INTELLIGENCE REPORT LIN PIAO AND THE STRUCTURE OF POWER (REFERENCE TITLE: POLO XLII)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001000010041-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 75
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: December 1, 1970
• Content Type: IR

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DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence Report
LIN PIAO AND THE STRUCTURE OF POWER
(Reference Title: POLO XLII)
RSS No. 0049/70
December 1970
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WARNING
This document c,mtaius inforutatiorn affecting the national
defense of the United states. within the meaning of Title
18. sections 793 and 79.1, of the US Code. as amended,
Its transmission or revelation of its contents to or re-
cciht by an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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LIN PIAO AND THE STRUCTURE OF POWER
MEMORANDUM TO RECIPIENTS:
The frail and enigmatic Lin Piao has seemed to
many observers a strange choice as the designated heir
to Mao Tse-tung. Many believe that he cannot long
survive Mao. The message of this research study is
that in view of Lin's apparent organizational strength,
his potential for holding power should not be dismissed
lightly.
It should be noted that this study concentrates
on one factor only in the succession: Lin's position
in the structure of power. It considers Lin's rela-
tionships with both his proteges and his peers, and the
implications of these for Lin's policies. Identifying
those who might reasonably be regarded as Lin's proteges,
the study traces the striking degree to which military
leaders purged in the Cultural Revolution have been
replaced with these apparent proteges of Lin's -- who
now dominate the military establishment, the most
important part of the existing structure of power. It
also traces the lines on which Lin seems to be moving
to achieve a similar domination over the emerging Party
structure. The paper concludes that Lin's heavy reli-
ance on military proteges, and his preference for one
type of civilian leader over another, will both tend
to deter him from pursuing Maoist policies to the ex-
tremes to which Mao has pursued them.
The study's methodology approaches with care the
question of what constitutes a protege and whether such
a relationship necessarily translates into effective
political power. Additionally, the study recognizes that
many factors other than organizational structure will
come into play in determining succession leaders and
policies after Mao.
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This Staff has received constructive comment from
the Office of National Estimates and from the Office
of Current Intelligence. This paper does not, however,
present a coordinated view of Lin's position and prospects.
The judgments expressed in the study are solely those
of its author and of this Staff. 25X1
Hal Ford
Chief, DD/I Special Research Staff
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LIN PIAO AND THE STRUCTURE OF POWER
Contents
Page
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Introductory Note: The Concept of Proteges. . . .1
1. Lin and the Cultural Revolution . . . . . .5
II. Lin and the Super-Elite . . . . . . . . . 16
III. Lin and the Politburo . . . . . . . . . . 23
IV. Lin and the Central Military Leaders. . . 26
V. Lin and the Regional Military Leaders . . 32
VI. Lin and the State Machinery . . . . . . . 39
VII. Lin and the Emerging Party Apparatus. . . 43
VIII. Lin's Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
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LIN PIAO AND THE STRUCTURE OF POWER
Summary
Lin Piao has been completely loyal to Mao. Yet
as Mao's designated successor, he has had to look to-
ward the day when he must work without Mao. With Mao's
acquiescence, he has indeed been making preparations
for that day.
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, the real
base of power for both Mao and Lin has been the armed
forces (PLA). Lin has not hesitated to purge PLA
leaders -- including his own proteges -- who dis-
pleased Mao or who, in Lin's judgment, did not meet
Mao's standards. Yet in the process of making the
PLA reliable both for Mao and for himself, he has been
able to install many more of his proteges in key posi-
tions in the military structure than have been lost in
the purges. Lin now overwhelmingly dominates -- through
his proteges -- the central military leadership in
Peking and the Military Region headquarters. Thus he
dominates the power-system which protects the central
leaders and carries out their orders, which super-
vises many central ministries and is the strongest force
in local governing bodies, and which constitutes the
main coercive instrument throughout China.
