who had "made serious mistakes, if they underwent self-criticism, they should be allowed to be delegates." However, a veteran cadre with a "questionable history" was not to be elected. The delegation would be selected by "negotiation" and "voting." A quota probably demanded by the radicals was set up for each occupational category: 30 percent for workers, 25 percent for lower-middle and poor peasants, 19 percent for "revolutionary" cadres, and 5 percent for "revolutionary" inellectuals. The Jiang Qing group also managed to set up an age quota for the delegation: 80 percent of the worker and peasant delegation had to be between eighteen and fifty-five; the same age group had to constitute about 60 percent of the military delegates, cadres, and revolutionary intellectuals.^[3]

Preparations for the congress proceeded secretly; delegates from each province met in its capital under the pretense of "study classes."^[4] These meetings selected an election committee of 104 members with Wang Hongwen as chairman.^[5]

The election committee used the Ninth CC members as the basis for selecting new CC members, first removing Lin Biao's followers (a total of forty-seven people) and then filling the vacancies with those selected by the election committee from the pool of nominees recommended by provinces and municipalities. Heated debate between the two groups ensued. The Zhou Enlai group managed to place some rehabilitated cadres (such as Deng Xiaoping, Wu Lanfu, Wang Jiaxiang, Tan Zhenlin, and Li Jingquan, all of whom were Eighth CC members, but had failed to enter the Ninth CC).^[6] The Gang of Four, by contrast, argued vehemently on behalf of the CR rebels, even nominating nonparty member CR rebels on the grounds that they "had joined the party ideologically, although they have not yet joined the party organizationally." A substantial

[3] Zhongguo Zhongyang Dangshi Yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang Lice Daibiao Dahui (Beijing: Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1983), 107.

[4] Ibid., 111.

[5] In addition, Wang Hongwen was in charge of revising the party constitution, and he assumed the chairmanship of the preparatory committee for electing the Tenth CC. Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng, Ye Jianying, Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and Li Desheng were vice chairmen. Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 112.

number of the young CR rebels entered the Central Committee. For example, Zhang Chunqiao pushed hard for Zhu Gejia, a Shanghai student who had been sent to Xinjiang, in spite of objections from Zhou's group. The final meeting, which was attended by all delegates and lasted only four days (from 24 to 28 August), approved the final list of Tenth CC members.^[7]

Officially labeled "a congress of unity, a congress of victory, and a congress full of vigor," the Tenth Party Congress produced a well-balanced outcome in terms of the membership of the Central Committee; 30 percent were from the PLA, 33 percent were cadres, and 37 percent were representatives from the masses.^[8] This balance was achieved by removing 40 percent of the PLA's Ninth CC members from office and adding twenty-five PLA candidates (six were liberated PLA leaders), forty-three cadres, and forty-eight leaders of the masses. This kind of balance would have been impossible without a conscious effort to maintain equilibrium. Theoretical justification for such equal representation came from the principle of the three-in-one formula—which was first introduced in 1967 as a means to form the revolutionary committees with representatives from the cadres, the military, and the mass organizations—on which the Jiang Qing group probably insisted in order to increase mass representation.

The radicals had reason to be satisfied with the outcome of the Tenth Party Congress. Mass representation made spectacular gains in the Tenth CC, mainly at the expense of PLA leaders; it increased from a mere 25 percent in the Ninth CC to 37 percent in the Tenth CC. By contrast, the PLA's proportion decreased from 43 percent in the Ninth CC to 30 percent, whereas cadre representation increased slightly from 31 percent to 33 percent. In terms of numbers of representatives, cadres were behind the masses. Yet if we take into account the difference between full members and alternate members by giving double weight to each full member, we see that cadres had more power than delegates from the masses.

[7] For the heated debates at the meeting, see ibid., 117–18.

[8] In the Tenth CC, some of the old cadres—Deng Xiaoping, Wang Jiaxiang, Wu Lanfu, Li Jingquan, Li Baohua, Liao Chengzhi, Yang Yong, Chen Chiwei, and Wang Zhen—entered the Tenth CC. But such Gang of Four followers (who were known to have "horns on the head, and scars on the body") as Wang Xiuzhen, Xu Jingxian, Ma Tienshui, Yu Huiping, Jin Zumin, Zhou Hongbao, Chu Chiayao, Dang Zhishan, Xia Fangen, and Xie Zhengyi were also added. Ibid.

Followers in the Tenth Central Committee

Since we know who among the Ninth CC members was purged with the Gang of Four, tables 21–26 attempt to delineate their power base among the three groups. In table 21 we see that under half of the Tenth CC members (41 percent) were removed from their seats when the Gang of Four fell. The scope of this purge indicates that the gang's influence was much more powerful than Lin Biao's: almost twice as many people were purged in Lin Biao's group as purged in the Gang of Four's. Of the 41 percent of the Tenth CC members who failed to make it into the Eleventh CC, 55 percent were mass representatives (54 percent of all the mass representatives at the Tenth CC), 26 percent were PLA representatives (37 percent of all the PLA representatives), and 19 percent

were cadres (17 percent of all the cadres). Needless to say, the Gang of Four controlled the majority of the mass representatives at the Tenth CC.

Table 22 shows a similar distribution of the Gang of Four's influence nationwide: their supporters were heavily drawn from the mass organizations; the 59 percent purge rate among the mass representatives is likely to be lower than the actual figure, because many of the mass leaders who had originally made it into the Eleventh Party Congress were later dropped. The radicals' influence among the PLA was surprisingly high; about 45 percent of PLA members in the sample were identified as having been purged with the Gang of Four. The radicals' weakest point was among party leaders: only 11 percent of them disappeared with the Gang of Four. Twenty-five percent of the government leaders were also purged with the Gang. The 71 percent purge rate of those who held multiple positions clearly indicates that the main power base of the Gang of Four was the former rebels whom they had promoted to leadership positions after Lin Biao's fall.

Table 23 examines the correlation between the number of promotions after 1971 and the probability of being purged with the Gang of Four. Undoubtedly, their followers were those whom the radicals worked hard to place in leadership positions—the beneficiaries

of the gang's cadre line. By contrast, table 24 clearly demonstrates the unpopularity of the radicals among the senior cadres; only six members of the Eighth CC were identified as members of the Gang of Four group.

Table 25 shows that the Gang of Four's ties with any particular field army were very weak because none of the radical members had any particular field army ties—except for Xie Fuzhi. Most of the military leaders who were purged with the Gang of Four were junior officers whom the gang patronized, promoting them to leadership positions on the basis of their "revolutionary spirit." This point is made particularly clear in table 26, which shows that 38 percent of the fourth to eight generation of military leaders were purged with the Gang of Four, although they constituted only 14 percent of all military leaders who reached a high enough level to be included in the sample.

In short, the Jiang Qing group did well at the Tenth Party Congress, partly thanks to Mao's support and Zhou Enlai's willingness to compromise for the sake of unity. They succeeded in making Wang Hongwen vice chairman of the party, probably as a representative of the masses and the younger members. However, a closer look reveals the weakness of the Gang of Four's position. First, they could not command a majority in the Politburo: the radicals controlled five votes (including Kang Sheng), whereas the beneficiaries, headed by Hua, had eight, the survivors had seven, and the rehabilitated had only one. In terms of simple arithmetic, the Gang of Four obviously needed the cooperation of Hua Guofeng's group to carry any majority vote in the Politburo.

More seriously, the ideologues' power base at the provincial level was very tenuous. None of the mass representatives of the Tenth CC

carried the title of first or second secretary to a provincial party committee. Moreover, twenty-eight of the mass leaders at the Tenth CC did not even sit on the standing committee of their provincial party committees. Many of them were instead chairmen or vice chairmen of provincial trade unions, which controlled the newly organized militia. Despite the two years of mass mobilization that disrupted, the entire ruling structure, the CR radicals failed to find entry into party committees once they were reactivated. For this reason, radicals wanted to "open the party committees and make revolution," while "relying on the leftists, not on the party."^[9] In their inability to control the party committees, they frequently set up new party committees—"officials of movement," "underground fighting groups," or "artillery brigades"—to replace the existing leadership of the party organ.^[10] Unlike the Lin Biao group, which tried to seize power from within, the Gang of Four used mass mobilization to seize party committees' power from the outside. They publicly declared, "We must support the revolt of large numbers of the masses in factories against the factory leadership and certain leaders of the third ministry. [We] should seize the power that must be seized."^[11]

Cadre Policy

Ideology

The Gang of Four developed an elaborate ideology, which, while eloquently articulating some of Mao's basic concerns (e.g., the bureaucratization of the party), also directly served its political interests. A good example is Zhang Chunqiao's 1975 article, "On Exercising All-Around Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie," which addressed a central theoretical question: how can one explain the existence of class struggle in a society where the means of production are collectivized and in a Communist Party that theoretically represents the working class? Zhang's answer politicized the concept of "class," making explicit points already discernible in Mao's writing. According to Zhang, not just the distribution of the means

[9] Hong Qi , no. 5, 1979.

[10] Daily Report , 29 June 1977, E2.

[11] Dagong Bao (Hong Kong), 27 January 1977.

of ownership but also economic reward and political power can serve as the basis for forming a class. By arguing that the inequality stemming from differential wages as well as from differential power distribution can also be a basis for class formation, Zhang logically justified in Marxist terms the existence of class struggle in socialist China and in the Communist Party. Any party leader advocating a policy that aggravated the differential distribution of power and wealth could be considered a capitalist roader. In this regard Zhang's view resembles Djilas's devastating criticism of the Communist elite as the "new class," a view articulated by such ultraleftist organizations as the May 16 group and Sheng Wu Lien.^[12]

To the concept of a politicized "class," Zhang Chunqiao added the notion of a "new stage": each new stage of revolution even within a socialist country requires new leadership and new enemies. Whatever the validity of his argument may be, its political significance is clear: he provided a theoretical justification for attacking veteran party leaders and social groups that had benefited from the Chinese revolution—in the name of continuing the revolution.

In order to reach the point where some party leaders could be made into targets of a new revolution, Zhang proposed a distinction between ideology and organization, which the Leninists believed to be inseparable.

There are undeniably some comrades among us who have joined the Communist Party organizationally but not ideologically. In their world outlook they have not yet overstepped the bounds of small production and of the bourgeoisie. They approve of the dictatorship of the proletariat at a certain stage and within a certain sphere and are pleased with some victories of the proletariat because they gain from them. Once they have secured their spoils, they feel it is time to settle down and feather their cozy nests. As for exercising an all-around dictatorship over the bourgeoisie and as for going farther than the first step on the 10,000-mile [li ] march, sorry, let others do the job: here is my stop—I must get off the bus.^[13]

[12] Zhang Chunqiao, On Exercising All-Around Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1975); Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York; Praeger, 1957).

[13] Zhang, On Exercising All-Around Dictatorship , 18.

Once ideology and organization were separated, it became possible to argue that those who had led the CCP to the establishment of the People's Republic of China were plausible objects of this new revolution. Zhang allegedly declared, "The current targets of revolution are the democrats who used to eat bran in the old society, were wounded in the war resisting Japanese aggression, shouldered guns in the war of liberation, and crossed the river [the Yalu River] in the movement to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea."^[14] Those who joined the revolution after 1949 were not exempt. "The poor and middle peasants reaped the benefits of land reform. They do not demand a socialist revolution and do not have a revolutionary character any more, whereas the landlords and rich peasants who have been suppressed for almost twenty years are opposed to the capitalist roaders, and their rebel spirit is the strongest."^[15] To the CR radicals, the party's leaders had too much interest in retaining the status quo. "When the war ended, they made profits and rose to the positions of influence; because of their vested interest in the new status quo, they can no longer advance."^[16] In the realms of ideology and policy, "they practice revisionism; in dealing with foreign countries, they practice capitulationism."^[17] These people should be the major targets of the revolution, not "traitors or secret agents, and not types engaged in corruption and degeneration."^[18]

Zhang Chunqiao analyzed workers in a similar fashion. He divided them into four age groups. The first group consisted of "veteran workers" who had started work before the liberation, usually as foremen or technical workers receiving high wages. Their political consciousness, according to Zhang, was not sufficient because "their position has changed and their livelihood has changed." The second group worked initially as "apprentices" both before and after liberation. Although "they had good feelings toward the party and are now the 'backbone' of the factories, they

[14] Hong Qi , no. 8, 1977, 60.

[15] Renmin Ribao , 4 June 1977.

[16] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 37, 1977," Issues and Studies , 14(7) (July 1978):81–102.

[17] Renmin Ribao , 4 June 1977.

[18] Ibid.

are influenced too much by 'Soviet revisionism,' and therefore they are too much concerned with material incentives."^[19]

The third group of workers entered factories around 1958 as

contract and temporary workers who suffered under the revisionist line. They rose to the revolution in 1966. Their understanding of line struggle is high, and they have excellent morale and good feelings toward the CR. The problem is that their understanding of the party is rather poor, and their attitude to labor is not quite satisfactory. They don't know what they can and cannot do. Some people have selfish motives in fomenting rebellion. They always go backward after seizing power. In a certain sense they are the new lumpenproletariat. Zeng Guofan used this kind of person to suppress the Taiping Rebellion, and Chiang Kai-shek used to rely on them. These are part of the foundation of our party.

The fourth group covers "new worker," those who became workers after participating in the CR as Red Guards. "They are enthusiastic, simple, eager to learn, with quick reflexes and very few experiences of struggle; they are childish and need tempering."^[20]

Recruitment

While attacking the veteran cadres, the Jiang Qing group endeavored to promote "the new rising forces" (i.e., the CR rebels) who had proven to be "highly sensitive to the two-line struggle, strong in their class view, willing to defend Mao's revolutionary line, and courageous in their opposition to revisionism."^[21]

More specific criteria advocated by the CR radicals included "daring to struggle against the bourgeois reactionary line," "being willing to go against the tide," having a "clear standpoint," being "familiar with leadership" or "being supported by the masses," and "cherishing deep feelings." All these phrases refer to rebels willing to take on the existing leadership. A Yunnan rebel summarized Zhang Chunqiao's elaborate argument in the following way: "The major contradiction at the socialist stage is between capitalist roaders and rebels. 'Rebels' are advanced elements and the basic

[19] Beijing Informer , 16 June 1977.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Hong Qi , no. 2, 1977, 7–12.

force for the revolution; they are 'the essence of humankind.' . . . [One] should take rebel ideology as the guiding principle, and democracy should be given to only rebel factions."^[22]

Since the term "rebel" was too controversial and too vague to be an official criterion and since most of the rebels were young, the Gang of Four advocated the promotion of "young" people, insisting that "the group around twenty-five years old should have one-third of all leadership positions; those forty-five or older are not fit for such positions."^[23] Simple-minded rebels made slogans such as "the older, the more revisionist; the older, the more inclined to the right; the older, the more counterrevolutionary."^[24] At the radicals' insistence, the meaning of the three-in-one formula was altered so that it referred to the young, the middle-aged, and the old, not to the PLA, the revolutionary cadres, and the mass representatives. Having one-third of every leadership group consist of young people became an official policy.

The radicals were accused of having used "two surprise attacks." One recruited unqualified persons to the party, and the second promoted them to high office by skipping several grades—the practice that Deng Xiaoping satirically labeled "helicopter promotion." For example, a Shanghai rebel who had graduated only from middle school was sent to a northeastern province where he became deputy director of the provincial propaganda department. Another Shanghai rusticated youth was ordered into the party by the Gang of Four and was eventually elected to the Tenth CC.^[25] Some people who were not yet party members became party secretaries.^[26]

The radicals apparently used several illegal methods to promote their followers to positions of power. First, when the radicals controlled a unit's organizational department, they used it arbitrarily to replace lower-level leaders with their own followers. Second, they relied on their factional communications channels to scout for

[22] The simpler-minded radicals used "high grade and high wage" to determine who were the powerholders. Renmin Ribao , 4 June 1977.

[23] Among the leaders of the revolutionary committee of Linxian county in Henan about 40 percent were "young people." Renmin Ribao , 5 June 1974. Also for promotion of "young people," see Renmin Ribao , 19 October 1973; 25 October 1973.

[24] Renmin Ribao , 6 October 1977.

[25] Ibid., 26 April 1978.

[26] Hong Qi , no. 2, 1977, 7–12.

potential candidates. For the central government leadership, "they prepared a list of a dozen persons to be appointed to the posts of minister, vice minister, and department and bureau director under the ministries. Some Shanghai cadres were so appointed." Third, "when the former rebels were not allowed to join the party, they complained to Jiang Qing, who specifically instructed the party committees involved to admit them on the grounds that they had 'rebelled and have revolutionary enthusiasm. . . . If you are not willing to introduce them, I will do so. . . . You should rely on that kind of people.'"^[27]

Another widely used illegal method of effecting promotions was the study session. More than 65 percent of the graduates of the Anhui provincial study session attended by workers and peasants were appointed to leadership posts above the county (xian ) level. Similarly, the Anhui provincial party school was a key instrument for recruiting factional members and placing them in leadership positions. When a particular rebel was rejected by party branches at his workplace, the Gang of Four's followers often used their authority to take the case to another unit or to set up a new, temporary branch, which admitted the person. This way of joining the party was known as "entering the party after flying over the sea."^[28] Thus, the Gang of Four "violated party rules and regulations, randomly destroyed the party's cadre management principle, and disregarded materials in the dossier, frequently changing the conclusions that had been reached organizationally and adding forged materials." Through such means, a railway party committee recruited 106 persons in eight days. The CR rebels openly declared, "the party charter is only for consultation"; "rebelling is the only qualification for joining the party, and the best application to it."^[29]

Since most radicals, at least at the beginning of the CR, came from undesirable class backgrounds, the people they recruited were vulnerable to charges of being "political riffraff, reactionary, literary radicals, the scum of society, and dregs and monsters carrying a counterrevolutionary black banner." Since many of them had been politically backward before the CR and were imprisoned

[27] Renmin Ribao , 14 March 1977.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

by the military because of their challenge to the PLA in 1967, they were also condemned: "Those who stank in the past now smell fragrant because they are out of prison."^[30] Since they were activists in the CR, they were also accused: "Their 'heroes going against the trend' were criminals—corrupt thieves, speculators, degenerates, and violators of state laws. Their comrades included those who participated in beatings, lootings, and destruction—the hooligans who disrupted the social order." What the Gang of Four called those with the strongest revolutionary enthusiasm were those who sent secret intelligence to them, filed complaints with them, and wrote pledges of loyalty to them. What they called "new rising forces were those who did not go to work every day, who were unproductive, undisciplined parasites."^[31]

We have no way of knowing how many former rebels were made cadres and then promoted. However, the scattered official figures available seem to indicate that personnel changes in some basic units were sweeping. For instance, the seventh machine-building ministry changed almost 80 percent of the leadership in Beijing factories under its jurisdiction in 1976.^[32] At Wuhan Steel Mill, seven of eleven secretaries were ousted, and the remaining four ran away, reducing production by 45 percent in 1976.^[33] New cadres accounted for 39 percent of the Wushun municipality revolutionary committee.^[34] Radicals in one district allegedly appointed ninety-five new members to county-level standing committees. In Zhengding county 126 young cadres were promoted to deputy secretaries of twenty-five communes.^[35] In one county of Qinghai province, almost 380 cadres were subjected to struggle meetings, more than half of all commune-level cadres were purged, and 201 out of all 321 production-brigade-level cadres were replaced by rebels. Shunde county, in Guangdong province, reported that 25 percent of brigade party committee members were young cadres.^[36] More than two-thirds of all cadres in twenty-three brigades of a Jiangxu province commune were young people (the

[30] Ibid., 4 June 1977.

