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Report from China: Political Rehabilitation of Cadres in China: A Traveller's View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Parris H. Chang
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When a memorial service was held in Peking on 14 December 1972 for the deceased Teng Tzu-hui, member of the Central Committee (CC) of the Chinese Communist Party and formerly Vice-Premier and Director of the Party's Rural Work Department, among those present to pay their last respects were a dozen or so veteran cadres making their first known public appearance for several years. Likewise, some 30 ranking civilian and army officials appeared publicly for the first time since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at a Peking reception given by the Ministry of Defence on the eve of Army Day, 31 July 1972. These men were among the victims of the Cultural Revolution – they were accused of a variety of serious political crimes, humiliated in public, and dismissed from their posts in the Party, government, or army. However, their appearance in public now, even on such purely ceremonial occasions, serves to indicate that they have been restored to good political standing. Some of them have already been assigned to new posts, but the present positions of most others have not yet been revealed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 54 , June 1973 , pp. 331 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

* I would like to thank the Social Science Research Council, and the Office of Research and Graduate Study of the College of Liberal Arts of Pennsylvania State University for grants which supported my trip to Asia and within China, respectively, during the autumn of 1972. These two institutions, however, are not responsible for the views expressed here.

1. E.g., Ku Mu (formerly Director of State Capital Construction Commission), Chien Hsin-chung (formerly Minister of Public Health), Yang Shang-kuei (formerly First Party Secretary of Kiangsi Province), and Lin Fu-chia (formerly a Party Secretary of Chekiang Province); for a complete list of those present, see New China News Agency (NCNA), 14 December 1972.

2. E.g., Ch'en Tsai-tao and Chung Han-hua (formerly Commander and Political Commissar respectively of Wuhan Military Region), Yang Yung and Liao Hansheng (formerly Commander and Political Commissar respectively of Peking Military Region), and Wu Leng-hsi (formerly Director of NCNA and the People's Daily); for a complete list of those present, see the People's Daily, 1 August 1972.

3. According to a Chinese official in Peking, Yeh Fei, formerly First Secretary of Fukien Province, has been “liberated,” and is now a top cadre in an important factory, and there are many cadres who have already been liberated but have not been conspicuous in public.

4. See Chang, Parris H., “Mao's great purge: a political balance sheet,” Problems of Communism (03–04 1969), pp. 1–10Google Scholar; also, Neuhauser, Charles, “The impact of the Cultural Revolution on the Chinese Communist Party machine,” Asian Survey (06 1968), pp. 465–88Google Scholar.

5. Chung-ta hung-ch'i (Chung-shan University Red Flag) (Canton), 4 04 1968Google Scholar.

6. Chu-ying tung-fung-hung (Pearl River East is Red) (Canton), 04 1968Google Scholar, as translated in SCMP 4166 (29 04 1968), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.

7. See “Cadres must be treated correctly,” Editorial, Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), No. 4 (23 04 1967)Google Scholar, and “Resolutely defend the correct principle of a ‘three-way alliance,’” Editorial, the People's Daily, 17 February 1967.

8. Among the better known are Chang P'ing-hua (formerly First Party Secretary of Hunan and now a Party Secretary of Shansi), and Chao Tzu-yang (formerly First Party Secretary of Kwangtung and now a Party Secretary there, after briefly holding the position of a Party Secretary in Inner Mongolia).

9. These victims include P'an Fu-sheng (Director of Heilungkiang Revolutionary Committee), Wang Hsiao-yu (Director of Shantung Revolutionary Committee), Liu Ko-p'ing and Chang Jih-ching (Director and First Deputy Director of Shansi Revolutionary Committee), Li Tsai-han (Director of Kweichow Revolutionary Committee), Li Yuan (Director of Hunan Revolutionary Committee), Tseng Yungya (Director of Tibet Revolutionary Committee), Liu Chieh-t'ing and Chang Hsit'ing (Deputy Directors of Szechuan Revolutionary Committee), and Nieh Yuan-tzu (Deputy Director of Peking Revolutionary Committee).