Lin is to be the leader as well of a Communist
Party, shattered in the Cultural Revolution but now
being reconstructed. Lin has a long way to go, before
he can dominate the Party apparatus in the way that he
now dominates the military structure. His relations
with the other four members of the Politburo standing
committee, the top policy-making body, are uneven. He
seems still to have the complete confidence of Mao,
and is unlikely to forfeit it. And his relations with
Chou En-lai seen very good. But they seem less good
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with the other two, Chen Po-ta (Mao's writer and trouble-
shooter) and Kang Sheng (Mao's policeman). The known
officers of the Cultural Revolution Group, said to be
the Party's de facto secretariat, are Chen and Kang and
some others close to those two, not to Lin. That same
group has reportedly had the largest responsibilities
in reconstructing the rest of the Party apparatus, in
Peking and in the provinces.
But Lin knows which components of the emerging
Party apparatus are important, and he seems to be tak-
ing steps analogous to those he took in progressively
dominating the PLA. It is possible that the composition
of the Politburo standing committee is already changing
(Chen is missing), and, if so, Lin's protege Huang
Yung-sheng, the second-ranking military leader, is a
likely candidate. Beyond this possibility, Mao has
reportedly given Lin the job of supervising the de facto
secretariat in its rebuilding of the Party, and Lin is
probably adding some of his proteges to that body.
His proteges are expected to appear also in the upper
levels of the great Party apparatus subordinate to the
secretariat, and proteges of his proteges at lower
levels. Still other proteges of Lin's are expected to
head many of the new Party committees in the provinces,
particularly those provinces which contain the power-
ful Military Region headquarters.
Lin's prospects for holding power, if his health
holds, seem fairly good. He will have Mao's clear
mandate, his own impressive record in the Cultural Re-
volution (in which he successfully purged the PLA at
the same time that he was successfully using it as the
main instrument of the Revolution), and what seem to
be formidable organizational assets and unequalled
opportunities to increase them.
The chances seem good that Lin and Chou En-lai
will continue to hang together, both before and after
Mao's death. There seems only an outside chance that
Lin will come to see Chou as a dangerous rival. Lin
will probably work well too with most of the military
leaders, who have reason to be loyal to him. If Lin
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were to make extreme demands on these military leaders
and threaten or try to carry out another great purge,
he might well be overthrown in a coup; but Lin seems
to have no intention of putting the PLA through all
this again.
Lin's apparent preference for Chou En-lai and
Lin's military comrades, over the civilian radicals
of the de facto secretariat, may have implications for
Lin's policies as the successor. It may mean that
Lin's predispositions are not as radical and militant
as Mao's are. This would not mean the abandonment of
abiding features of Maoism in practice -- the emphasis
on loyalty to the leader personally, on the heavy
responsibility of cadres, on the importance of poli-
tical indoctrination and moral incentive, and on the
need for great national campaigns pressing hard on
the populace. But it might well mean a willingness
to continue on these lines without reaching the extremes
that Mao has reached. Those leaders whom Lin seems
to like best -- Chou and the military -- are expected
to influence him in the moderate direction, the more
easily if his predispositions are indeed less extreme
than Mao's.
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Introductory Note; The Concept of "Proteges"
The term "protege" is used frequently in this
paper. It designates, even more in Chinese than in
Western society, a man whose career has seemed strik-
ingly related to that of a more powerful figure -- with
whom he apparently identifies, and by whom he is ad-
vanced and protected. Chinese Communist leaders, as
other Chinese before them -- the officers of the Party,
and directors of the Party apparatus and of the state
machinery, the chiefu of the military esta,lishment,
the most powerful regional figures -- have all seemed
to have such proteges. These proteges have risen and
often fallen with their mentors, have sometimes col-
lapsed under the demands made upon them, and have some-
times deserted or challenged them.