[31] Ibid., 17 May 1977; ibid., 4 June 1977.

[32] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 37, 1977," 139.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Renmin Ribao , 9 June 1973.

[35] Ibid., 10 July 1974.

[36] Ibid., 21 March 1973.

average age was thirty; they had proven themselves during the CR). Another source reported that new cadres amounted to 61 percent of 176 production team cadres.^[37]

During this period, many workers were promoted to cadre positions. At one factory in Henan county, twenty-five workers out of a total of 1,000 were promoted to cadre status.^[38] The Beijing Transformer Factory reported that 30 percent of its cadres and 70 percent of its leading cadres were newly promoted.^[39] The Fuzhou railway bureau reported that one-third of its leadership was composed of newly promoted young people.^[40] In brief, many basic-level units carried out official policy by staffing approximately one-third of their revolutionary committees with the young, but not all of the young people were adherents of the Gang of Four. Who was promoted depended largely on the old cadres' choices.

In 1969, when party rebuilding started, official policy was "to eliminate wastrels, renegades, spies, counterrevolutionaries, and stubborn capitalist roaders." A commune in Henan province reported that it had expelled 3.4 percent of its party members; 1.8 percent more were subjected to various disciplinary measures. Although we do not know what percentage of new recruits entered the party with the aid of the Gang of Four's network, the increase in party membership during the period was very rapid. One Chinese source claimed that "a substantial portion of the 6 million recruited in 1969–73 is suspected to have been composed of rebels."^[41] In the ten years of the CR, the total number of party members doubled to 32 million. This means that on the average, 1.6 million new members were recruited each year.

A majority of the new recruits were under the age of thirty.^[42] At the Gang of Four's insistence, women were actively recruited. Beijing reports that "the overwhelming majority of new recruits were under thirty-five years of age, and women constituted 25 percent of the total."^[43] As a result, the proportion of women among new

[37] Ibid., 14 September 1973.

[38] Ibid., 19 February 1974.

[39] Ibid., 22 October 1973.

[40] Ibid., 27 August 1973.

[41] Dangshi Yanjiu , no. 2, 1985, 57–64.

[42] Beijing Review , 1 July 1973; New China News Analysis (Shanghai), 30 June 1973; New China News Agency (Shenyang), 2 July 1976.

[43] "Comrade Wang Hongwen's Report at the Central Study Class," Issues and Studies 11(2) (February 1975):94–105.

party members increased from about 10 percent in 1966 to 27 percent in 1973.^[44] Another group that the regime actively recruited during this period were ethnic minorities.^[45] Youths who had been sent to rural areas provided a large pool of young people from which new members were recruited.^[46] Most new recruits had good class backgrounds. For instance, 45,000 of the 60,000 new members admitted by the Beijing party committee between 1966 and 1973 were "workers, former poor and lower-middle peasants or children of such families"; just under 3,000 were "revolutionary intellectuals working in the fields of culture, health, science and education."^[47]

Rehabilitation

The fall of Lin Biao, one of the main architects of the CR, put decision-makers in Beijing in a quandary: they had to rehabilitate Lin's victims, but they could not reverse official decisions made during the CR, decisions that usually originated from Lin Biao and were endorsed by Mao. It proved extremely difficult to distinguish Lin's decisions from those made by others during the CR. Many purged cadres demanded rehabilitation on the grounds that they had been his innocent victims.^[48] According to the Gang of Four's charge, Deng Xiaoping, with tears in his eyes, declared in one of his self-criticism sessions that he was "the arch enemy of Lin Biao" and consequently Lin had wanted to "put him in a death situation."^[49] Moreover, the Zhou Enlai and the Jiang Qing groups disagreed about who should be rehabilitated.

According to a Taiwanese source, Wang Dongxing, vice chairman of the CCP at this time, sent a list of ten types of cadres to be liberated and ten types not to be liberated to a specially convened work conference. He ended his instructions by remarking, "This is party 'policy.' If there are any errors, I request comrades to point

[44] Joan Mahoney, "Problems in China's Party Rebuilding," Current Scene 15(3) (March 1977); Robert Martin, Party Recruitment in China: Pattern and Prospect (New York: Columbia University, Occasional Papers of the East Asian Institute); Renmin Ribao , 27 June 1973.

[45] Renmin Ribao , 6 October 1973.

[46] NCNA (Beijing), January 21, 1975; Beijing Review , no. 22, May 31, 1974, 20.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Daily Report , 7 November 1978.

[49] Xuexi Yu Pipan , no. 5, 1976, 18–20.

them out. I personally assume responsibility."^[50] This blunt statment implies how sensitive the issue was.

Official policy granted rehabilitation to all cadres who had been purged because of their opposition to Lin Biao's line and to his rise within the party. All those who had been purged for errors in "supporting the left" during the CR were exonerated. As noted, many cadres had supported conservative mass organizations during the CR, and for that reason they were rejected by the radicals. Now all cadres who were active in the CR for either conservative or radical organizations became eligible for rehabilitation. Another category included those who were dismissed from office for their lack of "enough revolutionary drive," one of the criteria advanced by Lin Biao for evaluating cadres.^[51]

Official policy also declared that "renegades, enemy spies, and alien classes" should not be rehabilitated even if they had opposed Lin Biao in the past. It also made a distinction between decisions made with Mao's approval and decisions made by Lin Biao alone. Decisions not to be reversed included those made "in accordance with conclusions drawn by our organization after Lin Biao and Chen Boda had reported to the central authority for intructions and obtained approval." Another point reads:

During the great proletarian CR the central authority, acting on Mao's instruction or his approval, made certain resolutions pursuant to the comments submitted by the central departments and provinces. Except for some individual cases which were not properly handled because Lin and Chen had furnished wrong information or issued false orders and directives in Mao's name, which are now being further studied, the overwhelming majority of cases were correctly handled. This should be affirmed and no reversal of the verdict on any of these cases should be allowed.^[52]

Regardless of how these ambiguous and somewhat contradictory policy lines were actually applied to an individual cadre, many high-ranking cadres purged during the CR reappeared, not in a group, but one by one, after Lin Biao's fall. On 1 August 1972, the founding day of the army, such old cadres as Chen Yun, Wang

[50] Daily Report , 24 March 1975, E5.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

Zhen, and Zheng Daiyuan appeared. At every important occasion thereafter, Zhou Enlai brought some more old cadres forward. For instance, Chen Zaidao, the commander responsible for the open challenge to the central authorities by the Wuhan workers in 1967, made his first public reappearance on Army Day, in 1972.

The most surprising comeback was that of Deng Xiaoping, who made his first public appearance in March 1973 escorted by Wang Hairong, Mao's niece. According to a Chinese source, Deng wrote a letter to Mao exposing Lin Biao in August 1972. Commenting on the letter, Mao said,

He does not have historical problems. In the Soviet period he was rectified by leftist opportunist Wang Ming. . . . During the liberation war, he helped Liu Bocheng to make a great contribution [to the final victory]. Besides, after [the CCP] entered cities, he did some good things. For example, he led our delegation to Moscow, and he did not surrender to the pressure of the Soviet Union.^[53]

Later Deng Xiaoping acknowledged his indebtedness to Mao. "Before my second fall in the CR, Chairman Mao wanted to protect me, but did not succeed. The main reason was that Lin Biao and the Gang of Four hated me very much. Their hatred toward me was not as deep as toward Liu Shaoqi, but they did not want to be soft on me. They sent me to Jiangxi to labor. In 1973, Chairman Mao transferred me to Beijing."^[54] Deng acceded to the position of vice premier on 3 March 1973.

In addition, Mao personally rehabilitated many other high-level leaders. In November 1971, he exonerated those involved in the "February Adverse Current."^[55] On 6 January 1971 he personally attended the funeral of Chen Yi.^[56] Sensing that Mao was burying old grudges against some veteran cadres, Zhou Enlai had Renmin Ribao publish an editorial entitled "Punish for Future Use, and Cure the

[53] Mao acknowledged that Deng had made many contributions to the revolutionary struggle as early as 1972: "I have said it before and I want to say it once again." Zhongguo Gongchandang Lishi Jianyi (Jilin: Jilin Chubanshe, 1982), 2:2.

[54] Qixi Niandai , no. 10, 1980, 54.

[55] The term "February Adverse Current" refers to top leaders' opposition to Mao's radical policy of allowing Red Guards to seize power. Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huiyilu (Beijing: Jiefangjun Chubanshe, 1984), 3:859.

[56] Zhou Enlai instinctively realized the significance of Mao's attendance and told Chen Yi's relatives to transmit the news to other cadres. Zhang Tianyi, Zhonggong Dangshi (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 1985), 345.

Disease to Save the Patient," which boldly declared that "the old cadres steeled in long revolutionary struggles are the party's greatest treasure."^[57] After that, Zhou continued to liberate some cadres and intellectuals, while improving jail conditions and banning physical torture of disgraced cadres.

While the disgraced cadres reappeared one by one, the media renewed the discussion of cadre liberation at the lower level—a theme that had been absent from public news since 1969. This time public discussion went further than before in several ways. First, discussion now focused on the cadres' rich experience of political and functional work, a characteristic of cadres that would have been denounced as counterrevolutionary. By contrast, revolutionary zeal was no longer mentioned as a necessary trait of cadres. Numerous articles describe how experienced older cadres corrected wrong decisions (presumably initiated by inexperienced young cadres), thus avoiding waste.^[58] The phrase "bourgeois reactionary line" was dropped from official use, and the nature of the mistakes made during the CR—the central theme in 1969 discussions—was ignored. When the issue came up, it was only used to argue that cadres who had made mistakes once would be less likely to do so in the future.^[59]

Second, primary emphasis was now given to the "bold and proper use of cadres' work ability" rather than to simple liberation. Clearly the new campaign was aimed at reinstating most of the old cadres in their jobs or in equivalent positions. One provincial newspaper declared,

Those who have already been liberated and who are capable of normal work must quickly be given suitable work. For those who have not been properly assigned, the necessary adjustments must be made after proper investigation and study. Those who are incapacitated must be taken care of according to party policy and actual circumstances. As for those who have not been liberated, their cases must be handled without delay so that appropriate decisions can be reached.^[60]

[57] Renmin Ribao , 24 April 1972.

[58] Survey of China Minland Press (supplement), no. 302, 8 June 1972, 9–11.

[59] Daily Report , 25 April 1972, B2.

[60] Ibid., 3 March 1972, D3; 22 March 1972, E2.

Numerous sources reported that more than 90 percent of all old cadres had regained their positions of leadership in either party committees or revolutionary committees.^[61] For the sake of properly utilizing the cadres' manpower, transferring across functional lines was officially prohibited.^[62]

Third, the work of liberation was carried out by party committees, which by this time had regained their dominant position over other mass organizations including revolutionary committees. Lower-level party committees played a leading role; they set up special sections to handle cadre liberation, organized numerous work conferences to educate cadres on the "party's cadre policy," and on many occasions sent out special investigation teams to check that old cadres were appropriately employed at the basic level.^[63] They arranged for work for those who were unemployed and made readjustments for those who had not been assigned to jobs suitable to their experience.^[64] The official slogan at the time was, "if there is even one cadre who has not been treated in accordance with party policy, the party's cadre policy cannot be considered to have been thoroughly implemented."^[65] Some party committees even organized mobile reportage teams to publicize the good results of carrying out party cadre policy. Discussions of cadre liberation seldom mentioned mass participation.

It seems that virtually all cadres at and below the county level and in basic production units had been liberated by the end of 1972. Some county committees had arranged suitable work for the "few cadres who made serious mistakes and who are not fit to carry out leadership work any more in accordance with party policy." Even the treatment of those with historical problems was changed. Special investigation teams were organized to clear up their problems as speedily as possible, and those whose cases were not yet settled were given temporary assignments.^[66] Only "old and physically feeble cadres" failed to regain employment, and they were treated as retired cadres, not as purged ones. Due respect was given

[61] Ibid., 30 May 1972, C1.

[62] Ibid., 18 January 1973, D9.

[63] Ibid., 28 April 1972, C2; 3 May 1972; 30 November 1972.

[64] Ibid., 3 April 1972.

[65] Ibid., 4 April 1972, C5.

[66] Ibid., February 1972, D4.

to retired cadres. To make use of their experience, old cadres were allowed to take part in party committee meetings dealing with their specialties.^[67]

Political Strategy

Having come to power by purging party leaders during the mass mobilization stage and feeling insecure about their political future, the Gang of Four used whatever formal authority they had to strengthen their power position by recruiting and promoting former rebels to leadership positions within the bureaucracy. After consolidating their own domination in one organization or area, they tried to "colonize" others, often using the news media to interfere with the operation of other organizations—in violation of the jurisdiction and command structure of each field. At the same time they vigorously defended their own exclusive jurisdiction over the propaganda machine.^[68] When it was difficult to penetrate an institution, as was the case with the military, the Gang of Four tried to set up a parallel organization. Their establishment of a militia not under the control of regional PLA commanders, although obviously justified by Mao's military concept of a people's war, was basically intended to develop the Gang's own coercive forces. Having been able to control such mass organizations as labor unions, it endeavored to enhance the political influence of these organizations vis-à-vis the party committee.

In their efforts to consolidate their power positions and to obtain new positions of dominance, the Gang of Four used three different but related methods. First, they tried to promote their followers to key leadership positions of the bureacracy through renewed mass mobilization. When their method failed, they openly demanded their share of power in the government organization. In the last days they combined pressure from the top and bottom by enlisting Mao's support and mobilizing the social forces that benefited from the CR in order to get rid of Deng Xiaoping, a representative of the rehabilitated cadres.

[67] Ibid., 12 January 1973, C28–29, C31, F1.

[68] For instance, in September 1975, the State Council tried to publish a new journal called Ideological Frontline , and Mao approved the project. But because of opposition from the Gang of Four, no issues were published. Hong Qi , no. 8, 1978.

Renewed Mass Mobilization: The Campaign Against Confucius and Lin Biao

Wholesale rehabilitation renewed conflicts between former rebels and their former victims, now rehabilitated. Since the number of leadership positions had probably diminished because of administrative streamlining, old and new cadres now had to compete for the limited number of positions, the former basing their claims on their work ability and experience, the latter stressing their revolutionary zeal. Once reinstated, the old cadres reiterated their previous view that "there is no good man among the rebels." Moreover, they were inclined toward revenge. "To get even with those who struggled against us should be considered a lenient measure. What is wrong with venting one's spleen?"^[69] To them, the CR was "a dark night of ravaging floods and savage beasts," which had been absolutely unnecessary. What China needed after the Lin Biao incident was to "sweep the temple, invite the real gods, return old marshals to their posts, and send little soldiers back to their barracks." To the radicals, the old cadres were simply waiting for an appropriate moment to repudiate them.^[70]

Related to the question of rehabilitating old cadres and the promotion of CR rebels was how Lin Biao's policy should be defined and who should be criticized as his followers.^[71] Zhou Enlai and the old cadres regarded Lin as an ultraleftist who exploited the CR for political gain. Zhou's characterization made the Gang of Four and their followers vulnerable to the same charge, while justifying the rehabilitation of the victims of ultraleftist errors.^[72] The Gang of Four viewed Lin as an advocate of ultrarightism. Thus, criticism of Lin's mistakes could justify the campaign against the military, which had ruthlessly suppressed the Red Guards in 1968, and

[69] "Comrade Wang Hongwen's Report at the Central Study Class," 94–105.

[70] Wang Hongwen insisted that when the old cadres "were liberated and put back in power, they sought every opportunity to liquidate the masses." Ibid.

[71] The conflict between the old cadres and the CR rebels was particularly serious in Zhejiang, where Tan Qilong, a veteran cadre who was made first party secretary, replaced the CR radicals with rehabilitated cadres under the excuse of "carrying out leadership readjustment." Renmin Ribao , 20 March 1978. For Wang Hongwen's support of the Zhejiang rebels, see Beijing Review , 4 February 1977, 10.

[72] "Comrade Wang Hongwen's Report at the Central Study Class," 101.

other kinds of rightist tendencies, while not raising the issue of the excesses of the mass movement or the purges it engendered.^[73]

Endorsing the Gang of Four's view, Mao approved the campaign to criticize Confucius and Lin Biao, which enabled the Gang to kill two birds with one stone. By equating Lin with Confucius, who endeavored to "revive states that were extinguished, restore families whose lines of succession were broken, call back to office those who had retired into obscurity,"^[74] the Gang of Four was able to challenge Zhou Enlai, who was guilty of similar offenses. At the same time they put pressure on the military leaders who had suppressed the revolutionary movement in the preceding state, but who now looked upon Zhou as a counterbalance against the radicals.

Once the campaign started, the Gang of Four pushed for mass mobilization, focusing its attack on "going through the back door," which ultimately aimed at the nepotism of veteran party and military leaders. They had particularly harsh words for local military leaders now resisting the renewed mass campaign.^[75] "What is the use of building an army, if it departs from the class line, the line struggle, and the ideological revolution?"^[76] Wang Hongwen was more blunt:

Soldiers are told to obey orders unconditionally and absolutely. We must know that they are required to obey your orders conditionally, not unconditionally. They should obey whatever conforms to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong's thought and rebel against whatever does not. All members of the Communist Party execute the instructions of the higher level on the basis of self-consciousness. We should judge the correctness of an order in terms of its line. We only execute correctly following the correct line. They will not be implemented if they are not correct.^[77]

Apparently surprised at the radicals' reckless effort, Mao banned any discussion of "entering through the back door," but he en-

[73] For changes in labeling Lin's mistakes from ultrarightist to ultraleftist in the official criticism, see William A. Joseph, The Critique of Ultra-Leftism in China, 1958–1981 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).

[74] Hong Qi , no. 2, 1978, 2.

[75] "Comrade Wang Hongwen's Report at the Central Study Class," 102.

[76] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue Cankao Ziliao: Wenhua Dageming Shiqi (Beijing: Zhonggua Renmin Zhengzhi Xueyuan, 1983), vol. 4, no. 4, 278.

[77] "Comrade Wang Hongwen's Report at the Central Study Class," 99.

couraged the campaign. As the movement spread across the nation, there was no shortage of grievances. All the CR conflicts, plus the new grievances that the mass movement had raised and that had then been ruthlessly suppressed by the military, surfaced again. In addition, many decisions made by the military came under attack.

