In January 1967, Communist China's “great proletarian cultural revolution” entered a new stage—a stage of violent overthrow of all those in positions of authority in the Party and government who refused to accept Mao Tse-tung's new “revolutionary” order. Erupting in Shanghai under the name of the “January Revolution,” this frenzied drive to “seize power” initiated a period of nation-wide violence and disorder.

The events of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” have resulted in Lin Piao becoming the heir apparent of Mao Tse-tung while the armed forces have become the principal power factor in Communist China. However, much of the basis for the greatly expanded roles and power of Lin and the military establishment was actually laid in the period 1959–66. In considerable part, Lin Piao and his lieutenants gained power by establishing themselves as “the most loyal” supporters and potential heirs of the venerable, charismatic Mao Tsetung. In addition, for several years they have been carefully infiltrating into numerous key institutions of the state and Party and have played an important role in seeking to purge the opposition. Many of Marshal Lin's supporters and some of his opponents are professional party-soldiers, who have long been the Party's senior specialists in military affairs. Legally these men no longer have the title of marshal or general, for ranks were officially abolished in June 1965. However, since these powerful figures continue to dominate the massive armed forces, while extending their influence much further into the battered party and government structure, it will help to clarify a complex struggle if those who are primarily party-soldiers are still designated by their previous military ranks. For example, after the party reorganisation of August 1966 there were eight former marshals on the list of members of the new Politburo of the Party.

Much nonsense has been written about the “agrarian reformer” myth. A retired American diplomat maintains that the agrarian reformer slogan was a clever artifice devised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to mask its intentions and affiliations. Allen Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has gone a step further. He contends that One of the most successful long-range political deceptions of the Communists convinced gullible people in the West before and during World War II that the Chinese people's movement was not Communistic, but a social and “agrarian” reform movement. This fiction was planted through Communist-influenced journalists in the Far East and penetrated organisations in the West.

In March 1954, the Central Committee of the CCP offered for discussion the initial draft of the Constitution which reflected the victories of the people's democracy and socialism. In this draft was systematised the new historical experience of the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people and the accumulated experience of state building. In the discussion of the draft, which lasted more than two months, took part more than 8,000 representatives of various strata of the population.