The careers of most of the past and present lead-
ers of Communist China are fairly well known. There
are voluminous records on many of them. It is usually
possible to discover whether a given leader -- say,
one of the officers of the powerful Military Affairs
Committee or the General Staff, or one of the top-rank-
ing officers of a Military Region headquarters -- served
and prospered under Lin in Lin's early career. (Lin's
main assignments, in ascending order, were as a divi-
sion and army commander, as Mao's assistant in special
jobs in Yenan, as the commander of Chinese Communist
forces in the Northeast after World War 11, and as com-
mander of the 4th Field Army in the Central-South in
the late 1940s and early 1950s -- and concurrently Party
leader in that area -- until illness forced his with-
drawal in the early 1950s.) And it is almost always
possible to discover which of those men were then chosen
by Lin for key posts in the centr_.l and regional mili-
tary structure after he became Minister of National
Defense and head of the Military Affairs Committee in
1959. A Chinese military officer whose record showed
both of those features as of 1965 -- substantial early
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association with Lin, and later preferment by him --
might reasonably be regarded as an apparent or likely
protege at that time. Many of these men were then
given additional signs of special favor during the
Cultural Revolution -- for example, were taken into
Lints confidence iii the first stages; were not punished
for their "mistakes" in handling mass organizations
(whereas less favored men were often demoted and some-
times purged); were given especially sensitive assign-
ments such as the conduct of the purge in the PLA it-
self and the supervision of political security work
thereafter, or the command of forces moved into troubled
provinces; were installed as the commanders and poli-
tical officers of military regions and districts, and
as the heads of local governments, to replace purged
leaders; and so on. Such men the study considers fully-
established proteges.
There are only a few dozen Chinese leaders
-- almost all of them military men, divided about
equally between Peking and the military regions --
out of several hundred examined who qualify as pro-
teges in this full sense of early, middle and late
association. But these tend to occupy the most im-
portant positions in the military structure.
This concept of "protege" is of course open to
some objection, on the ground that such bonds -- even
where the record of association and preferment is in-
disputable -- are too fragile to support a projection.
One may point to proteges of long standing who have
challenged their principals: for example, Peng Te-huai
in 1959, or Liu Shao-chi more recently. Peng, the
military leader who openly criticized Mao's plans for
military and economic development and his attitude
toward the Russians, and Liu, who covertly but systematic-
ally obstructed Mao in the early 19609, both had unques-
tionably been proteges of Mao before questions of high
policy led them to become "disloyal." One can point
to other instances in which a protege has attached him-
self to a new principal out of opportunism, or has
come to hate his benefactor for no apparent reason.
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And from the principal's point of view, there are many
proteges who fail to measure up, and are abandoned by
their principals. Lin's proteges in the General Poli-
tical Department were given special assignments one
after another in the early stages of the Cultural
Revolution and were then purged one after another for
failure -- failures which were sometimes seen as "dis-
loyalty. "
But such bonds do not in general seem fragile.
Peng Te-huai and Liu Shao-chi had served Mao well and
faithfully for many years, carrying out policies which
were often disagreeable to them, and helping Mao to
conceal his mistakes and to minimize the ill effects
of them. They turned against him only when his policies
seemed so extreme as to pose a question virtually of
national survival. Similarly, Join's proteges -- most
of those who fell, as well as these who prospered --
tried hard for him in the Cultural Revolution, doing
their best to carry out opaque or conflicting directives,
standing firm while the great purge was going on around
them and even when they themselves seemed threatened;
rather than combining forces against him, they in general
conducted themselves as loyal lieutenants and reliable
instruments. Those few of Li.n's proteges who were purged
in the Cultural Revolution -- four or five in the highly
hazardous General Political Department, and four or
five more outside it -- seem in general to have been
men placed in an impossible position. That is, the
demands made on them were so extreme that they could
not personally survive. Thus, a protege will occasion-
ally challenge or desert his principal out of conviction
or to advance or save himself, or he may be crushed by
an extreme demand, but a protege is likely to adhere
longer and to endure larger demands than a non-protege.
