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Military Regions and Provincial Party Secretaries: One Outcome of China's Cultural Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Gordon Bennett
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Extract

During the Cultural Revolution, “Party life” (tang ti sheng-huo) was temporarily interrupted when leading members of Communist Party organizations at all levels were called (or “dragged”) out to defend themselves against the criticisms of revolutionary mass factions. As these issues were resolved, new coalitions formed and Party organs were carefully restructured to reflect the new distribution of power. The analysis here is of the 158 secretaries and deputy secretaries elected by the new provincial committees of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) between 4 December 1970 and 24 August 1971. It yields some unexpected findings.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 54 , June 1973 , pp. 294 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

1. An earlier draft of this paper was read before the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in New York, 27–29 March 1972. Funds for research were granted by the University Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin and temporary facilities were graciously provided by the East Asian Institute at Columbia University. I would especially like to acknowledge Susan Horsey's invaluable research assistance, and Donald Klein's repeated help and suggestions to me in collecting and analyzing the data. In addition, highly useful criticisms and suggestions were offered by William Parish, Parris Chang, James Caldwell and Ronald Montaperto. Sole responsibility for what remains, however, belongs to me.

2. Throughout I consistently use the term “civilian” to refer to individuals who were either civilian exclusively or simultaneously holding a military post. I use the term “pure civilian” to refer more restrictively to individuals with no significant military appointment. In parallel fashion, I refer to “military” and “pure military” personnel.

3. The reasonableness of this assumption rests with the supposition that these unknowns are local people from Cultural Revolution mass organizations whose previous careers were too insignificant to merit inclusion in western compilations of elite personages. It should be pointed out, however, that a similar assumption made earlier about the revolutionary committees has proved faulty: more than half of those unknown at first were later discovered to be PLA men.

4. Gittings, John, The Role of the Chinese Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 308Google Scholarelaborates this reorganization.

5. Whitson, , “The Field Army in Chinese Communist military politics,” The China Quarterly, No. 37 (01–03 1969), pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One might argue that any randomly constructed region having several provinces, not just ones associated with Field Army Systems, would produce higher insider rates simply by virtue of their size. This is a valid criticism. But data presented below on the regions' ranking by degree of “intervention” give reason to prefer Field Army System-defined regions throughout. Another point to note is that not every writer who uses the Field Army System concept agrees with Whitson's delineation of their constituent units. Whereas Whitson places the Shenyang Military Region (Manchuria) in the Fourth Field Army System, for example, Parris Chang writes that the Second Field Army “has its power base in Manchuria and Southwest China.” See his “Changing patterns of military roles in Chinese politics,” in Whitson, William W. (ed.), The Military and Political Power in China in the 1970s (New York: Praeger, 1972), p. 67Google Scholar.

6. Of these, however, 14 (15 per cent.) are known to have been active in the same region (using Field Army Systems—see below) before the Cultural Revolution.

7. An exceptional number were first identified in their new province during the turbulent summer of 1967. Seventeen (18 per cent.) of the 94 possible newcomers were spotted originally between May and October of that year, and all but three were pure military. Chekiang absorbed 4; Kiangsi 3; and Hupei, Shansi and Szechwan 2 apiece.

8. I am grateful to William Whitson of the RAND Corporation for supplying these unpublished figures for Field Army Systems affiliations.

9. Teiwes, , Provincial Party Personnel in Mainland China, 1956–1966 (New York: Columbia University, Occasional Papers of the East Asian Institute, 1967), pp. 38–9Google Scholar. For an updated and slightly revised version of this measure (the version I use here) see Teiwes, , “Provincial politics in China: themes and variations,” in Lindbeck, John M. H. (ed.), China: Management of a Revolutionary Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), pp. 152–3Google Scholar.

10. Spearman's where D is the difference of ranks for each case i and N is the total number of cases. If there is no relationship whatever, rho = 0; if the rankings are in perfect agreement, rho = 1; and if the rankings are in perfect disagreement, rho = – 1. Peking, Shanghai and Tientsin were omitted from this computation.

11. For example, see Powell, Ralph L., “Soldiers in the Chinese economy,” Asian Survey (AS), XI: 8 (08 1971), pp. 742–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Klein, Donald W. and Hager, Lois B., “The Ninth Central Committee,” The China Quarterly, No. 45 (01–03 1971), p. 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Whitson, William W., “The Military: Their Role in the Policy Process,” in Trager, Frank N. and Henderson, William (eds.), Communist China, 1949–1969: A Twenty-Year Appraisal (New York: New York University Press, 1970), p. 122Google Scholar.

14. Both quotations from Domes, Jurgen, “Some results of the Cultural Revolution in China,” AS, XI: 9 (09 1971), pp. 937–8Google Scholar.

15. For example, see “Unite to win still greater victories,” the joint 1972 New Year of the People's Daily, Red Flag, and the Liberation Army News translated in the Peking Review, No. 1 (7 01 1972), pp. 8–11Google Scholar. “Adhering to Chairman Mao's teachings, the whole Party, through reading and studying, opposing arrogance and doing away with complacency, and criticizing revisionism and rectifying the style of work, has carried forward the struggle between the two classes, the two roads and the two lines in a deep-going way and consolidated and developed the gains of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. … The victorious progress of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the ever-deepening process of education in ideology and political line have enhanced the enthusiasm for socialism of the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers and revolutionary intellectuals and promoted the steady advance of industry, agriculture, commerce, science and technology, culture and education and work in other fields; our socialist construction is thriving.”

16. Bennett, Gordon, “China's continuing revolution: will it be permanent?” AS, X: 1 (01 1970), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

17. Harding, Harry, “China: toward revolutionary pragmatism,” AS, XI: 1 (01 1971), pp. 51–66Google Scholar.

18. For example, see Cheng, Peter, “Liu Shao-ch'i and the Cultural Revolution,” AS, XI: 10 (10 1971), pp. 943–57Google Scholar. See also Trager, Frank N. and Henderson, William (eds.), Communist China, 1949–1969: A Twenty Year Appraisal (New York: New York University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, passim.