To make matters more complicated, the radicals' intention to use the campaign to "cultivate new cadres" further intensified the conflict between the rehabilitated and the newly appointed cadres.^[78] After Wang Hongwen, the newly elected vice chairman of the CCP, called for training a million revolutionary successors and promoting them to posts of leadership at all levels, public discussion of cadre rehabilitation stopped. The news media began instead one-sidedly to stress the revolutionary qualities of young cadres and their contributions during the CR, while criticizing the old cadres' attitude toward the newly promoted young ones.^[79] "If we fail to see this fundamental fact [that the young cadres possess revolutionary zeal] and talk of nothing but qualifications, we will not be able to select a large number of outstanding young people for leading posts."^[80] Meanwhile, the radical leaders told their followers what was at stake. "Some powerholders are trying to reverse the achievements of the CR by reinstating all pre-CR leadership, irrespective of their political history or their attitude toward the CR. They made a serious error in personnel management."^[81]

By this time, public discussion had made it clear that cultivating new cadres meant placing them in powerful positions, not making them decorative aides to old cadres.^[82] Resistance to the promotion of young cadres ("young men are unstable, [and] men without mustaches are immature") came under increasingly severe criticism.^[83] For instance, Guangming Ribao bluntly declared: "Maturity in handling things should be judged on the basis of one's class, one's consciousness of line struggle, and one's general orientation, not on the basis of one's age."^[84] A thesis reminiscent

[78] Daily Report , 19 July 1972, B1–4.

[79] Ibid., 10 October 1973, D1; 16 November 1973, B1.

[80] Ibid., 22 March 1973.

[81] Guangming Ribao , 15 July 1977.

[82] Daily Report , 15 October 1973, F1.

[83] Ibid., 2 May 1973.

[84] Ibid.

of CR rhetoric, that of the two-line struggle, was reintroduced to bolster the radicals' position. One provincial radio broadcast declared, "which line [old] cadres should follow and what stand they should take concerning the training and promotion of new cadres are questions at the heart of the struggle between the two classes, the two lines, and the two ideologies."^[85] Criticisms became increasingly harsh. "Many leading cadres failed to uphold the basic line, [and] they imposed a bourgeois dictatorship on the masses."^[86]

Some party committees, largely dominated by the military and old cadres, took evasive measures by simply creating new positions for the younger cadres, thus swelling their ranks in spite of the official policy of administrative simplification.^[87] Others put up a strong fight.

Consequently, workers' unrest, strikes, and armed clashes between rival youth groups spread. Beijing was swamped by petitioners. The leading cadres resorted to a familiar method: some of them simply left their posts as they did at the initial stages of the CR. The economy suffered.

Determined to dislodge the veteran cadres at any cost, the Gang of Four declared that "to disrupt the production of one factory is to put a knot around the neck of the faction in authority," and that "the loss belongs to the state, the responsibility belongs to the faction in authority, and the power belongs to us."^[88] Mao was not, however, in a position to sacrifice the economy for the sake of evolution.^[89] Nor could he agree to the Gang of Four's view that "rebelling against the leadership is going against the tide." He reportedly declared that "the CR has been going on for eight years. It is time to settle down. The entire party and the army should unite."^[90] With Mao's change of mind, the campaign came to an end.

[85] Ibid., 11 June 1973, C1.

[86] Ibid., 21 June 1976, T4. Guangming Ribao , 16 March 1977; 9 May 1977.

[87] Daily Report , 14 March 1974, D5.

[88] Hong Qi , no. 12, 1976, 48; Dagong Bao (Hong Kong), 27 January 1977, 13 December 1976.

[89] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 21, 1974."

[90] Zhonggong Dangshi Jiaoxue , no. 4, 1983, 369.

"Forming a Cabinet": Pressure from Above

Having failed to strengthen their power base at the basic level through mass mobilization, the radicals tried to gain a large share of government positions by using the politics of confrontation at the top level. When preparation for the forthcoming National People's Congress was undertaken, Jiang Qing first pressured Zhou Enlai to hand over some government power—probably including the post of chief of staff of the PLA—to the radicals, but she failed to obtain his concession. The radicals then took their case to Mao in the city of Changsha. Wang Hongwen complained to Mao that Deng, unhappy with the CR, did not support the "newborn things" and that Zhou Enlai, although seriously ill, was always busy meeting with the other old leaders. Mao allegedly advised Wang to see Zhou Enlai often and not to form a faction with Jiang Qing. "You should be careful about her."^[91]

While rejecting the radicals' bid to "form a cabinet," Mao suggested making Deng Xiaoping first vice premier, vice chairman of the party, and chief of staff of the PLA. Authorized by Mao, Zhou made the final decisions about personnel after "repeated consultation with other veteran cadres" in the hospital. He gave the ministry of culture and the ministry of physical education to the radicals, but refused the Gang of Four's demands for the ministry of education.^[92] The radicals came away with very few government positions. Although Zhang Chunqiao became vice premier, second to Deng Xiaoping, only four of the twelve vice premiers could be regarded as close associates of the Jiang Qing group.

According to a Taiwanese source, the true picture was different. Mao initially supported the Gang of Four's effort to form a cabinet and obtained Zhou's agreement in selecting cabinet members. But the old cadres in the Politburo strongly opposed the idea. Zhu De allegedly said, "If Premier Zhou does not assume premiership, the position should be rotated and should come to me."^[93] After work-

[91] Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Yanjiusuo, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Zuigao Renmin Fayuan Tebie Fating Shenpan Lin Biao, Jiang Qing Fingering Jituan Zhufan Jishi (Beijing: Falu Chubanshe, 1982), 92.

[92] Renmin Ribao , 17 January 1986.

[93] Zhonggong Yanjiu 11 (23) (March 1977).

ing out their differences in secret meetings, these Politburo members collectively confronted Zhou Enlai with the threat of splitting the party center. Mao had to retreat.

Once placed in charge of the government, Deng Xiaoping proceeded to straighten out the mess created by the CR. He prepared three documents dealing respectively with industry, science and technology, and the academy of sciences. These documents not only repudiated many policies adopted after the CR but also explicitly blamed the Gang of Four for the economic dislocation. For instance, declaring that in many units power was held by "unreformed petty intellectuals, brave elements, and bad people," one version of the "Twenty Articles on Accelerating Economic Development" demanded rectification of the basic leadership. Undoubtedly the group to be rectified were the young cadres who had been promoted by the Jiang Qing group.^[94] To the radicals, those whom Deng wanted to rectify were "the revolutionary intellectuals" and "those people carrying out Chairman Mao's revolutionary line."^[95]

Given the explicitness of the language used in the party program, whatever hopes Mao and Zhou Enlai might have entertained of uniting the rehabilitated cadres and the Jiang Qing group were completely shattered. Now the liberated cadres and the Jiang Qing group found themselves in a situation where one group had to go. In Chinese parlance, the three documents that the liberated cadres prepared were either fragrant flowers or poisonous ones; they could not be both.

The Campaign Against "Rightist Reversal Trends"

The frontal clash between the Gang of Four and the old cadres took place over the issue of educational policy. When Liu Bing, president of Qinghua University, complained that the CR educational policy lowered the quality of higher education, the Gang of Four mobilized the worker-peasant-soldier (gong nong bing ) students, who obviously owed their place in higher educational institutions to the CR's radical admissions policy. The educational debate even-

[94] Issues and Studies , 13(7) (July 1977):90–114.

[95] Hong Qi , no. 10, 1977, 77.

tually developed into a public campaign against "the rightist wind to reverse the correct verdicts," which, among other things, specifically condemned Deng's three documents as the concrete manifestation of the reversal effort. By December 1975, the campaign was widely reported in the official media, and by 1976, although his name was not yet explicitly mentioned, Deng Xiaoping came under attack as the leader of the "rightist reversal wind."^[96]

The death of Zhou Enlai on 8 January 1976 changed the distribution of power in the Politburo. Since Dong Biwu and Kang Sheng were dead, Zhu De and Liu Bocheng mortally ill, and Deng Xiaoping in deep political trouble, the veteran cadres' political power in the Politburo substantially diminished, whereas the beneficiaries of the CR (headed by Hua Guofeng and including Wang Dongxing, Wu De, and Chen Yonggui) emerged as the crucial bloc in the conflict between the Gang of Four and the older leaders. Mao chose Hua Guofeng over Zhang Chunqiao as acting premier, and his appointment was announced on 3 February.^[97]

Understandably, the Gang of Four was unhappy with Hua's appointment, for to them he was not only behind Zhang Chunqiao in seniority, but he was also incompetent, too close to the old veteran cadres, including the late Zhou Enlai, and deeply involved in preparing one of Deng's three documents, "On the Question of Science and Technological Work."^[98] The Gang of Four used the mass media they controlled to surreptitiously criticize Hua.

Although Deng's disgrace helped Hua become acting premier, Hua displayed an ambivalent attitude toward the anti-Deng campaign. He must have known about the Gang's frequent engagement in factional activities and their unpopularity in contrast to Deng's high prestige among old cadres. Mao advised him "not to be anxious and to take your time." Hua criticized Deng in such a manner so as not to upset normal bureaucratic operations: he advised provincial leaders to continue the anti-Deng campaign but cautioned that Deng's problem was "contradiction among the peo-

[96] Harry Harding, "China After Mao," Problems of Communism , 26 (March–April 1977):1–18.

[97] It is reported that Mao asked Ye Jianying to persuade Deng to submit another self-criticism and that Deng refused. Zhou Xun, ed., Deng Xiaoping (Hong Kong: Guangjiaojing Pub., 1979).

[98] Hong Qi , no. 10, 1977, 72–80.

ple" and that neither Deng nor those who had supported his 1975 modernization plans should be purged.^[99]

The Gang of Four, in contrast, took a strong anti-Deng line, frequently making unauthorized appearances and speeches to reinforce their position. Consequently, the campaign against Deng intensified in 1976, and posters publicly denouncing him appeared in Beijing by the end of February. In early March the Gang of Four used the name of Chi Heng to publish an article entitled "From Democrats to Capitalist Roaders," in Hong Qi magazine, defining the main target of the campaign as "a handful of capitalist roaders within the party who have refused to repent." The article explained, following Zhang Chunqiao's theory, how a large portion of party veterans had become "bourgeois democrats and capitalist roaders." Renmin Ribao also published Mao's undated statement, "You are making a socialist revolution, and yet you do not know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right in the Communist Party—those in power taking the capitalist road. The capitalist roaders are still on the capitalist road." Around this time Mao reportedly called Deng a bourgeois democrat who had never been a Marxist. "He said he would never reverse the verdicts," Mao observed. "His words cannot be trusted."^[100]

The Tiananmen Square incident of April 1976 was the turning point in the Gang of Four's attack. When the spontaneous commemoration of Zhou by a large crowd gathered in the square turned into an open protest against the radicals, the Gang of Four persuaded Mao that Deng was responsible. The center made two decisions on 7 April 1976: to remove Deng from all his offices and to appoint Hua as premier and first vice chairman of the CC. Although stripped of all official power, Deng continued to enjoy the veteran cadres' support.^[101]

After the Tiananmen incident, the Gang of Four expanded the scope of the original campaign with a view to replacing old cadres with young rebels. Deng Xiaoping was publicly condemned for having opposed the promotion of young cadres "because their

[99] Lowell Dittmer, China's Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949–1981 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

[100] Xuexi Yu Pipan , October 1976.

[101] For Deng's activities during this crucial period, see South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 25 February 1977, 1.

positions are high, their experience is nil, and they do not know what to do."^[102] Deng's view that promotion should be made one grade at a time was criticized as a sinister attempt to "suppress the new cadres who emerged during the CR." Declaring that "a nation-wide network of the capitalist roaders had been formed," the radicals advocated the policy of dragging out "Deng's representatives in provinces" "layer by layer," and carrying out "large-scale surgery on the leadership."^[103] The rehabilitated cadres were obviously their major target. Jiang Qing demanded a public apology for the rebel groups from the old cadres. Zhang Chunqiao joined her: "Every official has made mistakes and every mistake will be opposed. As a result, there is now no single county party committee member who can be trusted, no single prefectural party committee member who can be trusted; among the provincial party committee members and those of the center, no one can be trusted except Chairman Mao."^[104]

During the height of the campaign against rightism, the radicals put pressure on provincial party leaders to promote former rebels to leading positions. Jiang Qing went to Tianjin and demanded that the municipal party committee adopt a quota system for young cadres. According to one source, Jie Xuemao, the first secretary, refused to carry out her wish. Yet Tianjin municipal radio reported that the municipal party committee actually made it a policy not to approve wholesale personnel appointments at lower levels unless they included the required percentage of young cadres.^[105] The Inner Mongolia party committee decided that every provincial, municipal, district, and county party committee would promote two or three young people to positions of leadership by the end of 1976. Some organs without enough qualified young people dispatched teams to look for them.^[106]

In some areas, many young cadres holding positions as deputies were promoted to positions as heads, while erstwhile heads became mere deputies and were forced to retire.^[107] In units where

[102] Hong Qi , no. 6, 1976, 30.

[103] Ibid., no. 2, 1977, 11; Renmin Ribao , 19 February 1975.

[104] China News Analysis , November 1976, 581.

[105] Renmin Ribao , 19 February 1975.

[106] Shijian (Inner Mongolia), January 1978, 28–37.

[107] Daily Report , 15 October 1973, F1.

young people were not promoted, rebels holding positions of deputy chiefs openly challenged their superiors, accusing them of obstructing the movement.^[108] Followers of the Gang of Four in Baoding district illegally fired three district party secretaries and appointed ninety-five young cadres above the county level.^[109]

When Mao died in September 1976, three situational groups shared the power of the Politburo: the radicals with four seats, the beneficiaries of the CR with seven seats, and the survivors of the CR with five seats. Despite the obvious fact that Hua Guofeng's beneficiaries constituted almost a majority, standing between the radicals and the survivors, the Gang of Four failed to form a coalition with them. Instead, they pushed them to collaborate with the old cadres.

[108] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 37, 1977 (Part III)," Issues and Studies , 14(9) (September 1978): 78–100.

[109] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 37, 1977," 142.

7
The Beneficiaries and the Victims

After arresting the Gang of Four, the coalition of CR beneficiaries and surviving veteran revolutionaries faced several urgent issues. The first was how to justify its extraordinary move against Madame Mao's radical group while at the same time establishing the authority of Hua Guofeng. Then it had to deal with how to characterize and criticize the Gang of Four's political errors and determine how best to investigate and purge it, without undermining the legitimacy of Mao and the CR. Finally, the coalition had to address the subject of the ongoing anti-Deng campaign, as well as the question of who should be rehabilitated as innocent victims of the Gang of Four. All these interrelated questions were given more concrete form in the issue of Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation, the issue which had profound policy and power implications for Hua.^[1]

From the very beginning, Hua Guofeng had few options in resolving these issues. As a beneficiary of the CR, Hua could not negate the CR or Mao. But he had to repudiate the Gang of Four and demonstrate that his ideology and policies differed from theirs. Since Hua benefited from Deng's purge, initiated by the Gang of Four, bringing him back posed a serious threat to his own political survival. In contrast, the survivors, his coalition partners, could move in either direction on all issues except Mao's legitimacy.

Given this dilemma, the possibility was slim that Hua and his followers could initiate a new ideology and policy by critically reevaluating the political decisions made during the CR. The only available strategy was to uphold Mao's legitimacy while narrowly limiting the scope of criticism, purge, and rehabilitation. In fact, Hua

[1] For Hua's position on these issues, see "Speech on the Second National Conference on Learning from Tachai in Agriculture," Beijing Review , 1 January 1977, 31–43; 31 March 1978; 16 June 1978.

upheld Mao's view that a bourgeoisie existed in the Communist Party, but he condemned the Gang of Four's attack on the old cadres on the grounds that, although some veterans had indeed been in error, the radicals' struggle against them was excessive. Hua declared an end to the CR, but he defended its achievements by specifically endorsing Mao's continuous revolution, while promising to revolutionize the government's superstructure.^[2]

The Issue of Rehabilitation

Hua approached the question of rehabilitation with caution. According to a Taiwanese source, a document from the central organizational department, dated October 1976, laid down guidelines for purging and rehabilitation. It specified that only "those who were rejected, attacked, removed from positions, or expelled from the party by the Gang of Four for their resistance to the [Gang of Four's] counterrevolutionary line" would be reinstated. At the same time, it refused to review cases involving "renegades, spies, Trotskyites, counterrevolutionaries, KMT elements, or degenerates," as well as all cases for which the organization had already arrived at a conclusion.^[3] Anyone demanding the reversal of such cases would be punished. In brief, rehabilitation was intended for only a small number of CR victims, and even the right to reopen cases was denied to the majority of victims.^[4]

The beneficiaries justified their policy in terms of defending "whatever Mao had said and decided." Otherwise, they argued, many past decisions would be challenged.

If we always look backward, we will always be settling accounts with bygone things. We will have to negate the "Cultural Revolution," and then everything from the "Gang of Four" to the Socialist Education Movement in cities and villages, from the Lin Biao affair to the Lushan conference. If the Lushan conference is negated, we will have to negate the socialist transformation of industry and commerce, the antirightist struggle, the Great Leap Forward, and then the people's commune policy. If it were not for this tendency to look backward, there could be no such statement as, "There were mistakes

[2] Ibid., 1 January 1977.

[3] Zhongyang Ribao (Taiwan), 4 November 1976.

[4] Renmin Ribao , 28 August 1979.

in the general line, and it is difficult to make another Great Leap Forward, the people's communes are no longer acceptable, and the 'three Red Banners are at half-staff.' " Whether this view is advanced by the masses of the people or by people in the cultural realm, I can definitely say that it is a serious mistake to make this assertion. If we settle accounts with bygone things one after another and invalidate one stage after another, how can socialism exist?^[5]

The pressure to bring Deng back was, however, too strong for Hua.^[6] Deng enjoyed not only the sympathy and understanding of the surviving as well as the rehabilitated cadres, but also the genuine support of the Chinese masses. Provincial leaders and Politburo members allegedly petitioned the CCP for Deng's rehabilitation. Particularly outspoken were Chen Yun and Wang Zhen, who pleaded eloquently at the February central work conference for Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation "for the sake of the Chinese revolution and China's needs"; Chen and Wang also asked that the decision on the Tiananmen incident be revoked. Despite Hua's refusal to publish the speeches, they spread widely by word of mouth.^[7] Ordinary people also expressed their wishes by placing small bottles (xiaoping ) along major streets.^[8] Then Deng Xiaoping wrote two letters to Hua, one promising support and the other expressing willingness to work at the front line.^[9]

According to numerous sources, Deng's offer prompted a hot debate at meetings on the highest level. Most of the veteran leaders favored Deng's rehabilitation; Xu Shiyu was especially vehement. Like Hua, most beneficiaries of the CR initially objected to reinstating Deng on the grounds that Mao had approved his dismissal. Under pressure, Wang Dongxing finally agreed to bring Deng back, on the condition that Mao's decisions would not be reversed.^[10] Another Chinese source reported that Hua Guofeng

[5] "Zhang Pinghua's Speech to Cadres in the Cultural Field," Issues and Studies , 14(12) (December 1978), 91–119.