The Chinese Communists themselves seem pretty
clearly to take the concept of "protege" seriously.
When Peng Te-huai fell, several of his proteges fell
with him. When Liu and Teng fall, the proteges with
whom they had packed the Party apparatus were almost
all swept out with them. Many of the proteges of
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military leaders purged in the first stages of the
Cultural Revolution were later purged expressly as
"their" men. And it does not seem coincidental that
so many of L?in's proteges have risen dramatically on
the Cultural Revolution, while so few have fallen.
In sum, while it is not possible in any given
case to be certain that a principal-protege relation-
ship is stable, Lin's ability to appoint his proteges
to key positions testifies to his strength in the
leadership, and his strength tends to be increased by
the men he appoints. This is of course not the only
consideration governing Lin's overall strength and
his prospects for holding power after Mao goes; ques-
tions of policy are likely to be more important. But
the character of Lin's proteges seems to be one import-
ant factor in questions of policy too, because prin-
cipals and proteges are mutually dependent; if, as
this paper will argue, Lin's proteges tend to be men
of a certain kind, their influence on his policies is
likely to he exercised in one direction rather than
another.
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1. Lin and the Cultural Revolution
The original objective of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution was to make the structure of power
reliably responsive to Mao Tse-tung -- which it had not
been for some years. Lin Piao, completely identified
with Mao, had already been secretly chosen by Mao as
his successor. It was thus Lin's problem, in the Cul-
tural Revolution, to make the new structure of power
reliably responsive to himself as well -- looking toward
the day when he, without Mao, would have to use it to
direct the activity of 800 million people.
The Party Apparatus: The Chinese Communist
Party was, o course, the primary instrument of com-
mand-and-control throughout China, and, as such, the
principal casualty of the great purge which was central
to the Cultural Revolution. When the Revolution began,
Lin's position in the Party was not strong. He was one
of several vice-chairmen (not the senior one) of the
central committee, and thereby a member of the politburo
standing committee, the summit of power; but the great
apparatus of the Party below the politburo level was
directed by two other members of the standing committee,
Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping, the two leaders of
those resisting Mao's will. Teng as secretary-general
dominated the party secretariat, charged with managing
the daily activity of the party. The rest of the
apparatus -- the central departments concerned with all
aspects of Chinese life, the powerful regional bureaus
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and provincial committees (the first secretaries of
which were often the political officers of the PLA
commands in those areas), and the network of Party
committees in government organs and the military es-
ta blishment -- was stocked largely with proteges of
Liu and Teng. Apart from some of the Party committees
in the PLA, the Party apparatus contained very few
proteges of Lin Piao.
The PLA: The PLA was in better shape, from
the point' of-view of Mao and Lin, than was the party
apparatus. Mao and Lin had been industriously indoc-
trinating it -- and on a small scale, purging it --
from the t i.me of Lin's assumption of command of the
PLA in 1959, and Mao had in fact transferred his own
true base of power from the Party to the PLA in the
years before the Cultural Revolution began. It was
Mao's intention to use the PLA as his reserve force
while he prepared to purge the Party.
Lin had been the dominant figure in the PLA since
1959, as de facto chief of the Military Affairs Committee
which directed the entire military establishment and
as Minister of National Defense, and he had installed
some of his proteges in key positions. Neither the
central nor the regional leadership of the PLA, however,
was dominated by Lints proteges at the outset of the
Cultural Revolution in 1965, and Mao and Lin did not
regard the PLA as fully reliable. Many of its ranking
political officers (regional and district) were pri-
marily functionaries of the disloyal Party machine
(rather than career PLA men), and much of the indoctri-
nation of the PIA had-been carried out by these men.
From the start, it was the intention of Mao and Lin to
make the PLA the secondary target of the great purge.
