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Political Aspects of the National People's Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

Previous sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC), with their voluminous official reports on the ups and downs of Government work —particularly economic work—have provided some of the best data for tracking the course of political change in China during the last decade, and for trying to co-ordinate apparent changes of policy with the rise or fall of individual politicians. Although this year's NPC produced little more than a guarded summary of Chou En-lai's Report on Government Work, a Resolution on it and a People's Daily editorial, when these are read with the rest of current propaganda and compared with previous form, an attempt can be made to draw some tentative conclusions about the present political climate in Peking.

Type
Recent Developments
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1962

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References

1 This has always been a risky business, since it is never clear to what extent such data should be taken at their face value, and die nearer analysts of the Chinese scene have got to the real significance of what is passing on it, the more unintelligible or even incredible their reasoning often becomes. Cf. Smith, Arthur's Chinese Characteristics (New York: Revell, 1894), p. 73Google Scholar: “[T]he individual who can peruse a copy of the Peking Gazette and … can form an approximately correct notion as to what is really behind it [may understand China]. But is there not reason to fear that by the time any outside barbarian shall have reached such a pitch of comprehension … we shall be as much at a loss to know what he meant by what he said, as if he were really Chinese?” For “Peking Gazette,” now read “Peking Review.”

2 Cf. Liu Shao-ch'i's report to the Eighth National Congress of the CCP, Second Session, 05 5–23, 1958.Google Scholar

3 See for example “Strengthen the Fighting Stamina of the Party,” Red Flag, No. 3–4, 1962Google Scholar, which complains that “some persons” think discipline is no longer important and would allow the Party to degenerate into a “Social-democratic Party which gives itself up to the bourgeoisie.”

4 The People's Daily of 04 17Google Scholar quotes it “as stated by Mao in 1957,” but it does not appear in the official version of his speech published on June 18, 1957.

5 Kuang-ming Daily, 03 15, 1961Google Scholar: an article in the same paper on March 22, 1962, reviews progress since the conference on political theoretical studies called by the CPPCC National Committee in 1960, which enunciated a programme suitable to the “new phase” of the United Front and implementing the “Party's current general policy in respect of the national bourgeoisie, which calls for readjustment of relations, strengthening of solidarity, and an effort to rally all those who can be rallied and to turn to account all the positive factors which can be turned to account.”

6 Cf. Kuang-ming Daily, 03 19, 1962.Google Scholar

7 Red Flag, No. 8–9, 1962, p. 42et seq.Google Scholar

8 The All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. On business methods see for example Ch'un-hsiu, Yang in Ta Kung Pao, 02 16, 1962Google Scholar, “what should be emphasised is that commercial personnel must learn to do business and keep accounts.”

9 En-lai, Chou, “Report on the Question of Intellectuals” (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1956), p. 34Google Scholaret seq. See also his Report to the Second Plenary of the second CPPCC National Committee in which he referred specifically to electronics and atomic energy.

10 Cf. editorials in Red Flag, No. 10, 1962Google Scholar, and People's Daily, 05 23, 1962.Google Scholar

11 Ulanfu told the Eighth Congress that big-Han chauvinism was “relatively serious at present”: NCNA, 09 19, 1956.Google Scholar

12 Hindustan Times, 04 11, 1962Google Scholar; Tribune, 02 7, 1962.Google Scholar

13 Both now and in 1959, Sino-Indian border disputes have been linked with Sino-Soviet tensions; recent Chinese articles on Sinkiang topics and moves such as the publication of a Latinised Kazakh journal in Hi seem to indicate a preoccupation with Sino-Soviet and Sino-minority relations in the area.

14 For a discussion of differential land rent, justifying material incentives for peasants, see Kuang-ming Daily, 09 18, 1961Google Scholar; and for differential wages in industry, see People's Daily, 03 6, 1962.Google Scholar

15 Cf. People's Daily, 01 13, 1962Google Scholar, “Insist on the method of persuasive education,” and People's Daily, 01 22, 1962Google Scholar, “Patient assistance, serious rectification.”

16 Rao, Lin, “March Ahead under the Red Flag of the Party's General Line and Mao Tse-tong's Military Thinking” (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), p. 8.Google Scholar

17 Red Flag, Nos. 11 and 12, 1961.Google Scholar

18 Marshal Lin Piao has been much concerned with strengthening political indoctrination at the company level; this was discussed at the important All-PLA Political work conference held in Peking, , 10 18-11 11, 1961Google Scholar, and is the subject of continuing campaigns for “four—good companies” and “five—good soldiers,” etc.