[6] For the anti-Deng campaign after the fall of the Gang of Four, see William A. Joseph, The Critique of Ultra-Leftism in China, 1958–1981 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984).

[7] Dangshi Tongxun , no. 2, 20 January 1983.

[8] Harry Harding, China's Second Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1987), 59.

[9] Ming Bao (Hong Kong), 9 July 1979.

[10] Feijing Yuebao 1 (23) (19 January 1979):65–68.

did not open his mouth during the debate, and when Chen Yonggui finally voted for Deng's rehabilitation, those in favor had only one vote more than those opposed.

Dens made his first public appearance at the third plenary session held on 16 July 1977. This meeting reconfirmed Hua's appointment to the chairmanship and reinstated Deng to all of his previous positions: member of the standing committee of the Politburo, vice chairman of the CCP, vice chairman of the Military Affairs Commission, and chief of staff of the PLA. At the meeting they also decided to expel the Gang of Four from the party.

Table 27 shows how in the newly elected Eleventh Central Committee, cadre representation increased from 33 percent in the Tenth CC to 42 percent, whereas mass representation decreased from 37 percent to a mere 29 percent, and the PLA's from 30 percent to 26 percent, thereby breaking the almost perfect balance among the three groups achieved in the Tenth CC. Among the sixty-three cadres who were added to the Eleventh CC, nineteen of them were former Eighth CC members, and the rest included many rehabilitated cadres, for example, Cai Suli (Henan party committee), Yu Mingtao (central-south party bureau), Wan Li (Beijing party committee), and Kang Xien (former petroleum minister). Moreover, even such controversial cadres as Xiao Wangdong, former deputy minister of culture, and Wu Lengxi, former editor in chief of Renmin Ribao , who had been especially attacked during the CR, now joined the Central Committee. Altogether more than a third of the sixty-three new members were rehabilitated cadres. The majority of the remainder at the time of the CR were middle-level cadres who had survived the mass purges and obtained positions on revolutionary committees. To a striking extent, then, the Eleventh CC was composed of rehabilitated cadres.

Table 28 examines the survival rate of those who entered the Eleventh CC for the first time and those who were left over from the Tenth CC. The difference between the two groups in terms of the percentage of those who failed to make it into the Twelfth CC is amazingly small (47 percent versus 45 percent). This may mean that Hua's preference was weakly reflected in the process of selecting cadres (except in the case of mass representatives), or else his preference did not differ very much from that of the rehabilitated. From table 28 we can also infer that Hua did not remove all of the Gang of Four's sympathizers from the committee. If so, Hua might have intentionally protected them as a potential coalition partner. Or perhaps he simply did not have enough time and organizational capability thoroughly to investigate their followers.

Table 29 shows that rehabilitation almost guaranteed survival; 97 percent (100) of the rehabilitated cadres of the Eleventh CC en-

tered either the Twelfth CC or the Advisory Commission, whereas only 3 percent (three) of them can still be considered as purged.

Despite the large influx of CR victims, the Eleventh Party Congress as a whole still upheld Mao's thought as a guiding principle, and reconfirmed class struggle and continuous revolution as the main tasks of the socialist revolution in the revised party constitution. In his report about political work, Hua again elaborated his view of continuous revolution, condemning the "powerholders taking the capitalist road," "bourgeois legal rights," and "the sole emphasis on productive forces," while only promising to uphold "proletarian dictatorship in the various fields." It was later reported that Deng objected to a certain part of Hua's speech when he was shown a draft, and many other veteran cadres criticized Hua's wholesale praise for the achievements of the CR. Hua, however, rejected all the criticism.^[11]

The Eleventh Party Congress apparently represented a moment of compromise between those who had suffered and those who had prospered during the CR. Even though many old cadres recovered their positions, Deng Xiaoping's group agreed to the rhetoric of the other side, which insisted on Mao's ideological legitimacy. But what the other side may not have foreseen was that these rehabilitated cadres, with their extensive experiences, were very skillful in political maneuvering. Moreover, increasing criticism of the Gang of Four and anyone involved with them inevitably called for a reevaluation of the soundness of Mao's thought.

Purging the Gang of Four Followers

Those whom the CR had favored and those who had been victims differed on the nature of the Gang of Four's mistakes and the number of their followers. Viewing the radicals as a conspiratorial group, the beneficiaries tried to limit the scope of the purges and rehabilitation and to uphold all of Mao's decisions, whereas the victims were determined to remove their luckier or more politically adroit confreres in order to reverse any of Mao's decisions that seemed wrong to them.

[11] Dangshi Tongxun , no. 2, 20 January 1983.

During Hua's leadership public criticism of the Jiang Qing group—which was carried out under tight control of the party organization, lest embarrassing questions for the beneficiaries were raised—underwent three different stages as Hua had originally envisioned: the first focused on the exposure of the Gang's "plot to usurp power," the second dealt with their "past criminal records," and the last condemned the "ultrarightist essence of their counterrevolutionary revisionist line."^[12]

The central leadership headed by Hua prepared official criticism materials, setting the tone for each stage of the campaign. Taking cues from official materials, various units published criticism of the radicals' concrete crimes in their units. Condemning the Gang of Four as "typical representatives of the bourgeois inside the party" who had "subverted the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to restore capitalism," the first batch of official materials focused largely on their characters and class backgrounds, which they had allegedly falsified to "sneak into positions of authority." The second batch stressed the radicals' efforts to usurp political power against Mao's will since the campaign to criticize Confucius and Lin Biao, while failing to touch upon the radicals' activities in the earlier stages of the CR.^[13]

The official view—that the radicals were an "ultrarightist conspiratorial" group that had betrayed Mao's instructions in an attempt to seize power—turned the thrust of the campaign to those who "endeavored to restore capitalism," while failing to correct "leftist errors" in the official line.^[14] Arguing that investigating the Gang of Four would create an atmosphere favorable to capitalist trends, the beneficiaries initiated the "double-blow movement" to investigate the Gang's followers and to check the "destructive activities of the class enemy," who undermined the collective economy at the basic level.^[15]

As to the question of who should be regarded as the Gang of Four's followers, the beneficiaries insisted that "only a few [had] participated in the Gang's conspiracy." In particular, the central

[12] Zhonggong Yanjiu 12(19) (15 September 1978):99–108.

[13] "Document of the Central Committee (Zhongfa ), No. 37, 1977," Issues and Studies , 14(7), July 1978, 81–102.

[14] Renmin Ribao , 7 April 1977.

[15] Beijing Review , 1 January 1977; 10 March 1978.

organizational department specified in October 1976 who should be purged. First, only close associates of the Gang of Four were vulnerable, whereas those who "involuntarily cooperated with the Gang" were to be forgiven. Second, close associates were safe if they recanted. Third, people who had merely done or said something wrong were not be included in any punitive measures. Hua Guofeng reiterated a similar line in all his public speeches, stressing that most of the cadres who had done or said something wrong deserved education, not punishment.^[16] He divided even the "backbone elements" into those who recanted by exposing the crimes of the Gang of Four and the "stubborn elements."^[17] Thus, even the radicals who had genuinely sympathized with the Gang could defend themselves by insisting that their relationship was merely organizational and that "my problem was that of carrying out orders, and [the mistakes] cannot be charged to my account."^[18] As for who should replace the Gang's associates, Hua reiterated Mao's five requirements for a revolutionary successor and the three-in-one formula of young, middle-aged, and old cadres.^[19]

Hua Guofeng was very slow in changing the provincial leadership, either because of his limited organizational capabilities or because of his desire to protect Gang of Four sympathizers. For instance, before Deng's formal comeback in July only seven provincial first party secretaries had been replaced, while many leaders suspected of having had close connections with the Gang were allowed to stay in power.^[20] Guo Yufeng, who later turned out be a Gang of Four associate, stayed on as director of the organizational department, formally heading the campaign against the radicals until the end of 1977.

Furthermore, rank-and-file cadres were not eager aggressively to pursus the Gang's followers. At that time they were confused and totally demoralized by the constant changes in official policy. Many of them had learned that making too many enemies was not

[16] Renmin Ribao , 13 April 1977.

[17] Zhonggong Yanjiu 12(19) (15 September 1978):99–108.

[18] Renmin Ribao , 16 April 1978; 12 June 1978.

[19] Ibid., 20 March 1978.

[20] Some of the provincial leaders Hua appointed turned out to have close relationships with the Gang of Four. For instance, Liu Guangtao was made first secretary of Heilongjiang province in January 1977, only to be removed by the end of the year.

good for their careers. Moreover, the leadership of each unit was still so splintered that carrying out an objective and fair investigation was impossible.^[21]

Despite the proliferating articles denouncing the Gang of Four, the campaign to "expose and criticize" did not have much impact in 1977. According to his opponents, Hua's campaign "investigated only small matters, but not big matters; investigated only the lower level, not the upper level; investigated only outside matters, not inside matters; investigated only matters tangentially related, not immediate matters."^[22] As a result, only a few very well-known radicals were investigated and dismissed.^[23]

As more victims of the CR were reinstated to politically influential positions, the campaign against the radicals was bound to expose Hua's tactics of "tacit discontinuity and overt defense" of the CR and Mao Zedong's thought.^[24] When the public campaign expanded to touch upon the Gang's specific policies—particularly "production relations" versus productive forces and the role of profit and material incentives in economic management—it became obvious that the Gang's policy was ultraleft rather than ultraright.^[25] This compelled the beneficiaries to change the official label to "ultraleft in appearance, but ultraright in essence."^[26]

Nonetheless, the victims of the CR were not willing to accept the validity of this new label. For instance, Renmin Ribao questioned whether the Gang of Four carried out a "proletarian dictatorship or fascist dictatorship?"^[27] Once the Gang's dictatorship was labeled fascist and its ties with Lin Biao openly discussed, it was a matter of time before the radicals were condemned as ultraleftists.^[28] The change in terminology brought about an upsurge of articles de-

[21] Renmin Ribao , 22 June 1978.

[22] Ibid., 13 January 1978.

[23] For instance, the Gang of Four's followers in Shanghai—Ma Tianxiu and Xu Jingxian—and at Beijing University—Wang Lianglong, Li Jiaokun, and Guo Conglin—were arrested and investigated.

[24] Lowell Dittmer, China's Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949–1981 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

[25] For instance, see "The Gang of Four's Attack on 'Sole Productive Forces' Is an Attack on Historical Dialectics," Renmin Ribao , 11 January 1978.

[26] Ibid., 6 February 1977; October 14, 1977; 7 March 1978.

[27] Ibid., 11 June 1977.

[28] Joseph, Critique of Ultra-Leftism , 184, 168; Renmin Ribao , 23 March 1978; 3 April 1978.

manding the correction of ultraleftism and, by implication, the Maoist line on beneficiaries. A Renmin Ribao article argued that if the Gang of Four's mistakes were not correctly identified as ultraleftist, there would be no way to correct them. As evidence, the article explained how Wang Ming's error in calling Li Lisan's policy ultraright justified the ultraleftist mistakes that Wang continued to make. Other articles made it plainer that without a thorough criticism of the Gang of Four's ultraleftism, the old cadres could not be rehabilitated.^[29]

Public criticism eventually expanded to raise the question of those who had benefited from the CR by managing to muddle through the mass movements ("remaining faction"), by adjusting themselves to whatever was the prevailing trend ("wind faction"), and by shaking up the political structure ("earthquake faction").^[30] The translations of these picturesque Chinese terms point to the questionable relationship of the beneficiaries with the Gang of Four at the early stage of the CR.

From the beginning, Deng Xiaoping advocated the removal of broader categories of radicals. In his speech to the municipal party secretaries on 27 December 1977, he established three criteria for determining who should be purged.^[31] First, all those who collected materials against Zhou Enlai and Zhu De during the CR, "irrespective of intentions, positions, abilities, and political performance," should be investigated and removed from office. This applied also to the masses, who had acted without ulterior political motives. Second, all those who had developed close relationships with Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, had acted on their instructions, and had cultivated them before and during the CR were to be dismissed from positions of leadership regardless of seniority and whether or not their actions caused any bad effects. Those who did not incur the people's resentment should not be punished, but instead of staying in leadership positions, such cadres should be forced "to earn their bread through laboring." Third, all cadres who had persecuted old cadres and collected "black materials"

[29] Renmin Ribao , 3 March 1979.

[30] Ibid., 10 January 1978.

[31] Feijing Yuebao , 21(7), January 1989, 25–30.

should be dismissed even if they had done so in the name of Mao Zedong's thought.^[32]

Scrutiny of the Gang of Four's followers stepped up when Hu Yaobang assumed responsibility for the central organizational department in December 1977. He acted decisively, changing the leadership of organizational departments at lower levels and appointing newly rehabilitated cadres to leadership positions at the provincial level. Local newspapers began to criticize several provincial leaders for their close ties with the Gang of Four and for their efforts to keep the lid on the campaign against the Gang.^[33] The newly reinstated cadres had many political reasons thoroughly to investigate the radicals who had attacked them. They adjusted the leading personnel on the lower levels and dispatched work teams to supervise the criticism. For instance, the new provincial party secretary of Shanxi province organized ten investigation teams with 100 cadres to check the results of the previous campaign to criticize the Gang of Four.^[34] The Jilin provincial party committee first rehabilitated five old cadres who "had suffered the most from the Gang of Four's persecution" and then placed them in charge of organizing the work teams to be sent out to the various units. Even lower-level units organized and sent out work teams to subordinate units.^[35] By mid-1978, the issue of how to handle cadres promoted in "the two surprise attacks" had surfaced.^[36] Although official policy was to decide cases individually, it seems very likely that almost all of those who had benefited from "helicopter promotion" eventually lost their positions.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Xie Xuekong of Tianjin was removed from his office in June, Wu De in October, Zeng Shaosha of Liaoning and Yu Daiching of Inner Mongolia in October, Li Ruishan of Shaanxi in December, Liu Zhenxun of Henan in October, and Saifudin of Xinjiang in February. The reorganization of the State Council removed such persons as Wang Yang, Li Chitai, and Sha Feng, who were not yet criticized by name. Through the summer of 1978 a few more provincial leaders, whose connection with the Gang of Four was not very obvious, came under attack too and eventually were removed from office. Provincial party leaders who came under public attack during this period in early 1978 include Saifudin of Xinjiang, Li Ruishan of Shanxi, Lung Daichung of Inner Mongolia, and Zhang Boshan of Hunan. See Beijing Ribao , 7 December 1979; Renmin Ribao , 30 March 1978.

[34] Renmin Ribao , 11 June 1979.

[35] Ibid., 13 February 1978.

[36] Ibid., 28 June 1978; 4 September 1979.

After the third plenum in December 1978, Hua Guofeng declared that the check on the Gang's followers had been completed. But rehabilitated cadres continued to stress the importance of thorough checking, and they launched what they called reexamination (fu cha ) of the radicals.^[37] More stringent criteria to verify previous campaign investigations were set up by various units. For instance, the Anshan Steel Mill Corporation organized sixteen inspection teams that used thirty criteria to see whether a unit had carried out its campaign properly.^[38]Renmin Ribao recommended that six conditions be met before ending the campaign against the Gang of Four.^[39] The rehabilitated cadres eventually put the Gang on public trial and adopted the "Resolution on Some Historical Questions," which officially acknowledged Mao's mistakes in the CR. The Gang's associates were further investigated as the "three types of people" during the party rectification campaign of 1983–85.

The "Two Whatevers" and "Practice"

The fundamental differences between the beneficiaries and victims of the CR were brought into sharp focus by the seemingly innocuous question, what constitutes the criteria for determining truth? The beneficiaries took the position that "whatever Chairman Mao said and decided" should be upheld, whereas the rehabilitated emphasized "practice" (shijian ) as the "sole criteria for empirical truth."

The beneficiaries coined the phrase "the two whatevers" (liang ge fanxi ) to use as "the basic weapon" for rejecting demands to reinstate Deng Xiaoping and to reverse the decision about the Tiananmen Square incident.^[40] By contrast, pragmatic Deng Xiao-

[37] For instance, see ibid., 14 April 1978 for the several investigations carried out by the Nanjing municipal party committee.

[38] Renmin Ribao , 13 May 1978; 20 January 1979.

[39] They were (1) thorough investigation of those who joined the Gang of Four to seize power, (2) criticism of the Gang's revisionist line, (3) readjusting the makeup of the leadership group by expelling Gang followers, (4) complete rehabilitation of cadres who had suffered as a result of false charges or mistaken or wrong decisions, (5) restoration of the good traditions of the party, and (6) unity and stability. Renmin Ribao , 5 January 1979.

[40] Dangshi Tongxun , no. 2, 30 January 1983; Cankao Ziliao , 24 March 1963.

ping (who reportedly declared even before the CR that regardless of whether it is black or white, any cat that catches a mouse is a good cat) had many reasons to stress "practice." Even before his official rehabilitation, he allegedly objected to "the two whatevers" view in his letter to the party center.^[41] No sooner had he been rehabilitated than he publicly argued that the essence of Mao Zedong's thought was to "seek truth from facts."

The final showdown between "the two whatevers" and "practice" views took place at a work conference organized to discuss the upcoming third plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress (held from 10 November to 15 December 1978). According to official Chinese sources, Hua Guofeng initially objected to the idea of convening the conference, and when the meeting was held, he tried to limit discussion to economic questions. Once the meeting began, however, many veteran leaders demanded that "some historical problems" be discussed. For instance, Chen Yun argued (in his speech to the northeastern group) that prior to discussing economic issues, some remaining historical cases should be resolved. "Without resolving these questions, there is no way of unifying the entire people." In particular, he raised questions about six cases: (1) the case of sixty-one counterrevolutionary people including Bo Yibo, (2) the central organizational department's seventy-seven decisions made in 1937 and the wrong decision made in 1940 about the "two political systems," (3) the problems of Tao Zhu and Wang Hoshou, (4) the Peng Dehuai problem, (5) the Tiananmen Square incident, and (6) the question of Kang Sheng. Other veteran cadres followed Chen Yun by tabling a motion to discuss the "January Power Seizure," the "February Adverse Current," the "Campaign to Criticize Deng," and even the question of the CR and Mao himself. The heated debate between the two groups lasted thirty-six days—"the longest meeting after the fall of the Gang of Four"—finally adjourning after deciding that everybody would be allowed to speak freely on these issues at the third plenum.^[42]

The third plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress, which some Chinese regarded as the "Second Zunyi Conference" (Mao emerged as the supreme leader of the CCP after the first Zunyi Conference

[41] Daily Report , 24 August 1981; Renwu , no. 1, 1982, 10.

[42] Dangshi Tongxun , no. 2, 20 January 1983.

in 1935), was a watershed in many regards. It adopted economic development as the regime's ultimate goal, while promising not to use mass movements as a means to implement policy. At the meeting, the balance of power tilted toward the rehabilitated cadre group, and Deng Xiaoping emerged as the number one leader. Old cadres like Huang Kecheng, Wang Renzhong, Hu Yaobang, and Yang Shangkun regained not only their honors but also important government and party positions. Hu was elected to the Politburo and appointed third secretary of the disciplinary committee. By contrast, although many beneficiaries retained their seats on the Politburo or the Central Committee, they lost other powerful and influential positions.