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Mao and Lin had concluded that one of their
Joint proteges, Chief-of-Staff Lo Jui-thing -- con-
currently secretary-general of the MAC and probably
the principal supervisor of political security work
in the PLA -- was disloyal. They were also suspicious
of certain other central military leaders, of senior
officers of the powerful regional military headquarters
whom they believed to be closer to Party-machine
leaders than to themselves, and of the entire political
officer network responsive to the Party secretariat.
It seems, however, that when the Cultural Revolution
began, comparatively few career PLA leaders (as
distinct from Party leaders) were already marked for
purging; most of those who finally fell appear to have
been purged for resistance to features of the Cultural
Revolution as it developed, for inability to meet the
sometimes impossible demands made of them, and for
being proteges of military leaders who fell in the
first stages.
Lin as Mao's Confidante: Throughout the Cul-
tural Revolution, Lin has en Mao's principal
confidante. Late in 1965, the PLA newspaper took the
lead in making an anti-Mao play the symbol of all
opposition to Mao and thus the touchstone of loyalty.
Lin then went into retreat with Mao to plan the cam-
paign. In early 1966, Lin wrote and spoke on the need
for an ideological revolution. He then made the key
speech at the May 1966 Party conference which officially
launched the Cultural Revolution and confirmed that a
great purge was underway. In early August, at the
Central Committee plenum which approved Mao's plans
for the Cultural Revolution, Lin again made the main
speech, defining the criteria for judging all Party
cadres -- fidelity to Mao's thought, devotion to
political work, and militancy. In mid-August Lin spoke
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for Mao at the rally which unveiled the Red Guards --
organized and indoctrinated students -- as Mao's
chosen instrument for attacking the Party apparatus
throughout China. At another top-level Party meeting
in October, Lin outlined Mao's plans for continuing
the Revolution. Continuing to speak for Mao
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he also made the main speech
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on National Day (1 October), defining the tasks of
the next stage. Again on National Day in 1968 (after
spending the summe.? with Mao) he did so, and in the
same month summarized the gains and losses of the
Revolution for a Party plenum. And he made the main
report at the Party's Ninth Congress in April 1969.
Purging and Reorganizing the PLA: Lin's
organize one activity during e u ural Revolution
has understandably centered on the PLA: first, to
make it a reliable reserve force, and, since January
1967, to make it a reliable instrument of Mao's will
in its complex task as the principal executor of Mao's
policies.
Lin took the lead in purging the first high-
level victims, who included his Chief-of-Staff, in
December 1965. He began soon thereafter to reorganize
some of the central military organs and some of the
regional and provincial commands, at first slowly and
quietly.
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In January 1967, following the collapse of
the Party apparatus throughout China under the as-
saults of the Red Guards, the PLA was ordered into
action to "support the Left," and it quickly became
a de facto governing apparatus in the name of the
Left.* In the prolonged period of dependence on the
PLA which followed -- a dependence that continues
today -- Mao and Lin continued to purge the PLA, but
in smaller groups, not risking a general revolt.
They also continued methodically to reorganize the
military region and district commands, and moved
armies around China, sometimes with the apparent in-
tention of putting especially reliable armies in
sensitive places. At the same time, showing the
same deep suspicion of his associates that Mao had
shown, Lin installed his wife as the chief of his
staff office. He also added to the leadership of the
MAC several younger military men -- of the compara-
tively few he was prepared to trust -- who were play-
ing important roles in the Cultural Revolution.
Further, he reorganized the PLA's special cultural
n mss was the first to admit -- in March
1967 -- that it was very hard to tell "left" from
"right" in the early months of 1967. That seems to
be the main reason why few PLA leaders were severely
punished for their "mistakes'' in dealing with mass
organizations.
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revolution (purge) group around his own proteges --
his wife and several military figures long close to
him.