10. Since Lin Piao's downfall in September 1971, at least 60 senior officials among central and provincial authorities have disappeared from the political scene and have presumably been purged. They include, from the PLA general headquarters, Huang Yung-sheng (PLA Chief of Staff), Wu Fa-hsien (Commander of Air Force), Li Tso-p'eng (First Political Commissar of Navy), Ch'iu Hui-tso (Director of PLA Rear Service Department), and Yeh Ch'ün (Lin Piao's wife, Director of the Staff Office of the Military Affairs Committee), all of them, being also members of the Politburo; and Li Hsueh-feng (alternate member of the Politburo and Director of Hopei Revolutionary Committee), Nan P'ing and Ch'en Li-yun (respectively First and Second Party Secretary of Chekiang), Wang Chia-tao (Commander and First Party Secretary of Heilungkiang), Liang Hsin-ch'u (Commander of Chengtu Military Region and Second Party Secretary of Szechuan), Liu Feng (First Political Commissar of Wuhan Military Region and Second Party Secretary of Hupeh), and Chou Chih-p'ing (Political Commissar of Foochow Military Region and Second Party Secretary of Fukien), Cheng Shih-ch'ing (First Party Secretary of Kiangsi) and Cheng Wei-shang (Commander of Peking Military Region) in the regional/provincial PLA/party hierarchies.

11. According to my incomplete tabulation, approximately 50 or more former provincial Party Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries have been rehabilitated. Among the ranking PLA officials rehabilitated are Li Ta (newly appointed PLA Deputy Chief of Staff), Su Chen-hua (formerly Political Commissar of Navy, now its Deputy Commander), Chang Tsung-hsün (formerly PLA Deputy Chief of Staff and now Deputy Commander of Tsinan Military Region), Kan Wei-han (formerly Political Commissar of Chengtu Military Region and now Political Commissar of the Lu-ta Garrison), Ch'en Tsai-tao, Chung Han-hua, Yang Yung and Liao Hansheng. In the central government, Ch'en Yun, Li Fu-ch'un and Nieh Jung-chen have recently been identified Vice-Premiers and may have resumed their important responsibility in the State Council, but they have been politically eclipsed as they are no longer Politburo members.

12. For a detailed, excellent study of the Wuhan Incident, see Robinson, Thomas W., “The Wuhan incident: local strife and provincial rebellion during the Cultural Revolution,” CQ 47 (07–09 1971)Google Scholar.

13. In the course of my visit, I asked to talk to Chao Tzu-yang, Chang P'ing-hua or any high-level cadre who had been through the process of re-education, but the request was not granted. The Chinese authorities did allow me to visit the Chaoyang May 7 Cadre School 40 miles from Peking which is run by the Chaoyang District of Peking Municipality for the cadres under its jurisdiction. According to a responsible school official I talked to, there used to be an erroneous tendency to punish student-cadres in the school, and he held “the swindlers like Liu Shao-ch'i” responsible for that ultra-leftist mistake. He also asserted that the emphasis of the school is re-education and that cadres in the district are going to the cadre school for six months by rotation.

14. A number of former Party officials, such as Liu, P'eng Chen and Po I-po, allegedly wrote confessions or issued anti-Communist statements to secure their release from the Kuomintang authorities in the 1920s and 1930s; they are now called traitors by the Party.

15. Kwangtung is one of few known exceptions; not only Chao Tzu-yang but other former high provincial Party officials as well have been reinstalled in the Kwangtung Provincial Party Committee or Revolutionary Committee.

16 In reply to my question as to why Chang P'ing-hua was transferred to Shansi and not returned to Hunan (where he served as its First Party Secretary for seven years and would know its conditions very well), a cadre in Changsha said that because Chang had been criticized severely in Hunan it would have been embarrassing for him and for the “masses” if he had gone back to Hunan.

17. See the examples in footnotes 8 and 11 above.

18. On a few occasions, Yao Wen-yuan was singled out as an example. A cadre in Shanghai also used Wang Hung-wen's recent elevation to an important post in the Central Committee to stress the Party's promotion of younger cadres; Wang, believed to be in his thirties, was a worker before the Cultural Revolution, but bis political star rose quickly in the second half of the 1960s, and he was elected to the Central Committee in 1969 and made a Party Secretary of Shanghai in 1970.