In retrospect, Hua Guofeng's chance of survival was always slight. The purge of the Gang of Four, whose ideology was further left than his own, exposed him to political pressure from the right. Once their common enemy was overthrown, Hua's group did not have the leverage to keep the old cadres behind him. Although the survivors initially made efforts to bring Hua's group and the rehabilitated cadres together, they chose the rehabilitated over the beneficiaries when they were forced to make a choice, because the beneficiaries lacked deep personal ties among themselves—ties that would have reinforced political ties. Many of them had not even had work relations before being promoted to leading positions at the center, and after Mao's death they did not have any patron to bind them together. Without such informal ties, no beneficiary was willing to risk his chance to survive individually by backing another.

Neither did the beneficiaries have enough time to develop a broad power base in the party-state bureaucracy, although some had support in the provinces from which they originally came (e.g., Hunan for Hua Guofeng, Henan for Qi Denggui). Their relation to military leaders at central and local levels was very tenuous. In addition, they could not resort to mass mobilization, the method that the radicals used for inner party struggles. Moreover, they did not even have any mass constituency to mobilize (because most Chinese people were thoroughly disenchanted with the CR). The beneficiaries, therefore, pursued the strategy of defense and compromise, yielding to the pressure of their adversaries on issue after issue. In turn, the rehabilitated effectively used a guerrilla strategy

of nibbling at the beneficiaries' power base and then finally destroying them as a coherent political group. The rehabilitated cadres, with more political experience, a stronger power base in the bureaucracy, and higher prestige positions, were destined to win once Deng Xiaoping was reinstated for the second time.

PART III
BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEMS AND REFORMS

8
The Politics of Rehabilitation

One of the most amazing aspects of the CR is that despite the ten years of chaos and ruthless purging, the majority of the pre-CR elite managed to regain their political power, leading China in a direction that Mao would have regarded as revisionist and capitalist. The return of veteran cadres was possible because there was one principle that even the Maoists did not violate during the CR, namely, not executing the losers in a power struggle. The return of the old guard is also a dramatic illustration of how entrenched the bureaucrats were in China even before the CR and of their remarkable resiliency, two characteristics which will probably not change much in the coming years.

Rehabilitated, "Born-Again" Reformers

As a political movement the CR was a total failure; it produced many losers and very few winners. It ruined Mao's position in Chinese history. Lin Biao died as a traitor in a plane crash. The members of the Gang of Four were purged, tried, and sentenced to death only to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, while its followers were hounded out of office as "three types of people." Some old revolutionaries were persecuted to death, but the majority of the pre-CR political elite returned to power, leading China in the new direction that Mao had hoped to prevent China from taking when he started the CR. The ordinary Chinese people suffered greatly, coming out of the crisis with profound disillusionment, cynicism, and distrust. Active young participants in the CR became the "wounded generation"—alienated and self-centered individuals without a trace of their earlier idealism.

The enormous human suffering that the CR caused left deep scars on the Chinese people. The chaotic mass movement magnified all human follies; confusion, cruelty, viciousness, deception,

and distrust ran riot. Wondering how the CR could produce such chaos in a nation proud of its long civilization, every Chinese had a share of the nightmare and is now eager to tell his or her horror story.^[1] Arthur Kleinman finds a close link between the socioeconomic and political experiences that the Chinese people underwent and their high rate of mental illness.^[2] For example, he traces the chronic depression of a worker in his late twenties to the deep shame and guilt that he experienced when he admitted what he had not done during the CR because he feared the public security forces. Circumstances forced many people to go against their consciences, and it seems that every Chinese harbors some secret that cannot be confessed even to his closest friends. Even Zhou Enlai, who helped many old cadres by compromising his beliefs and supporting the CR, must have had some painful reflections.

The rehabilitated cadres are the veterans who joined the party almost half a century before the CR. In their youthful and idealistic days they risked their lives by fighting against oppressors—the Nationalists and the Japanese. In their middle age, they eagerly dedicated themselves to the construction of a new China, often acting knowingly or unknowingly as "oppressors, inquisitors, and denouncers in an attempt to achieve a revolutionary transformation of the society."^[3] They ruthlessly wielded the enormous powers of the party-state to suppress what they considered "class enemies." At the beginning of the CR, Deng Xiaoping regarded the students in revolt as "rightists," who, like "snakes in a hole," should be lured out of their hiding places to expose their true nature.

The old leaders were ruthless revolutionaries, willing to sacrifice their personal interests, families, and friends for the sake of the revolution and executing all who were suspected of working for the enemy. Throughout their long careers, each one's life become intertwined with the others', resulting in strong hatreds as well as

[1] For example, Ann Thurston, Enemies of the People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai (New York: State Mutual Books, 1986); Gao Yuan, Born Red (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).

[2] Arthur Kleinman, "The Interconnections Among Culture, Depressive Experiences, and the Meanings of Pain" (unpublished paper).

[3] Tang Tsou, The Cultural Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 148.

close friendships. On many occasions they helped one another because of friendship or a shared ideology, but they also engaged in many deadly inner-party struggles.

In their late middle or old age, these veterans found themselves the victims of still another revolution in the system they had helped build. During the CR, they were subjected to violent physical abuse, forced to parade in the streets with dunce caps on their heads, and do such humiliating menial labor as cleaning toilets. They were imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured by young Red Guards who had not yet been born at the time the cases they were investigating had taken place. Bo Yibo was accused of having collaborated with Yan Xishan, a powerful warlord who had had close ties with the KMT, from 1936 through 1939 and of having surrendered to the KMT in 1934.^[4] In prison he learned that his wife had committed suicide and that his children had been jailed and then sent to one of Mao's thought study classes. Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the People's Republic of China, was condemned as a renegade because he had been arrested three times in his revolutionary career. His wife spent almost ten years in prison. Hu Yaobang, who, unlike the "white" area cadres, had a flawless career record, was luckier; he spent several years at home doing reading that he could not previously afford to do.^[5] Peng Zhen, the tough Beijing mayor (criticism of him had officially started the CR), was sent to a rural area in Shanxi, the province where he had done his underground work twenty years before.^[6] Luo Ruiqing, former deputy chief of staff, attempted suicide, an incident that left him crippled. Other unfortunates, such as Tao Zhu, Chen Yi, Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai, and He Long, died in disgrace. The fate of provincial leaders was not much better.^[7]

The veterans' children suffered too. Deng Xiaoping's son was permanently crippled. He Long's children served in prison and spent a long time in a Mao's thought study class. They were under great pressure to betray their parents.^[8] Old revolutionaries could not see their children for long periods of time. "When I entered the

[4] Zhengming , October 1980.

[5] Yang Zhongmei, Biography of Hu Yaobang (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharp, 1990).

[6] Zhengming , no. 15, January 1979, 27–30.

[7] Dong Xiang , May 1980.

[8] Ming Bao , 13 November 1978.

room, a boy called me Papa and I could not recognize him. I only recognized him when he told me that he was my son, who had been eight years old when I was taken from my house."^[9]

Most victims of the CR experienced similar stages of maltreatment and rehabilitation. Initally they were subjected to Red Guard interrogation and forced to attend mass struggle meetings with big signboards around their necks or dunce caps on their heads. They suffered many different kinds of physical coercion. Later in the CR they were placed in cow huts or in prisons where they underwent sustained "interrogation" by special investigation teams, managed by ad hoc committees largely composed of followers of the Gang of Four or Lin Biao. They were tortured and persecuted until they made false charges against their former comrades.^[10] Some were such dedicated revolutionaries that they did not yield to torture, but many others succumbed under pressure. The brave ones who did not compromise either died or spent long periods in jail. Some were condemned as renegades and spies. Others were simply pushed aside as "powerholders taking the capitalist road." Some were sent to rural areas with their families.^[11] Others were released from jail and dispersed to various localities when Lin Biao issued his infamous Order no. 1. After Lin's fall, many were allowed gradually to return to Beijing and to recuperate in hospitals.

What went through their minds? No rehabilitated senior cadre has written about his feelings and thoughts. But a few intellectuals and writers have published moving recollections of the period. Ba Jin, for example, felt regret and remorse not only for having failed to foresee the disastrous leftward drift in official policy but also for having personally contributed to the trend. The feeling of emptiness and total disillusionment stayed with him for a long time, causing him frequently to contemplate suicide. After careful objective analysis of both himself and his persecutors, he decided to spend the rest of his life trying to prevent the reoccurrence of any future political persecution in China.^[12]

Old cadres must have had thoughts similar to Ba Jin's. When the

[9] Nanfang Ribao , 5 April 1979.

[10] For instance, Kang Sheng and Xie Fuzhi reportedly tried to coerce An Zuwen to produce material against Liu Shaoqi.

[11] For instance, see Nanfang Ribao , 18 April 1979.

[12] Ba Jin, "Random Thoughts," published in a series by Huaqiao Ribao since 17 December 1978.

initiators of thought reform and self-criticism were subjected to these same methods, they quickly learned how arbitrary and ineffective the methods could be. They felt that they were framed by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four for political reasons. They saw close comrades languishing in prison because of their refusal to bring false charges against others. And they saw how those willing to collaborate with the Gang of Four gained political power.

Although we do not know what went through the minds of the highest political leaders, we do know how they lived. Deng Xiao-ping was confined to a small house in a Jiangxi military compound. He was allowed to work only part time in a nearby factory: "Every day I went to the factory and worked along with workers for half the day, taking them as my teachers, and learning much. The experience greatly helped me to change my weltanschauung."^[13] In Shanxi Peng Zhen often mingled with ordinary peasants, learning about their living conditions in detail. What he saw was the back-breaking poverty of peasants—the social group who had contributed most to the success of the Communist revolution and for whose sake the revolution had been fought. On his return to Beijing in 1972, Deng Xiaoping traveled to places where he had fought as a guerrilla. He saw that there had been little economic improvement since liberation. The peasants complained to him: "You made revolution and left us. We did not receive much benefit from the revolution. What have you done for us in thirty years?"^[14]

Zhang Pinghua, director of the propaganda department, who lost his job in 1978 as a member of "the two whatevers" group, recalled:

When I made a stop at a commune on my way to Kaifeng in Henan province last year, several comrades of the commune had this to say to me: "How can we be interested in watching model plays after dinner?" [Zhang asked] "Why? If it is not good to have plays to watch, is it any better not to have plays to watch?" [The peasant replied] "When the troupe came to our front door, dinner was rumbling in our belly even before the gongs and drums were beaten. We eat gruel twice a day and dry rice only once. After eating these things, we urinate but do not defecate. How can there be anybody who is still interested in watching plays, Director Zhang?"^[15]

[13] Internal documents relayed by one interviewee in Hong Kong.

[14] "Zhang Pinghua's Speech to Cadres in the Cultural Field," Issues and Studies , 14(12) (December 1978), 97–118.

[15] Ibid.

The rehabilitated cadres learned the hard lesson that propaganda makes sense only after the basic needs of the people have been met.

When these old cadres returned to positions of power in China's ruling structure after Mao's death, they became "born-again" reformers. Having shared common experiences, they formed a coherent group under Deng Xiaoping. This rehabilitated cadre group won one political victory after another over Hua Guofeng's group. There were reasons for them to be such reformers. As victims of Mao's political campaign, they were less constrained by ideological and personal ties with Mao and thus felt less responsible for past decisions.

Most important, they discovered that the sense of crisis and failure in the CCP permeated the entire society to such an extent that the party had to regain legitimacy and support from the people. In a speech given in April 1979, Chen Yun noted that since political slogans, criticism, and struggle had failed to restore the CCP's popularity, the party would not be able to maintain its political power without reforms.

There are three methods for resolving China's increasing problems. The first method is to bring out all the problems, including those in sacred areas, asking people whether or not they want the leadership of the CCP. I think that nobody wants to do this, and it is not worth talking about it. The middle option is to carry out reform [gailiang ], although not thoroughly, which would entail a large-scale readjustment of economic relations. It means to keep the present political structures and principles, while only carrying out minor surgery. Many people agree that this method can work. The third method is to maintain the present situation.^[16]

The experience of having been purged and rehabilitated is the functional equivalent of elite transformation. The old revolutionaries were indeed reeducated by the CR, but not in the way intended by its originator. They saw that the system they had built could lead to disaster and that certain underlying principles, as well as actual practices, which they had strongly advocated or supported at various times, could have devastating consequences for Chinese society. The purge offered them the rare opportunity to look at the

[16] Feijing Yuebao 10(22) (19):92.

political system from the outside—as its victims. The forced exile taught them that China needed economic development. They were compelled to ask themselves a fundamental question: why did a movement for class and human liberation develop into one of the most oppressive systems in Chinese history—what the Chinese Communists call "feudal fascism"?^[17] Ding Ling pointed to the excessive concentration of political power in the hands of cadres with small-group mentalities. Hu Zhiwei, former editor in chief of Renmin Ribao , concluded that "unless 'democracy' inside and outside the party is fully developed, the party's system of centralism will become a 'feudal, fascist, and dictatorial system with feudal authority.'"^[18]

After their return to power, the rehabilitated cadres carried out sweeping reforms, reversing the past trend toward an all-powerful party-state that imposes increasingly tighter controls over society. The reforms affected the very foundation of state power. In the economic sphere, the rural responsibility system reduces the arbitrary power of the party-state and its agents while expanding the areas open to individual decisions and economic rationality.

In the political arena, the regime has endeavored to rationalize, legalize, and institutionalize the structures of the state and party. Rules governing intraparty struggles and policy-making processes now emphasize intraparty democracy and collective leadership. Parallel efforts to separate the party from the government and the economic arena from the political arena have been made. Political control over the population has been substantially diminished, allowing ordinary Chinese citizens a certain amount of legal protection. The participation of the masses has been institutionalized, allowing popular concerns to be articulated through officially sanctioned channels.

Rehabilitation Policy of the Rehabilitated Cadres

After Deng Xiaoping's second return, the reinstated senior leaders used their positions to bring back increasing numbers of their less

[17] Tang Tsou, Cultural Revolution , 144–88.

[18] Hu Yaobang, "How to Develop Criticism and Self-Criticism in Newspapers," Xinwen Zhanxian , no. 6, 1979, 5.

fortunate colleagues. Hu Yaobang, who had been purged and rehabilitated twice, played a particularly crucial role in rehabilitation politics. He had personal and political reasons to push for thorough reexaminations of all CR-related cases and was also strategically positioned for the task. After being elected to the Eleventh Central Committee, he was appointed deputy director of the central organizational department and vice president of the central party school in August 1977. Two months later, he replaced Guo Yufeng as director of the organizational department.

Sharing with other rehabilitated cadres the view that without a thorough rehabilitation "the party will not be at ease, and the people will not be at ease," Hu Yaobang moved decisively, approaching the complicated matters of investigating all the CR cases and rendering fresh judgments from several different angles. After his appointment as director of the central organizational department, he first reshuffled the cadres in the department.^[19] Then he mobilized more than 100,000 cadres and masses in order to make a comprehensive survey of the task and to develop several hundred model cases (dianxing ). He instructed local authorities to develop their own model cases and then use them as references for actual review. At many party meetings Hu made emotional pleas on behalf of innocent victims. "Some [innocent victims'] bodies have decayed, but the criminal labels of 'spy' are still attached, and their family members are still burdened."^[20]

The victims of the CR tackled the "easy case" first when the resistance of the beneficiaries to reopening the CR-related cases was still strong. Instead of demanding rehabilitation (which presupposed the reversal of past decisions), they advanced the slogan of "implementing the party's cadre policy," stressing the need to correct administrative ills by bringing unresolved cases to an authoritative conclusion.^[21] Since the most obvious reason for an inability to draw conclusions is lack of sufficient evidence concerning whether one committed mistakes or not, it was easy to reach conclusions based on the changed situation without reversing previous decisions.

[19] Renmin Ribao , 1 October 1977.

[20] Zhonggong Zhungyang Wenxian Yanjiushi, ed., Guanyu Jianguo Yilai de Ruogan Lishi Wenti de Jueyi (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1986), 474.

[21] Renmin Ribao , 19 January 1978.

The central organization department under Hu's leadership adopted several crucial decisions dealing with different groups that suffered during the CR, but all of them in a broad sense touched on the question of rehabilitation. First, it proceeded to settle five types of cases: (1) those for which no organizational conclusion had been rendered, (2) those involving incorrect conclusions, (3) old cadres who had not yet been assigned to work, (4) persons who had died before investigation was completed, and (5) cases involving problems of relatives, friends, and colleagues of purged cadres.^[22]

On 3 November 1978 the organizational department issued another crucial document entitled "Several Opinions of the Central Organization Department with Regard to Intellectuals," which virtually spelled out all the concrete measures to be taken in rehabilitation.^[23] Reporting that about 40 percent of all CR-related cases in science, technology, and education had been reexamined, the document insisted that "victims of put-up, false, and wrong cases should be exonerated." Even "all those who were labeled as spies [and] reactionary academic authorities" should be vindicated.^[24] In addition, the document ordered that "those who died should be posthumously rehabilitated and their honors restored." All materials in the dossiers of the victims or their relatives were to be cleared; all property seized, bank deposits frozen, wages withheld, and houses forcefully occupied should be returned to the original owners.

After the third plenum, the central organization department issued another instruction, this time concerning old cadres' work. Praising the "historical contribution made by old cadres," it recommended a thorough rehabilitation. In addition to concrete measures to which every rehabilitated cadre was entitled, the documents also specified how work should be reassigned. "Old cadres who can do regular work should be quickly reassigned. Those with ability should be assigned to leadership positions. Cadres who retired during the CR should be given appropriate work, if they so desire." At the same time, it recommended a very lenient

[22] "Guanyu Ganbu Zhengce Lushi," in Zhuzhi Yu Tongxun (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1980). The key points were published in Hong Qi , no. 6, 1978.

[23] "Zhongyang Zhuzhibu Guanyu Zhishifenzi Zhengce de Jidian Yijian," in Zhuzhi Yu Tongxun .

[24] Ibid. It also specified the procedures for rehabilitation.

policy toward old cadres who had made mistakes, detailing special treatment for them, which the retirement (lixiu ) system later incorporated.^[25]

Hu's energetic maneuvers behind the scene were reflected in the official media's handling of the rehabilitation issue. Or one may say that the central leadership—largely dominated by the rehabilitated cadres—intentionally fostered public pressure by widely publicizing the issue of rehabilitation. As early as October 1977, Hu Yaobang managed to have Renmin Ribao publish an article entitled "Rectify the Mistakes Made by the Gang of Four in Cadre Work," which reportedly drew about 10,000 letters of support from readers.^[26] As the issue of rehabilitation continued to figure prominently in the official media, letters requesting reviews of cases poured in. In the two years following the third plenum, Anhui provincial authorities received 1.8 million letters concerning rehabilitation.^[27] One-third of all letters received by Fuzhou municipality during the same period were concerned with rehabilitation.