Lin continued in 1968 to reorganize both the
central and regional military structures. He re-
placed the PLA's special purge group with a more
nearly orthodox Political Work Group, still composed
of his proteges, and charged it with investigating
every PLA leader to support a judgment as to his
trustworthiness. (He has said again and again that
nobody is to be completely trusted, that everyone must
be under surveillance constantly.) Soon thereafter
(in March), Lin felt obliged to purge one of his most
important proteges, his chief-of-staff and concurrently
the MAC secretary-general and senior supervisor of
political security work in the PLA; this person was
charged with challenging him by building his personal
power and with offending Madame Mao. Lin replaced
the purged protege in all three posts by another pro-
tege even closer to himself, Huang Yung-sheng, a
regional commander.* Finally, he again reorganized
the MAC; he set up, under Huang, an Administrative
Unit composed of seven proteges who had had key posts
in the various special organs for the conduct of the
Cultural Revolution in the PLA, and gave this unit
supervisory authority over all political security
work in the PLA -- that is, the entire process of
screening, investigating and purging PLA leaders, sub-
ject to review by himself. This group, perhaps sur-
prisingly, has remained stable.
*There is a fuller treatment of ITuang on page
22.
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Lin has continued in 1969 and 1970 to purge
and reorganize the PLA, on a small scale. Since the
Ninth Congress, a few PLA leaders have fallen out of
sight and are thought to have been purged. A few
regional and provincial commands have been given new
top leaders. The General Political Department is
again operating, under a new director who had been a
career military commander, and this department will
probably recommend other changes.
Constructing "Revolutionary Committees": Lin
has also en concerned w e operations and staff-
ing of the "revolutionary committees" throughout China,
which have been sharing power with the PLA while the
Party is being rebuilt. Mao in February 1967 called
for the formation of "revolutionary committees" --
composed of PLA officers, acceptable Party cadres, and
representatives of mass organizations -- as provisional
organs of government. From the start, these committees,
especially at the highest, provincial level, have in
general been dominated by military men.
The spring and summer of 1967 were periods of
great disorder in China, as mass organizations competed
for position in the emerging structure of power and
denounced and attacked PLA leaders, the existing
"authorities" in China after the collapse of the Party
apparatus. Mao and Lin at first gave the PLA substan-
tial authority to deal with this violence, then
withdrew it, then gave some of it back. The problem
of the shifts in line was complicated by the considera-
tion that some of the attacks on PLA leaders may have
been encouraged -- were at least not discouraged -- by
some of the civilian leaders of Mao's team, causing a
tension between those leaders and Lin's military com-
rades which has probably persisted to this day. Many
PLA leaders, under attack or at best confused, handled
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the mass organizations roughly, dragged their feet
in implementing orders from Peking to carry out per-
missive policies, and declined to admit the young
revolutionaries to important positions in the revo-
lutionary committees shaping up. The few PLA leaders
who actually defied Peking's orders were purged, while
the many more who had made "mistakes" were summoned
to Peking for Mao-study.
The young militants resumed their large-scale
violence in late 1967 and the early months of 1968.
Mao and Lin together, possibly taking counsel from
PLA leaders, cracked down hard in July 1968. The
provincial revolutionary committees then unformed
were quickly shaped up, in orderly conditions, in the
summer and early fall of 1968. Lin in his report to
the Party Congress in April 1969 was to associate
himself with Mao's general exoneration of those
military leaders who had made "mistakes" (and then
self-criticisms), on the ground that it had indeed
been very difficult to distinguish friends from ene-
mies. (Lin himself had made this point earlier.)
These revolutionary committees have continued
to be very troublesome for Mao and Lin, largely be-
cause they operate on the "three-way alliance"
principle. This has in fact institutionalized con-
flict, even among the leaders themselves of these
committees, and Peking is still purging and replacing
these leaders. Moreover, Mao himself was responsible
for re-emphasizing (at the Ninth Party Congress) the
role of the revolutionary masses, an intervention
which led to renewed violence. Even where violence
is avoided, the revolutionary committees are inherently
unstable, poor instruments for the implementation of
Peking's policies and directives. The rebuilt Party
apparatus is expected to be a much more stable and
responsive governing structure.