19 Another important point not mentioned was the indoctrination of the youth with revolutionary traditions and the “Yenan style.”

20 See The China Quarterly, No. 8, 1961Google Scholar: Charles, David A., “The dismissal of Marshal P'eng Teh-huai.”Google Scholar Since the above was written Ch'en Yun's comeback has been graphically demonstrated by the publication of a symbolic photograph of him shaking hands with Mao under the aegis of Liu Shao-ch'i. (The Times, 08 24, 1962.)Google Scholar

21 In his book Liu Shoo Chi (Editions Denoel, Paris, 1961)Google Scholar, the German ex-Communist H. H. Wetzel paints a fascinating picture of Liu's relations with Trotsky and the present Soviet leaders, unfortunately without adducing adequate evidence.

22 In September 1956 he did write in the Canton Southern Daily that Party Committees should not interfere in day-to-day work, and implied that in an emergency they would cause delay and irresponsibility.

23 Daily Worker, 07 31, 1955.Google Scholar

24 Ch'en Shu-t'ung, reported by NCNA, 06 21, 1956.Google Scholar

25 Hsia Yi-kun, reported by NCNA, 06 27, 1956Google Scholar. Chang Po-chün favoured the expansion of ocean shipping and trade with South-East Asia.

26 Also Lai Jo-yü and Chia To-fu.

27 November 29, 1956.

28 “Report on the Agrarian Reform Law” at Second Session of National Committee of the CPPCC, 06 14, 1950.Google Scholar

29 World Marxist Review, 10 1959.Google Scholar

30 See the “Decisions on Agricultural Co-operation” adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the Seventh CC of the CCP, 10 11, 1955 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), p. 39et seq.Google Scholar

31 See Hsieh, Alice Langley, “Communist China and Nuclear Warfare,” The China Quarterly, No. 2, 0406, 1960.Google Scholar

32 Among other things, some APCs turned into a sort of collective Kulak harder to cope with than the individual kind; People's Daily, 06 26, 1957Google Scholar. In the early days of the communes, before command of the militia was separated from management of production, East European Press reports indicated a similar tendency towards the creation of “private empires.”

33 Cf. especially Liu Ya-lou's article in the Liberation Army Daily, 05 23, 1958Google Scholar. Erroneous tendencies had only gradually been corrected since the promulgation of the 1954 Draft Regulations on political work, he said; in an apparent attack on those who favoured a rapid military build-up at any price, he argued that modernisation of defence should proceed pari passu with the modernisation of Chinese industry as a whole. “If we catch up with Britain and then the United States … (we shall) be able to make the most up-to-date aircraft and atomic bombs in the not too distant future.” On August 1, 1958, Chu Teh and Ho Lung stressed “Mao's military thinking” on the importance of “man,” and warned against reliance on outside help and over emphasis on nuclear weapons and modern techniques. Immediately after this, the drive to raise militia began; as Ho pointed out, the essence of Mao's doctrine was that when not fighting the troops were dispersed to mobilise the masses, and this they did, joining in the cottage steelworks drive, etc., under the slogan “politics is commander-in-chief.”

34 Daily Worker, 12 31, 1961.Google Scholar

35 Sun Tzu (Chung Hua Bookstore, March 1961, photostatic edn.), Vol. IV, p. 6.Google Scholar

36 Chou En-lai, Teng Tzu-hui and others have explicitly mentioned “the cosmopolitan world our forefathers dreamed of” (i.e., Ta T'ung or Utopia) as the aim of the CCP's socio-economic measures; see for example Teng's speech on the APCs at the NPC, June 19, 1956. Thompson, Lawrence G.'s book Ta Tung Shu, The One-World Philosophy of K'ang Yu-wei (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958)Google Scholar gives an idea of how bizarre these dreams could be.

37 Yi-fu, in People's Daily, 01 20, 1962Google Scholar, as translated in Survey of China Mainland Press (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 2676.Google Scholar

38 For a good example of Boxer mentality, see “Man is the factor that decides the outcome of war,” The Chinese Youth Newspaper, 10 29, 1960Google Scholar; it argues that “we the righteous, are bound to win, no matter what weapons the enemy may have.”