Since the central organizational department did not have sufficient manpower to investigate and exonerate all wrongly handled cases, reinvestigations were carried out by the unit which had made the decisions.^[28] As a Chinese maxim, "Nobody can use an axe to cut one's own body," aptly indicates, the cadres who had made the original decisions were reluctant to overturn them.^[29] Lower-level leaders were also afraid of reversing decisions made by leaders higher up the ladder. In addition, many Chinese exploited the official policy of rehabilitation to demand a review of their cases. Some people wanted to change the punishment they received ten years ago and even reverse the official decision rendered on disputes among the masses. Others demanded that they be returned to urban areas and have their wages raised.^[30]

Reluctance to pass new verdicts usually meant partial rehabilitation, which frequently left looser ends than the complete denial of rehabilitation. For example, a youth had been convicted as a coun-

[25] "Zhongyang Zhuzhibu Guanyu Jiaqian Laoganbu Gongzuo de Jidian Yijian," in Zhuzhi Yu Tongxun .

[26] Ibid., 1.

[27] Daily Report , 21 October 1981, 1.

[28] "Guanyu Ganbu Zhengce Lushi," in Zhuzhi Yu Tongxun .

[29] Nanfang Ribao , 24 January 1979.

[30] Renmin Ribao , 22 October 1979.

terrevolutionary in June 1977. The same court granted him conditional rehabilitation in 1978 because he had actually done no more than utter "some mistaken words." He was released. However, his original unit accepted him only as a temporary worker and continued to discriminate against him.^[31] One person who had been arrested for having participated in the Tiananmen Square incident was released in December 1977, but the public security bureau that had arrested him refused to acknowledge that the arrest was a mistake. Instead, they simply changed the charge from being a counterrevolutionary to being in possession of a "yellow novel"—Tolstoy's Anna Karenina .^[32]

Many cadres felt that it was unfair to use current standards of right and wrong to judge decisions made in the past. For instance, when some "counterrevolutionaries" demanded rehabilitation on the grounds that they had challenged the Gang of Four, cadres replied:

The Gang of Four were members of the Politburo, and your opposition to them was a direct attack on Chairman Mao. . . . Your criticism of the Gang of Four was in reality a criticism of the CR and of the socialist system. . . . Your revolt against the Gang of Four was a little too early, and it undermined the strategic plan of Chairman Mao. . . . It should be clearly recognized that opposition to the Gang of Four was in violation of the organization principle and hence wrong.^[33]

The only way to deal with such resistance was to change the leadership. After an almost two-month-long debate, the central organizational department adopted "some opinions regarding the readjustment of leadership" on September 1978.^[34] Recommending the complete removal of Gang of Four sympathizers, the document urged that CR victims be promoted to high-level positions (diao xiang ), dislodging "those cadres who lack experience and about whom the masses have many [bad] opinions"—in other words, those who had benefited from the CR. In many places, it was only after the beneficiaries were replaced by the victims that the rehabilitation work started in earnest.^[35] The newly appointed leaders had

[31] Zhongguo Qingnian Bao , 24 October 1978.

[32] Renmin Ribao , 3 August 1978.

[33] Ibid.

[34] "Guanyu Ganbu Zhengce Lushi," in Zhuzhi Yu Tongxun .

[35] Nanfang Ribao , 11 April 1979; Hebei Ribao , 4 September 1980.

no psychological inclination to protect the previous decisions made by purged leaders. The regime also specifically banned the persons who made the original decisions from becoming involved in the reviews of their original cases.

Furthermore, in order to ensure that the official policy of rehabilitation was thoroughly implemented at lower levels, the center dispatched "inspection teams" (composed of about 1,000 cadres from central ministries, the Military Affairs Commission, central organs, and the People's Congress standing committees). Local authorities also organized their own inspection teams (fucha gongzuo ban ) with "cadres who have a very strong standpoint, who can uphold principle in all fairness, and who know history and have work ability." On the other hand, "those individuals who are seriously responsible for producing invented, false, and wrong charges and who are resented by the people" should be removed.^[36] Authorized to "seek truth from facts" by correcting all mistaken cases "irrespective of when the original decisions were made, who made them, and which level of leadership approved them," the responsible teams reviewed the rehabilitation work done at the lower levels. Shanxi province organized special investigation teams involving 5,000 cadres—many of whom were the victims of previous political campaigns—and established five steps in effecting a person's rehabiliation.^[37]

With a more comprehensive rehabilitation program, the official media began to question Mao's decisions. The decision on the Tiananmen Square incident, the most difficult and controversial case, was finally reversed in November 1978, when Lin Jiaohu replaced Wu De. Renmin Ribao published a long and authoritative article entitled, "The Rehabilitation of Trumped-Up Cases in a Historical Context," which argued that large-scale rehabilitation would prevent a total rejection of Mao such as happened to Stalin. In the absence of rehabilitation, discontented people might completely repudiate Mao.^[38]

The article was followed by a flurry of other articles calling for a thorough vindication of the "framed, falsely charged, and wrongly

[36] Zhonggong Zhungyang Wenxian Yanjiushi, ed., Guanyu Jianguo Yilai de Ruogan Lishi Wenti de Jueyi , 474.

[37] Shanxi Ribao , 31 March 1979.

[38] Renmin Ribao , 15 December 1978.

sentenced." Now thorough rehabilitation was officially regarded as the prerequisite for ending the campaign against the Gang of Four in each unit. The official media began to publish veiled references to Mao's arbitrary purge of many cadres. "If a certain leader made comments on the cases of certain cadres without going through an organizational approval, those comments are just his personal opinions. Those comments not corresponding to organizational principles must be rectified, if incorrect." Mao's responsibility for the radicals' actions was recognized. The Gang of Four was accused of having condemned as "renegades and spies" everyone to whom Mao had simply said, "I do not consider you a good person." Even Mao's personal approval could not prevent reversal of the particular decision. "If the party constitution and the state constitution can be amended, what excuse is there for official documents with mistakes in them to be the basis for defending wrong decisions?"^[39]

By the third plenum, Hu Yaobang had exonerated all cadres under his jurisdiction. Wang Dongxing, who was in charge of the management section of the Central Committee—which in turn handled the cases of high-ranking leaders—was replaced by Yao Yilin, and the units within the management offices dealing with the rehabilitation of cadres were abolished. All cases were transferred to the central organizational department.

The Scope of Rehabilitation

Early in 1978, rehabilitation rather than "implementation of cadre policy" emerged as the predominant issue in the public media. In addition, the scope of rehabilitation expanded.^[40] Several factors aided this trend. Increased criticism of the Gang of Four, which was officially labeled ultraleftist, and the notion that "practice is the sole criterion for empirical truth," implied that many leaders were merely victims of the wrong line. Growing numbers of rehabilitated cadres who assumed leadership at the provincial level aggressively investigated CR-related cases of rehabilitation.^[41]

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid., 23 March 1979.

[41] Ibid., 1 October 1977.

After the third plenum, rehabilitation accelerated. In 1979 the official news media carried a number of articles reporting the rehabilitation of and memorial services for those who had died during the CR.^[42] Those alleged to have made mistakes during the CR and those condemned as "renegades and spies" were vindicated.^[43] Finally Liu Shaoqi's case was reversed.^[44] The third plenum authorized Hu Yaobang and Song Renqiong to reinvestigate, and after nine months' work, they concluded that Kang Sheng had falsified the charges against Liu. The fifth plenum (1980) approved the new findings.^[45] On 19 May 1980 the center issued document 25, which revoked the previous decision against Liu Shaoqi, restoring his reputation as "a great proletarian revolutionary leader."

Reinvestigation went far beyond CR-related cases. Those purged during the Socialist Education Movement (1963–1965) (SEM) were also reinstated.^[46] Even decisions made as early as 1961 were canceled. The verdict in the case of the Hu Feng counterrevolutionary group (1955) was reversed on 29 September 1980. The central organization department, probably in a review of all controversial cases since its founding, vindicated Qu Qiubai, Li Lisan, Huang Gocheng, Li Weihan, Zeng San, and Mao Mingfan.^[47] By 1983, the regime had even reviewed cases decided as far back as the 1940s and 1930s.^[48] Another interesting case involved former Nationalist troops, who, despite their surrender to the CCP, were nonetheless persecuted during the CR together with their children. The political consultative conference demanded that the regime vindicate this group of people.

Another group of ordinary people whose honor was restored were model workers, many of whom had been criticized as "work-

[42] Those who were rehabilitated through this process include Zhang Zhichun, Xu Haidong, Wu Zhifu, Liu Changsheng, Zhang Linzhi, Wang Shiying, Liu Liumin, Liao Loyen, Xu Zufu, Hu Shihkuei, Liu Xiewu, Wang Qimei, Liu Jen, Qhien Bozan, Gao Chungmin, Tian Han, Zhang Wentian, Xu Bing, and Zhang Jingwu.

[43] Revoked were previous decisions on "sixty-one persons" who had allegedly surrendered to the KMT in 1934 and on Peng Zhen, Lo Ruiching, and the "Yang antiparty group." Shehui Kexue Yanjiu Cankao Cailiao , no. 2, 1982.

[44] Renmin Ribao , 19 May 1980.

[45] Feijing Yuebao , 16 September 1979.

[46] Renmin Ribao , 13 January 1979; Beijing Ribao , 15 February 1979; 24 May 1979.

[47] Renmin Ribao , 29 September 1980.

[48] Dangshi Tongxun , February 1985, 16.

er aristocrats with vested interests in the status quo," and "false models, and the black gang's model." Basic-level cadres initially refused to rehabilitate model workers because the masses, not official party organs, had attacked them, and there were no charges from which they needed to be exonerated.^[49]

Seriously affected by the CR were former underground party workers. CR radicals had reportedly organized 339 central and 85 local investigation teams to probe into about 3,600 members of the former Shanghai underground party organization. All ninety-nine former underground party members who had reached the bureau level lost their positions, and sixty-five were arrested and investigated.^[50] A similar fate befell the members of former northeast underground party organizations.^[51]

The most frequently used criminal label attached to ordinary Chinese during the CR was "vicious attackers" (yadu gongji ). Any disparaging remark about Mao's Selected Works and any utterance made out of "temporary discontent and anger" were used as evidence of a "vicious attack" against the party and socialism.^[52] One person was condemned as a counterrevolutionary because he had said, "Jiang Qing's statement 'Defend with weapons and attack with words' promotes armed struggle." Another was jailed because he said, "Lenin said that only the dead and the unborn have not made mistakes." A cadre was condemned as a counterrevolutionary because he had left a space between the party center and Mao when he had written a poster declaring that "whoever opposes the party center and Chairman Mao is counterrevolutionary."^[53]

Rehabilitation affected not only former cadres but also their relatives, colleagues, and friends. The official news media began to criticize the CR's tendency to discriminate against children of disgraced cadres as a "feudal practice." Despite Mao's directive in September 1968 that "serious historical and political problems should not affect children," punishing relatives became a widespread practice and produced such phrases as "children of the

[49] Gongren Bao , 10 September 1979.

[50] Renmin Ribao , 26 April 1979.

[51] Ibid., 5 November 1978.

[52] Beijing Ribao , 11 January 1979.

[53] Wenhui Bao , 19 February 1979.

black gang" and "children of renegades." The offspring of purged cadres were discriminated against when they tried to join the Communist Youth League, enter schools, enlist in the army, or obtain jobs. Moreover, their parents' political problems were entered into their own dossiers. Each unit that rehabilitated cadres was required to notify the children's units of the decisions so that the children's dossier could be corrected.^[54]

Rehabilitation was truly comprehensive. Controversial cases that had occurred before the CR were reviewed in a different and more favorable light. The united front department reinvestigated cases of its own cadres.^[55] Shanxi province revoked its previous decision on "Sanshang Taofeng," a drama that the radicals condemned as an attempt to reverse the CR decision on Liu Shaoqi; the Beijing party committee revoked its decision on "The Three-family Village," which had signaled the beginning of the CR.^[56] Guangdong military region rehabilitated seventy-nine officers whom the Gang of Four had persecuted.^[57]

The people's courts reexamined cases—including death sentences—which they had passed judgment on before. The Shanghai court overturned previous decisions on 2,000 cases, even trying to reconcile couples whose marriages had broken up because of earlier decisions.^[58] According to Jiang Hua, president of the People's Supreme Court, by May 1979, the court systems of twenty-nine provinces had corrected a total of 164,000 wrong and mistaken cases.^[59]

In Yunan province, about 100,000 people were rehabilitated. The Anhui province party committee reviewed about 110,700 pre-CR cases. More than 233,000 concocted, false, and wrong decisions were rectified, and a total of 41,609 persons were reinstated in their former positions. Another 7,466 persons regained their party membership.^[60] The Pijing district in Guangdong province re-

[54] Through this method, Chengdu reported that about 5,200 dossiers out of 5,400 dossiers in the municipality were cleansed. Zhongguo Qingnian Bao , 7 October 1978.

[55] Wenhui Bao , 19 March 1979.

[56] Renmin Ribao , 22 September 1978; 3 August 1979.

[57] Nanfang Ribao , 20 May 1979.

[58] Wenhui Bao , 11 March 1979. As a result, Yangbu district court managed to help eleven cases of divorced couples to resume marital relations.

[59] Nanfang Ribao , 28 June 1979.

[60] Daily Report , 21 October 1981, Q1.

portedly reexamined about 3,900 cases, and three cases alone in Xinping county affected about 22,000 people.^[61] Deng Xiaoping reported that 2.9 million people were rehabilitated, and if one includes relatives and friends, the rehabilitation touched almost 40 million Chinese.^[62] Almost all the controversial cases that the CCP had made since 1949 were overturned. The only known exceptions, at least according to Zhengming magazine, were those of the Guangdong localists.^[63]

Process of Rehabilitation

Rehabiliation involved many steps, each of which required decisions on how the organization should acknowledge its mistakes, compensate victims for their hardships, clear their dossiers, and assign them to new jobs. Broadly speaking, the process of rehabilitating a case involved the following steps.

First, responsibility for checking the correctness of the original decision fell on the unit that had made the decision, regardless of whether or not the disciplined person was still with the unit or requested reexamination. The party committee in each unit often organized one or several rehabilitation committees, depending on need. For instance, the history department of Beijing University, a unit that had produced a large number of rightists in 1957, organized four investigation teams, one each for former students, professors, foreign students, and research associates. A team could be further subdivided to deal with different types of problems.

The rehabilitation committee was generally headed by a deputy secretary and consisted of people who had no part in the original decision. For example, the ministry of culture organized a "rehabilitation committee with persons whose party spirit is strong, whose work style is orthodox, and who are willing to take responsibility for their actions."^[64] Tianjin province mobilized 3,000 cadres to handle rehabilitation, receiving visitors and answering letters. In order to ensure impartiality, two kinds of people were barred from the investigation teams: those who had participated in armed

[61] Ming Bao , 3 July 1978.

[62] Zhengming , 16 January 1980, 11–23.

[63] Ibid., 15 February 1979.

[64] Renmin Ribao , 22 April 1978.

struggle during the CR and put together false cases, and the former leaders of rebel organizations.^[65]

The members of the rehabilitation committee first studied official documents to familiarize themselves with official policy. Then they selected several typical cases as models. One committee chose the following three cases as models: (1) a provincial alternative secretary who had been condemned as the "root of seventeen years of the black line," (2) a director of the united front bureau who had once been arrested by the KMT as a model "historical problem," and (3) a cadre who had been persecuted to death.^[66] Committees usually worked on easy cases first, leaving the most difficult cases for last.^[67]

Sometimes when a person to be rehabilitated had been transferred to another unit, his rehabilitation required the work of many different units. For example, a cadre working in a provincial financial bureau was classified as a rightist and then sent down to a labor farm under the commercial bureau. In 1962 he was reassigned to a provincial department store and then retired in the same year. He had to write letters to many units because each unit passed on the responsibility to another.^[68] In cases where many units had been involved in the original decision, a "combined investigation team" was set up.^[69]

Each investigation team looked into the dossier of any cadre who might need rehabilitation. Investigation teams were allowed access to other dossiers in the course of their work. When the necessity arose, the committee sent out investigation teams to collect more evidence and to interview witnesses.

The party committee discussed each report and gave an organizational decision, which was placed in the dossier. New conclusions often included such statements as "no rightist remarks have been found" and "should not be considered a rightist."^[70] The reasons for the changed outlook were often given. A frequently cited justification for change was that originally

[65] Ibid., 24 May 1980.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Nanfang Ribao , 28 March 1979.

[68] Renmin Ribao , 10 February 1980.

[69] Nanfang Ribao , 12 April 1979.

[70] Ibid., 13 January 1980.

several wrong statements arising from misunderstanding were accepted as evidence of antiparty and antisocialist views, [or] what one said in a free discussion was used as evidence of an antiparty clique, normal criticisms as evidence for attacking the party, what one confessed to the party as evidence of a vicious attack and a counterrevolutionary ideology, different opinions in academic research questions as evidence of anti-Marxism and rejection of Mao's thought, and suggestions to party leaders as evidence of attacking central leaders.^[71]

The party secretary or another similarly responsible person explained the organizational decision, stating the concrete actions to be taken to compensate for the original wrong decision in a heart-to-heart talk. The former victim could raise questions, and leaders were encouraged to be responsive.^[72] Conditions of rehabilitation entailed haggling over such issues as back payment, housing, children's problems, and medical treatment.

The victims who needed health care because of their sufferings during the CR were issued "priority cards [yudai zheng ] for medical treatment." To be eligible, one had to prove that the CR was somehow accountable for one's problem; a certificate from a physician stating that the problem needed continuous medical treatment was also required.

Usually victims were entitled to partial retroactive payment of the wages they had not received during their disgrace.^[73] During the CR, the purged generally received a portion of their wages, though barely enough to cover subsistence. The amount to be paid was negotiable. In some cases, units wanted to deduct the cost of feeding and lodging the victim in confinement or jail. Frequently, people who received back pay were asked to donate some of the money to their unit—sometimes this was even compulsory. Former rightists were not automatically entitled to back payment, but sometimes their salaries were raised by one or two grades to compensate for their loss. Often special arrangements were made for those in dire straits. Shanxi province reported that it had made back payments to about 2,600 original capitalists, Liaoning province to 14,000 nonparty members.^[74]

[71] Renmin Ribao , 23 January 1979.

[72] Wenhui Bao , 19 February 1979.

[73] Ibid., 11 March 1979.

[74] Renmin Ribao , 25 April 1985.

Another matter that had to be negotiated was a person's job assignment. The basic principle was to reinstate former cadres in positions equivalent in status to their previous ones. Hunan province reported that 96 percent of those who were rehabilitated were assigned to positions equivalent to or higher than those they had occupied before.^[75] "Depending on one's political situation, physical condition, and past work experience," some were promoted to higher positions, transferred to equivalent ones, or assigned to less demanding jobs. Those with health problems were allowed to retire.^[76] Former rightists were not automatically entitled to their previous positions, but their new assignments were to be based on ability, physical condition, and the needs of the unit.