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gipt"D 117r
Purging and Rebuilding the Part : Lin has played
a large roe in the massive purge, and a lesser role
(until recently) in the slow rebuilding, of the Party in
the Cultural Revolution. He stood with Mao in the May
1966 Party meeting which purged the first of the top-
ranking Party-machine leaders. At that time, Mao un-
veiled a new instrument -- called the central Cultural
Revolution Group -- for the conduct of the Cultural
Revolution as a whole and for the coordination of the
work of smaller such groups. Lin in May was the first
to tell Party leaders that the Cultural Revolution was
to be directed primarily against them, and in August
Mao and Lin turned the Red Guards loose against the
Party apparatus.
At the August 1966 Party plenum, Lin was revealed
as Mao's choice as "deputy supreme commander of the entire
party," and Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping, the
two principal leaders of the Party apparatus, were re-
moved from power. The Politburo and (more importantly)
its standing committee were reorganized accordingly.
The new standing committee consisted of Mao, Lin, the
long third-ranking Chou En-lai, and three leaders of
the central CRG: Chen Po-ta (Mao's chief writer and
trouble-shooter), Kang Sheng (Mao's political security
specialist), and a promising regional leader brought
from South China. By the end of 1966, the Politburo
standing committee, dropping the regional figure, had
assumed essentially the shape it was to keep throughout
the Cultural Revolution, at least into 1970: Mao, Lin,
Chou, Chen, and Kang, with Madame Mao as a possible de
facto member from time to time.* Also by the end of 1966,
ere is some question-as to whether Chen Po-ta,
missing since 1 August 1970, is still a member.
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the leadership of the central CRG, dropping the same
man dropped by the Politburo standing committee, became
stabilized: Chen, Kang, and Madame Mao. By this time,
the CRG had replaced the Party secretariats at the
center of the work of what remained of the Party appa-
ratus -- had become, that is, a de facto secretariat.
Although Lin as vice chairman had authority over this
CRG, it included no proteges of his.
Following Mao's call in January 1967 for the
destruction of the regional and provincial Party com-
mittees, constructive efforts were concentrated on the
"revolutionary committees" which were to replace them.
By autumn 1967, after purging several second-level
figures of the central CRG, Mao issued instructions to
certain officers of the CRG -- Kang Sheng and tc r.
younger ideologues who had served Mao well in sc!tting
up the Cultural Revolution -- on preparing for a party
congress and rebuilding the party. The CRG -- already
active in handling mass organizations like the Red
Guards, and in helping the MAC with the reindoctrina-
tion of regional PLA leaders brought to Peking -- was
now to play the central role in reconstructing the
Party. In December, the central Party organs called
for rebuilding the Party structure, outside the Party
center, within the revolutionary committee structure.
Early in 1968, Lin apparently lost a round in
his presumed effort to keep the reconstructed Party
apparatus from compromisin his own control of political
security work in the PLA.
thereafter, Chou
En-lai was apparently also assigned'some role in'
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supervising this work, meaning that the work has in
effect been supervised since 1968 by the entire
Politburo standing committee.
In October 1968, Lin defined the main tasks
of the next stage of the Cultural Revolution as those
of consolidating the revolutionary committees and
rebuilding the Party in accordance with Mao's call
to "take in new blood." This proceeded slowly, owing
in large part to Mao's insistence on the "three-way
alliance" principle -- already established in compo-
sing the revolutionary committees -- in Party-bt'.lding
as well. The principle was apparent in the selection
of a new Central 25X1
Committee at the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969.