When both sides—the party representative and the victim—had agreed on the specific conditions of the rehabilitation package, the case was passed on to the supervisory authorities for approval. Often disagreements arose with the supervisory authorities about how to interpret evidence and what conclusions to draw from it. Since the lower level was responsible for executing the specific conditions of a person's rehabilitation, which required funding, housing, and positions, it resisted pressure from above, for instance, to declare that a particular cadre was "persecuted to death."^[77] Since most workers' cases were much simpler than the cadres', often the approval of the upper echelon was waived. The appropriate unit could finalize the workers' cases, except for those that needed approval by the courts and other units. In some cases just the approval of the cadres in charge of the case was sufficient to close the matter, bypassing the party committee entirely.^[78]

Quite often the implementation of the terms and conditions agreed upon produced tensions among the units involved. As an example let us suppose that a rightist who was expelled from his research unit was sent to a state farm in a different province, where he worked for almost twenty years as a guard. Who is reponsible for him? His original unit wants the state farm to give the former rightist what he is entitled to—including a new job, a raise, new housing, retirement benefits, and help for his children—whereas

[75] Hong Qi , no. 6, 1978.

[76] Renmin Ribao , 16 September 1978.

[77] Ibid., 24 May 1980.

[78] Wenhui Bao , 3 May 1979.

the state farm insists that the research unit should take him back and do whatever it can for him. Eventually the issue has to go up to the provincial level to be resolved.

Organizational department personnel carefully went over all dossiers and removed unreliable CR-related materials. It is, however, unclear what constitutes "unreliable material." Obviously, the category includes "hearsay," evidence collected after the case was decided, and "forced confession."^[79] All materials pertaining to the wrong decisions had to be removed from the dossier, and the new organizational conclusion, with its supporting evidence, was added.^[80] Often material taken out of the dossier was shown to the person before being destroyed. Thus, one could see what had been removed from his dossier, but not what was left. The Chinese news media often complained that not all unreliable materials related to wrong cases were removed from personnel dossiers. The regime made it clear that past political records should not be used as a basis for future politicial discrimination by prohibiting the use of such terms as "former rightist" and insisting that former rightists, and particularly their children, should be treated like anyone else in "promotion, salary raises, wage adjustment, decisions on bonuses, and conferring job titles."^[81]

All confiscated goods were returned. Sometimes monetary compensation was made for lost property. Frozen bank accounts were reactivated and houses returned.^[82] The political consultative conferences cooperated with the central united front department to supervise the return of valuable goods to former owners. Many antiques that had been taken away from people—including paintings and books—were sent to libraries, antique shops, and museums.^[83] From looking at the owner's names on the items, libraries and museums were able to return them. Shanghai received about $6 billion worth of gold and silver objects; about $5.9 billion worth was returned. The various units under Shanghai received about 720,000 confiscated items and 4.4 million books, which were returned to their original owners.

[79] Nanfang Ribao , 8 June 1979.

[80] Shijian (Inner Mongolia), April 1978.

[81] Renmin Ribao , 17 November 1978.

[82] Ming Bao , 30 August 1979.

[83] Renmin Ribao , 15 April 1985.

Each rehabilitated cadre or former rightist received a rehabilitation certificate, which some people hung on their walls.^[84] If the person migrated or fled to a foreign country, the certificate was sent to him.^[85] Copies were also sent to units where the person's spouse or children worked. And each unit organized a mass rally to announce the rehabilitation officially so that every member of the unit would know both that the rehabilitated person had been unfairly treated in the past and that this would no longer happen.

Finally, each unit informed the units where the relatives of rehabilitated people worked. The official policy was to inform "all those who happen to be the rehabilitated cadres' relatives or children, irrespective of where they work, which units they belong to, and regardless of whether they have been affected or not." Frequently cadres working in personnel departments were dispatched to inform relatives and leaders of units where they worked. Those from far away were informed by mail. In some cases, it was necessary to inform family members scattered over more than a hundred units.^[86] A factory in Beijing reported that it had convened twelve rehabilitation meetings and sent our 291 letters to relatives in the process of rehabilitating sixty-nine people.^[87]

Ending the Class Struggle

The idea of class struggle that Mao renewed in 1962, when he disclaimed his previous implication that violent class struggle was over in China, constituted the ideological justification for Maoist radicalism. By politicizing the concept of class, Mao justified the existence of a bourgeoisie even in China, where the ownership of the means of production had been socialized. By the time of the SEM, the term "bourgeois class" in China referred to party leaders who favored policies considered revisionist by Mao. Mao's interpretation of "class" became clearer when his thesis of class struggle underwrote the masses' attack on "powerholders taking the capitalist road" in the party, government, and military during the CR.

[84] For a sample certificate, see Ming Bao , 30 August 1979.

[85] Nanfang Ribao , 15 April 1979.

[86] Renmin Ribao , 16 September 1978; Nanfang Ribao , 6 March 1979.

[87] Beijing Ribao , 12 April 1979.

Later, Zhang Chunqiao systematically elaborated the radical meaning of class.^[88]

The radicals' politicization of what they called class struggle had many undesirable consequences. It further contributed to an increase in the number of "class enemies" that every political campaign since 1949 has fostered. One 135-member brigade in Guangdong province had only one person belonging to the four-category element—landlords, rich peasants, bad elements, and counterrevolutionaries—at the time of land reform, but there were eleven by 1976.^[89] A commune reported that "upon seven occasions altogether class status was reviewed and altered. More and more people became members of the 'four-category element.' " The status of those who had overseas connections was often reclassified, and the person concerned was often given a less desirable designation.^[90] Sometimes original regulations were changed to make obtaining good class status more difficult. For instance, according to 1950 regulations, children under eighteen in 1949 were not to be called landlords like their parents. However, during the SEM the regulation was changed to exempt those younger than six. In some areas, children automatically inherited their deceased parents' status. Beginning with the CR, not only one's own class status but also one's family background—which was determined by the parents' and grandparents' status—was emphasized. Anyone with a bad family background was persecuted. The cadres purged during the CR formed a new category of "class enemies," and the record of their having been purged went into their children's dossiers.^[91] The rehabilitated cadres had another incentive to repudiate Mao's class struggle besides all these abuses—the fact that Mao had purged them in the name of class struggle. Deng Xiaoping publicly criticized Mao's politicization of class:

We oppose the overextension of class struggle. We do not admit that there is a bourgeois class in the party. We also do not admit that under the socialist system, after the effective elimination of the

[88] Zhang Chunqiao, "On Exercising All-Around Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie" (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1975).

[89] Ming Bao , 1 April 1979.

[90] Nanfang Ribao , 14 March 1979.

[91] Zhongguo Qingnian Bao , 7 October 1978.

exploiting class as well as the conditions that make exploitation possible, a bourgeois class or any other exploiting class can be produced.^[92]

In addition, waging class struggle was not conducive to economic development, the regime's new goal. The third plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress thus promised to "mobilize all positive elements" for economic development while declaring that turbulent class struggle on a large scale had ended. Later Hua Guofeng declared specifically that the landlord, rich peasant, and capitalist classes had ceased to exist in China.^[93] Presently class is defined exclusively on the basis of ownership of the means of production. This strictly economic definition leaves no room for the existence of an exploitative class in China. The regime, however, still refuses to declare an official end to class struggle, reasoning that there are still counterrevolutionaries and foreign agents in China.^[94]

The changed official view on class and class struggle provided the theoretical justification for the abolition of discriminatory class designations. The regime decided first to remove all labels of rightists and then to reclassify most as four-category elements. This measure was intended to "mobilize all positive factors, transform negative factors into positive ones, promote stability and unity, and contribute greatly to the socialist modernizations."^[95] In other words, the regime intended to count on former landlords and rich peasants, who were efficient producers, and on former capitalists, who were able managers, for economic development.

We do not know what proportion of the Chinese population had been given undesirable class designations. The official media estimated that 5 percent of the people were "class enemies," and in 1967 Mao specifically estimated their number to be about 35 million.^[96] According to another source, in 1979 there were about 6 million landlords and rich peasants and half a million capitalists.^[97] All of them, except for some landlords and rich peasants, received

[92] Hong Qi , no. 20, 1981, 27.

[93] Renmin Ribao , 26 June 1979.

[94] Beijing Review , 16 November 1979, 9–13; 23 November 1979, 15–17.

[95] Jiefang Bao , 29 January 1979.

[96] Feijing Yuebao 22(7) (1980):42–47.

[97] Zhonggong Zhungyang Wenxian Yanjiushi, ed., Guanyu Jianguo Yilai de Ruogan Lishi Wenti de Jueyi , 160–61.

new class labels.^[98] Among 400,000 people who were originally labeled rightists, about 130,000 still carried the label after several readjustments made between 1957 and 1979.^[99]

The decision to abolish "rightist" as a label began to take form early in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping instructed the party not to use it. The organizational, propaganda, and united front departments and the public security and civil affairs ministries jointly convened a meeting from 26 June to 22 June 1978 in Shandong province.^[100] After a heated debate between the "whatever faction" and Deng's group, the meeting approved "Concrete Measures for Implementing the Decision to Remove All the Hats of the Rightists," which apparently decided to make a distinction between correcting (gaizheng ) and granting pardons (zhaimao ). In a "correction," the person who had been mislabeled was entitled to restoration of his party membership, his political honor, and his former salary scale.^[101] For those whose cases had not involved any error, simply removing the label sufficed.^[102]

It seems that the regime first planned to "correct" only the erroneous designations, but later decided to remove the stigma even from genuine rightists. Moreover, there are indications that the center put pressure on local cadres to take a broad view.^[103]

Some basic-level cadres resisted the new measure on the grounds that it constituted a "rightist reversal" and a "repudiation of the achievements of the antirightist struggle." In dealing with cadre resistance, the regime emphasized that the movement was correct and generally properly directed but that some minor errors

[98] Ibid.; Zhongguo Qingnian Bao , 8 September 1979; Zhengming , no. 7, March 1979, 5–8.

[99] "Deng Xiaoping's Report on the Present Situation and Task," Zhengming , March 1980, 11–23.

[100] Presiding at the meeting, Wang Dongxing set up three guidelines: (1) the overall direction of the antirightist campaign was correct, (2) the process of the movement was basically healthy, but (3) there had been some minor mistakes. Zhengming , 1979, 5–8.

[101] Ibid.

[102] Those judging whether a person had been correctly or mistakenly labeled were to rely on the "Notice of Criteria for Classifying Rightists," the document originally used in the 1957 campaign. Ibid.; Renmin Ribao , 23 January 1979.

[103] On 3 January 1978 the central party school reported that thirty-one of ninety-seven rightists were incorrectly labeled, but only twenty days later another article reported that ninety-three of the ninety-seven had suffered from mistaken decisions. Renmin Ribao , 2 January 1979; 23 January 1979.

had been made in its execution. The official media defended the policy, saying it showed the success, not the repudiation, of Mao's policy of transforming rightists. As a result, by November 1978, no more rightists officially existed. The first plenary session of the newly organized disciplinary committee decided to review the implementation of the policy.

How successful was the policy implementation? The answer depends on how one defines its objectives. As far as administrative procedures are concerned, the policy was thoroughly carried out. Each person's dossier contained a note to the effect that he was either no longer considered a rightist or that the original decision calling him one had been corrected. But this left everything in the dossier, causing some people to be quite uneasy.^[104] As for ridding the victims of past political campaigns of their grievances and helping them to dedicate themselves to modernization, the result is less clear. For some former rightists the new policy was not sweeping enough to make restitution for all the suffering they had endured. After all, how could the regime compensate for broken marriages, lost opportunities, and, in some extreme cases, permanent injury? For other former rightists, the removal of the discriminatory label was anticlimactic, after which they had no incentive to work hard.^[105]

After dealing with rightists, the regime immediately proceeded to remove the designations of landlord, rich peasant, counterrevolutionary, and bad element.^[106] Official policy toward them was not as generous as toward the rightists. The labels were not completely abolished, however, because an "extremely small number of those who are stubbornly upholding the CR standpoints and those who are not yet properly remolded" continued to merit them. Only those who met three requirements could have their class labels removed: they must have abided by state laws and regulations, sincerely labored, and not done any "bad things."^[107]

After the publication of the official decision about the four categories in newspapers, the minister of public security, Zhao Zhangbi, elaborated on these conditions in an interview with journalists.

[104] Nanfang Ribao , 11 March 1980.

[105] Tansu , no. 5, 1979, 68–69.

[106] Nanfang Ribao , 29 January 1979.

[107] Renmin Ribao , 30 January 1979.

The "sincere labor" requirement would apply only to those who could perform physical labor. "Bad things" referred to such activities as "engaging in class retaliation," "beating, smashing, and looting," and "carrying out counterrevolutionary or other criminal activities." According to Zhao, an "extremely small number of people who had done 'bad things' when Lin Biao and the Gang of Four were in power" would not be reclassified. At the same time, he emphasized that all who had been called any one of the four categories because of their opposition to ultraleftist policies and the Gang of Four would be reclassified. These included everyone "who promoted private plots and those who challenged the erroneous leadership of the radicals."^[108]

The procedure for examining each case was similar to that used for rightists; it involved both leadership and the masses and required a public announcement. However, in the case of the four categories the masses' opinion carried more weight in arriving at a final decision. The public security bureaus were also involved, and final authority in each case was given to a county-level revolutionary committee. The removal procedure also involved the changing of class status, for instance, from landlord to commune member, in all written records. The class status of a person's children was also similarly changed. Grandchildren of the four categories even had their family backgrounds changed.^[109]

After reclassification, former four-category elements "should enjoy all the basic rights of citizenship as specified in the constitution." No discrimination was to be practiced in such matters as entering schools, obtaining factory jobs, joining the Communist Youth League and the party, and receiving job assignments. The only proper consideration was "political performance."^[110] Like former rightists, reclassified people were not to be referred to in any way by their earlier designation. Even if the reclassified person committed a crime, his former class label was not to become an issue. But no old records were removed from the dossiers.

Most of the former landlords and rich peasants had their designations removed. An example comes from the Huancheng

[108] Ibid.

[109] Ibid.; see also Nanfang Ribao , 11 March 1980.

[110] Nanfang Ribao , 9 February 1979.

commune in Guangdong province (population 5,300 in 1979). At the time of the land reform this commune had 828 landlords and rich peasants. The number had shrunk to 608 by 1965 and to 423 by 1979, and finally only two remained.^[111] In Beijing municipality, of 8,500 landlords and rich peasants, 7,800 had their designations removed. Zhongguo Qingnian Bao reported that only 1 to 2 percent of former four-category elements failed to obtain reclassification.^[112] Another source estimates that only about 50,000 people were still considered landlords or rich peasants.^[113]

By 1984, the remaining four-category elements were further reclassified. According to Renmin Ribao , all remaining four-category elements had their labels removed, including 28,227 landlords, 14,343 rich peasants, 16,260 counterrevolutionaries, and 20,674 bad elements. The regime declared that it had succeeded in educating and transforming about 20 million such people since the foundation of the PRC.^[114]

Another group that regained full citizenship included industrialists and businessmen of the national bourgeoisie. From the beginning the CCP's policy toward them had been relatively lenient, largely because of the small size of the group. Capitalists numbered about 850,000, and of these about 150,000 were big capitalists. The rest were small capitalists, who could draw about lo yuan per month from assets that had been taken over by the government.^[115] There were about 720,000 people in the group called the "national bourgeoisie" in 1956, but the number had diminished to about half a million by 1979.^[116] Even after the "peaceful transformation of industry," former industrialists and businessmen continued to enjoy their wealth; they were allowed a draw a fixed interest of 5 percent on their total verified assets, to retain private property (including houses and bank deposits), and to work as highly paid executives or technicians in the enterprises they had once owned. However, the CR not only brought an abrupt end to these economic privileges, but it also made the

[111] Ibid.

[112] Zhongguo Qingnian Bao , 8 September 1979.

[113] Beijing Review , 21 January 1980, 14–20.

[114] Renmin Ribao , 2 November 1984.

[115] Dangshi Yenjiu Ziliao , 20 November 1984.

[116] Beijing Review , 28 April 1980, 21.

national bourgeoisie vulnerable to political persecution; their private property was confiscated, and interest payments stopped. Many of them lost their jobs or suffered cuts in salary. In 1979, the regime decided to return all property, to repay them retroactively, and to reinstate them in positions where they could fully utilize their skills and knowledge.^[117]

The regime's policy toward overseas Chinese and their relatives in China changed as well. When the radicals were in power, anybody with "overseas connections" was politically suspect. Such unfortunates were discriminated against in school admissions, job assignments, conscription, and recruitment into the Communist Youth League and the Communist Party. Despite the 1963 regulation that all overseas Chinese who had returned to China after the land reform should be reclassified according to their previous class status, in Guangdong province, where many people had overseas connections (there are 150,000 overseas Chinese there), radicals enacted "Six Articles on Handling Cadres with Overseas Connections."^[118] These articles stipulated that no one with overseas connections could become a cadre and that incumbent cadres with overseas connections had to be investigated.^[119] Many such cadres were suspected of being spies, and their houses and rooms were confiscated or occupied by force. In January 1978, the regime announced a new policy toward overseas Chinese; it promised to stop all discrimination, to return confiscated homes, to reopen special shops for overseas Chinese, and to take care of their special needs.^[120] In order to supervise implementation of the new policy, the Office of Overseas Chinese of the State Council set up a reception office, which helped to resolve 13,000 cases.^[121] By 1986, the regime had reportedly made restitution in 33,000 cases from the CR and 10,000 earlier cases, returned numerous houses, and promoted 17,700 overseas Chinese.^[122]

The disciplinary committee reported that the number of cases involving overseas Chinese appealed and reexamined in seventeen

[117] Renmin Ribao , 30 January 1979; 19 March 1979.

[118] Nanfang Ribao , 12 February 1979.

[119] Ming Bao , 20 February 1978.

[120] Ibid., 3 January 1978; 27 January 1978; 29 September 1978.

[121] Renmin Ribao , 16 July 1980.

[122] Ibid., 24 February 1986.

provinces amounted to 3.26 million. The disciplinary committees of twenty provinces received about half a million letters and visits.^[123] Deng and Hu Yaobang have said that rehabilitation and reclassification have affected approximately 10 billion people.^[124]

The work done to remove undesirable class labels and to redress wrongs committed during the CR heralded the end both to the era of class struggle and to the practice of determining political loyalty from a family's economic status in the three years 1946–49. The amazing fact is not that the regime finally decided to end its feudalistic practice, but that it took so long to do so.

[123] Ming Bao , 20 September 1979.

[124] Feijing Yuebao , 22(3) 16 September 1979, 80; Qishi Niandai , 21 June 1980.

9
The Structure of the Cadre Corps

By the time the CCP made the historic decision to shift its main goal to economic development, China had a gigantic cadre corps shaped cumulatively by past policies. As a historical product of guerrilla warfare in the early 1940s, the socialist revolution in the 1950s, the "continuing revolutions" in the early 1960s, and the interelite conflicts during the CR, the existing cadre corps was ill-suited for the new task of the Four Modernizations (the modernizations of agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology): it was too large in size, old in average age, low in educational level, ossified in political outlook, demoralized, and factionalized. Through their prolonged and checkered careers, the cadres learned that the best way to preserve their positions in the bureaucracy was to play it safe by refusing to take clear-cut positions on any issue, while cultivating extensive personal networks. Economic reforms and changes in official ideology that allowed a certain amount of individualism offered ample opportunity for cadres to use their formal authority for personal gain. The ordinary Chinese were bitter about the cadres' corruption. "If things continue like this, how can the party be called a Communist party and the state be called a [socialist] state?"^[1]

Deng Xiaoping succinctly summarized the problems of Chinese officialdom:

The bureaucratic phenomenon is the most serious problem for our nation and our party. The major manifestations of bureaucratism are looking down on the people, abusing political power, departing from reality, being separated from the masses, speaking empty words, espousing an antiquated ossified ideology, blindly observing absurd regulations, creating redundant organizations, having more

[1] For the bureaucratic problems, see Zhengming , no. 52, February 1982, 11; Renmin Ribao , 18 September 1980; "Zhang Pinghua's Speech to Cadres in the Cultural Field," Issues and Studies , December 1978, pp. 97–118.

people than needed, avoiding decision-making, not caring about efficiency, irresponsibility, betraying trust, adding red tape, behaving destructively, retaliating against others, suppressing democracy, cheating superiors and subordinates, taking bribes, and accumulating wealth.^[2]

These problems stemmed from the structure of the bureaucracy in which the cadres were operating as well as the characteristics of the cadres themselves.^[3]

The Bureaucratic Setting

As shown in table 30, the bureaucratic machinery that the CCP had developed after 1949 and prior to the reforms was not only gigantic and unwieldy, but also highly stratified, with eight layers from the central government down to an individual in the rural area. Within each level was another set of layers. For instance, between the municipal government and individual workers were five administrative layers including the municipal government, the commission, the bureau, the corporation, and the factory.

Moreover, at each level there were and are several parallel bureaucracies: party, government, military, judiciary, and political consultative conference. Within the party and government, internal structures were further theoretically divided between executives and representative organs: secretaries, several committees, functional bureaus, and party congresses. Government organs at each level had similar units. In addition, about 392,500 industrial enterprises, as well as 1 million business units, were under the jurisdiction of the party-state organs at different levels. Some of them were directly under the jurisdiction of central government units, while others answered to the provincial or local authorities. Many of these units were under dual leadership of the upper echelon's bureau (tiaotiao ) and of the local government (kuaikuai ).

Within the bureaucracy political authority was highly centralized. The Leninist principle of democratic centralism created a pseudo-military command structure, with authority flowing from

[2] Renmin Ribao , 2 November 1981.

[3] For structural problems of the Chinese bureaucracy, see Harry Harding, Organizing China; The Problems of Bureaucracy, 1949–1976 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981).

the Politburo down to the secretary of each party cell. Each level had a well-defined authority, responsibility, and task, but their authorities and responsibilities were not guaranteed by laws and rules. A higher authority could always encroach upon the jurisdiction of the lower level. Despite the various illegal and unofficial means (mainly passive) for resisting the higher authority, the organizational structure effectively allowed authority to flow from the center to the individual level.

All offices and cadres have well-defined rankings (see fig. 2). The uniform wage grade system of 1956 classified all cadres—from central to basic levels—into thirty grades, ranging from the top three grades for party and state chairmen and premiers, to the bottom grades for service personnel in party-state organs.^[4] Although

[4] Workers were classified into eight grades. Technical cadres—school teachers, public health workers, and scientists—had several different sets of wage scales ranging from 1 to 13, or 20. Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Renshi Zhidu Gaiyao (Beijing: Beijing Dafue Chubanshe, 1985), 267–313.

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

initially designed only for wage scales, the grade system codified the distribution of power and prestige within the gigantic bureaucracy. Each enterprise and business unit had, and still has, a ranking equivalent to some territorial unit. A university may be at the ministry level; in that case it would enjoy the administrative rights of ministry-level units in such areas as personnel, financing, and communication with other units. Usually research institutes corresponded to the county level, and the leaders of such an institute were considered county-level cadres, with all the appropriate privileges.

The immense size and hierarchy of the Chinese bureaucracy accentuated such well-known malaises of any large bureaucracy as leakage of authority, disputes over jurisdiction, displacement of goals, and inefficiency. There were several additional factors unique to the Chinese bureaucracy that further aggravated these problems.

The Chinese bureaucracy monopolizes political authority while not being accountable to anyone—except to top political leaders, who derive their authority from the offices they hold within the bureaucracy. The series of social revolutions—such as land reform, collectivization, the peaceful transformation of industry, and the antirightist campaign—completely eliminated any social force that could check on the bureaucracy. No forums where political issues could be discussed existed outside the party-state apparatus. Although the party-state and other mass organizations could be nominally distinguished, in reality mass organizations existed only as a "transmission belt." Despite the official position that the bureaucracy is the instrument of the proletarian dictatorship, the theoretically dominant groups do not have any direct control over the bureaucracy.

The scope of activities that the bureaucracy regulated was comprehensive and inclusive. In other words, the entire society was bureaucratized. All Chinese belong to a unit (danwei ), each of which is organized to be as self-sufficient as possible ("big and complete, small and complete"—da er chuan, xiao er chuan ). For example, each unit managed a wide range of support facilities for its members, such as dining halls, motor pools, repair teams, hotels, printing shops, health clinics, kindergartens, nursery schools, barber shops, bath houses, and retail shops (see table 31). Approx-

imately 25 percent of all personnel are employed in support services,^[5] but the regime plans to reduce them to 15 percent.^[6] It is said that Chinese universities have almost everything for their members' needs except a cemetery. The unit takes care of "one person's entire life from birth to death, clothing, eating, living, activities, studying culture [wenhua ], and participating in labor; there is nothing that is unrelated to the administration."^[7] Within each unit, the division of labor, specialization, and professionalization of its members are minimal, largely because of Mao's worry that functional specialization would lead to the restratification of Chinese society.

The idea of organizing each unit to be self-sufficient can also be traced back to guerrilla warfare practice. During the war period, state organs, associations, military units, and schools were dispersed in rural areas, moving around according to the changing

[5] Jingji Fazhan Yu Tizhi Gaige , no. 7, 1986, 7–12.

[6] Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanli , no. 4, 1986, 13.

[7] Zheng Zhi Yu Zhengzhi Kexue (Beijing: Qunzhong Chubanshe, 1984), 95.

battle situation. Consequently, every unit had to have personnel to take care of the needs of the entire unit.^[8] The practice continued after 1949, largely because of Mao's commitment to egalitarianism, his dislike of the division of labor and functions, his admiration of simplistic collectivism, and the regime's reluctance to use market mechanisms for the flow of information, materials, and service. Moreover, in Mao's, view an organization and a community were indistinguishable. The organization replaced the community (xiang ), the village became the brigade and production team, and the work unit became the basis for the residential community.

Organizing the entire society along the lines of "big and complete, small and complete" results in inefficiency and bloated personnel. For example, when all the printing shops in society are operating two or three shifts, many government printing facilities sit idle. Higher educational institutions cannot increase student enrollment because of shortages in dormitory facilities. Adding one additional car requires a new driver and support, such as housing for his family. Any cadre fired from his job loses all his support base.

In 1983, the Secretariat suggested the socialization of state support works, that is, the transfer of support works to independent enterprises, which will be managed according to economic principles by providing services to other clients. Many, however, are extremely reluctant to give their support work to independent units because "when the service industry in society is not ideal, support personnel are more important than the cadre."^[9]

This kind of organizational structure does not allow much room for individuals to make decisions, but it grants a wide scope of power to the unit. Each unit makes decisions not only on matters pertaining to its tasks, but also on issues relating to the private lives of the unit members from birth to death. Theoretically, members of a unit own the unit. But in reality, it is the unit which owns the members. In turn, cadres who are officially responsible for managing the unit virtually own it.

Collectivization theoretically means collective ownership by peasants, but in reality "collective ownership" means that the collective owns

[8] Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanli , no. 11, 1986, 16–18.

[9] Jingji Fazhan Yu Tizhi Gaige , no. 7, 1986, 7–12.

us peasants as well as the resources we work on. The cadres who control the collective then do whatever they please with our lives. They behave no differently from the local bullies we heard so much about from the recall-bitterness accounts of our fathers. However, the strongmen of the 1930s and 1940s had no legitimate claim on the peasants, who regarded them as excesses of the traditional society. The cadres, on the other hand, enjoy the total authority given to them by the socialist system. Chairman Mao once said that the scriptures were good, only that they had from time to time been recited by priests with crooked mouths. I wonder about these scriptures; it seems that they have distorted the mouths instead.^[10]

The Chinese bureaucracy was highly politicized. Mao's idea of "politics in command" implies that no area of human activity should be left outside the political realm. Every decision, whether it is political, economic, or social, is of a political nature. Thus, political criteria—rising from the perspective of class struggle—should be used in making decisions. No other consideration, either of ethics or of unique laws governing the specific field, should be taken into account when the decision is made. "Politics in command" provided the bureaucracy with ample justification for the command style of work, which refused to be restrained by any objective law governing separate functional fields.

The combined effect of this hierarchy, inclusive functions, and politicization of the Chinese bureaucracy was minimal lateral contact between units. Most of the coordination and interaction of units on the same level had to be channeled through a superior authority, which administratively allocated most necessary resources, finances, and services to subordinate units, thereby minimizing the need for communications or interactions among units or individuals belonging to different units. In other words, the regime relied on political coordination while neglecting functional coordination and coordination based on exchanges. In turn, the absence of functional coordination further encouraged each unit to pursue self-sufficiency in every aspect, acting like an independent kingdom. Any kind of work that required interoffice coordination

[10] Helen Siu, "Collective Economy, Authority, and Political Power in Rural China," in Myron J. Aronoff, ed., The Frailty of Authority (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1986).

required several months because every office wanted to "research and research" and "discuss and discuss."

In addition, the party ordinarily maintains tight control over administrative as well as other functional bureaucracies, rendering meaningless organizational distinctions among the party, the state, enterprise units, and business units. The party not only has its own bureaucratic hierarchy paralleling the state structure, but it also penetrates every formal organization and institution. Party members hold key positions in government as well as in economic and social organizations. Most cadres, particularly leading ones, were party members subject to party command. Within the party bureaucracy, power gradually became concentrated in the hands of the first secretary, with party committees and congresses acting merely as rubber stamps. When the regime stressed collective decision-making, the bureaucratic system encountered a different kind of problem.

Because of the idea of collective decision-making, numerous meetings are held. But often no decision is made, and even already decided policy is seldom implemented at the lower levels. Middle-level bureaucrats simply copy instructions from above and transmit them below. Documents are numerous, but concrete directives are very few, and the cadres do not understand the situation at the lower levels. Not all staff members attend to their work. When a general meeting of leaders is called, less than half of them attend. Even those who attend are divided in their opinions and engage in endless discussion, so that the problems remain unresolved. As for really handling matters, they just take turns signing their names on the documents and expressing their opinions, so that it takes a lot of time to circulate the documents among them. If something concerns their gains and losses, or if they are held responsible for it, it would take even more time for them to pass the documents from one to another.^[11]

Although power was concentrated at the upper echelons of the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy regulated all aspects of an individual's life, the Chinese political process has never been highly institutionalized. Low-level institutionalization of the Chinese bureaucracy granted the cadres enormous discretionary power,

[11] Xuexi Lundan , no. 2, 1983, 20.

thereby allowing them to employ their personal and idiosyncratic features in performing their official duties.

In addition, some Chinese administrative practices further increased the cadres' power. The official guidelines on any policy have always been broad and ambiguous, leaving a great deal of leeway for leading cadres at each level. Although its intended purpose was to enable the cadres to incorporate the concrete conditions of the localities in the process of policy implementation, they could easily exploit that leeway for personal gain or for local interests.

Moreover, Chinese administrative practice was to keep cadres for a long time in one position—known as the "life-tenure system"—which can be traced back to three factors. First, senior Chinese cadres are the first generation of revolutionaries who believed that "those who contributed to the revolution are justified in becoming cadres." Second, due to the unavailability of employment opportunities outside the inclusive state structure, the regime has no way of disposing of excessive personnel after a reduction in the bureaucracy or of cadres who have finished their terms. Third, the socialist state is responsible for the cadres, regardless of whether they are on active duty or not.

Although such a system provides long-term security and employment, it also produces a waste of talent, frustration, dependency, and a loss of initiative. Serving at one post for a long time may make leading cadres familiar with their own units, but it also helps develop "complicated human networks" involving superiors, colleagues, subordinates, and family members, making it easy for leading cadres to "privatize" their formal authority, while forming a "leading strata" quite separate from ordinary people throughout China.^[12] As Andrew Walder succinctly demonstrates, the leading cadres frequently exploited their formal authority to reward the obedient while penalizing the disobedient, thus developing elaborate patronage networks.^[13]

Even if we assume that many leading cadres have been exercising their formal authority impartially and justly according to the

[12] This is why many family members work in the same unit. Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanli , no. 7, 1986, 25; no. 6, 1987, 34.

[13] Andrew G. Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987).

intention of official guidelines, the mere fact that they have jurisdiction on innumerable matters crucially relevant to the daily life of ordinary people indicates that the Chinese masses were highly dependent on administrative decisions. Since power in an organizational setting can be defined in terms of the "structural phenomenon of dependency," whether or not cadres made decisions in line with the wishes and best interests of members of the unit had no bearing on the power imbalance between cadres and the masses.^[14]

Furthermore, there was not much room for individuals to challenge the formal authority exercised by bureaucrats of the party-state in their own units. Any challenge to an individual leader is considered a challenge to the party-state, because, as the work teams during the CR argued, individual leaders could claim to represent the party committee, and the lower-level party committee could claim to represent the higher party authority. Thus, any challenge to a unit leader becomes criticism of that individual leader's unit and is often construed as a challenge to the authority of the party-state. No mechanism to check abuse of power by the cadres has been formalized. Mass participation in political campaigns, leadership participation in labor, and criticism and self-criticism became rituals without having much impact on the operation of the overall structure.

In sum, the structural characteristics of the Chinese bureaucracy were not conducive to the democratization of human relations in China. On the contrary, the unique features of the Chinese bureaucracy allowed the cadres to wield an unprecedented amount of power as agents of the party-state. The cadres were not only the implementors of policy decisions but also the policy formulators in a country where there was no distinction between politician and bureaucrat.^[15] High-level cadres often exercised the formal authority of the party and the party-state and formulated official policies. When the absence of strong leaders such as Stalin or Mao allowed the Leninist Party to make decisions according to "democratic centralism," the preference of the lower level cadres were bound to

[14] Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power in Organization (Boston: Pitman, 1981).

[15] For the distinction between politicians and the bureaucrats, see Joel D. Aber-bach, Robert D. Putnam, and Bert A. Rockman, eds., Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).

influence the policy choices of the party-state. In this process the cadres' experiences, perceptions, and values are bound to be reflected in their policy preferences. In other words, the organizational structure of the Chinese bureaucracy reinforced, rather than modified, the persistent traditional way of thinking on the part of the cadres and the ordinary masses.

It is ironic—and tragic for China—that the CCP's efforts to remove all sources of exploitation and inequality have resulted in the new system of units (danwei ), which probably limits freedom and mobility more than traditional institutions. In traditional China, such diverse institutions as class, kinship, and community, at least, allowed each individual to identify with many different groups. But in socialist China, the practice of organizing each unit—which has its own rankings as ministry-level unit or county-level unit—to be self-sufficient in meeting most of its members' social needs, an interesting combination of the "life-tenure system" with the practice of "unit ownership" has allowed the traditional social networks and practices to enter in the operation of the unit, thus perpetuating the "feudal mentality" of the cadres. As many Chinese scholars insist, this feudal mentality is in part derived from traditional Chinese culture and in part reinforced by the "peasant mentality of the cadres," many of whom are from the poorest groups in the rural areas. But it should also be pointed out that the organizational structure in China has been as much responsible for the feudal mentality of the cadres as resilient Chinese cultural tradition. The most urgent agenda for political reform in China is the development of a new organizational structure which, instead of reinforcing the traditional political culture, will be conducive to producing a modern outlook in cadres. Without the structural changes of "department ownership," the "life-tenure system," and "big and complete, and small and complete," the feudal mentality of the cadres and the ordinary people will continue.

Growth and Distribution of Cadres

To staff this gigantic bureaucracy, China developed about 20 million cadres by 1982 and 29 million by 1988 (see table 32). The size of the cadre corps increased steadily after 1949. In 1958, the ratio of

cadres to citizens was 1:80, but it reached 1:50 in 1982. It grew by more than 370 percent from 1952 to 1982, whereas the number of people working in the administrative sector only doubled in the same period.^[16] The most rapid increase occurred between 1971 and 1973, when the CR rebels were becoming cadres, whereas temporary decreases took place after the 1953 party rectification (for those employed in state and mass organs), the 1957–58 simplification of the administration, and the initial stages of the CR.

Although we do not know how the total number of cadres employed in the states were distributed by party and government organs, the table of organization the regime is setting up indicates that about 14 percent of the total authorized personnel in state organs are party cadres, 5 percent are mass organization, and 5 percent are other.^[17]

The regime has managed successfully to limit the size of the State Council, although its size fluctuates largely with political movements and economic centralization and decentralization.^[18] Nonetheless, the number of cadres at the provincial, district, municipal, and county levels has increased steadily, regardless of the decentralization and recentralization of economic decision-making authority (see table 33). In 1949 the regime decreed that an average-sized provincial government should have approximately 600 cadres spread over twenty offices. But the actual numbers of provincial cadres swelled rapidly. For example, Hubei province had 4,000 cadres by 1961, more than six times the originally approved ceiling; this number increased to 5,692 by the time of the CR and to 8,600 by 1982. The growth was particularly rapid immediately following the purge of the Gang of Four.^[19] By 1983, the authorized manpower ceiling for Hubei increased to 6,000 persons with an eighty-office limit.^[20]

The increase at district and municipal levels paralleled the

[16] The administrative sector refers to the party, government, and mass organizations in the 1982 census.

[17] Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanli , no. 4, 1986, 10–13.

[18] Guowuyuan Bangongting Diaocha Yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanlixue Chutan (Beijing: Jingji Kexue Chubanshe, 1984), 45–54. The number of economic enterprises and business units directly under the State Council increased from 1,260 in 1978 to 2,680 in 1981. Zhongguo Xingzheng Guanli , no. 5, 1987, 27.

[19] Shijian , no. 2, 1982, 16–17.

[20] Shehui Kexue Dongtai (Hubei), no. 11, 10 April 1983.