That Congress approved a new Party constitution
which provided for Lin to become Mao's successor with-
out any nonsense of a Party' election, and reaffirmed the
principle of Party control of the PLA. Lin in his
report to the Congress called on the Party to ensure that
leadership of Party organizations at all levels "is
truly in the hands of Marxists" -- meaning Maoists,
although it seemed doubtful that there were enough
hard-core Maoists at hand to occupy all key posts even
at the upper levels of the Party. In any case, a plenum
following the Congress elected (reappointed) the Polit-
buro's five-man standing committee of four Left-inclined
Maoists (including Lin) and Chou En-lai.
Since the Ninth Congress Party-building has
continued to move very slowl
E:::~. During the late summer of 1970, however,
the Party press suggested high-level dissatisfaction
with the course of Party-building, and shortly there-
after it was reported that Lin himself had now been
assigned the central role in this process.* If this is
true, Lin has taken a large step in his effort to con-
struct a Party apparatus reliably responsive to himself.
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II. Lin and The Super-Elite
The Big Seven: The super-elite consists,
strictly, of ao, n, and the other three members
of the politburo standing committee, Chou En-lai,
Chen Po-ta and Kang Sheng. The standing committee
is the core of power, the body which makes those
decisions that Mao and Lin have not reserved for
themselves, or which passes matters on to appro-
priate party organs (e.g., it calls meetings of the
full politburo), and which sets up and supervises
the entire party apparatus (including the powerful
MAC). Those five members among themselves answer
(if not always expertly) for the full range of Peking's
political, military and economic concerns. It seems
necessary, however, to consider also Madame Mao, who
has been less visible since 1968 but who may still be
a de facto member from time to time when the standing
committee operates as a discussion group, and has
been as important in the Cultural Revolution as some
of the official Big Five; and also Huang Yung-sheng,
another possible de facto member and in any case the
second-ranking military leader, whose position in the
structure of power seems stronger than that of some
of the foregoing six.
Lin and Mao: Lin's relationshi with Mao has
been discusse at len th
In
sum: Lin was long Mao's favorite military leader,
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has had Mao's confidence as a political leader for many
years, has been Mao's closest comrade since about 1962,
was designated officially in 1966 as Mao's successor,
and throughout the Cultural Revolution has been given
every sign of Mao's continuing trust, reliance, and high
favor. This high favor will not necessarily continue:
Mao is unstable, and he may recently have set aside or
even purged another of his lieutenants with a record of
fidelity almost as impressive as Lin's. Yet the proba-
bility seems strong that Mao will not arbitrarily
change his mind about Lin as the most willing and able
of his lieutenants to carry on with Mao's essential
policies, and that Lin will not do anything to give
Mao reason to change his mind. The practical question
then seems to be that of Lin's relationships with those
with whom he will have to work after Mao's death. Even
in the small politburo standing committee, the picture
is mixed.
Lin and Chou: Apart from the father-son type
of bond with Mao. Lin's best relationship appears,
surprisingly, to be with Chou En-lai, the leader tem-
peramentally least like himself. Lin began as a student
and protege of Chod's in the mid-20s, and there is
reliable testimony (from a defected Chinese Communist
leader whose information on other top leaders has been
excellent) that the two worked closely and welltin the
early years of the movement. Chou took Lin with him
to Chungking for negotiations in 1942-1943, and, although
the two were largely separated for the next 15 years,
continued. They have been close again since 1958
~and
,
Chou, if consulted, probatlly genuinely favored Mao's
choice of Lin over Liu Shao-chi. Despite rumors of
bad feelings and even conflict between them, Lin and
Chou have seemed to work well together in the Cultural
Revolution. Mao and Lin as aiteam have entrusted Chou
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SRC:R FT
with many delicate missions in expounding and en-
forcing the Mao-Lin policy, including the defense
Ole Lints military proteges under attack by mass
organizations. Chou has apparently been careful to
consult with Lin when necessary (even on foreign
affairs), and has done whatever he was asked to do.
Chou may have reservations P.bout Lin; for example,
during the Cultural Revolution, Lin at one time made
contemptuous remarks about the old "state machine"
which Chou had put together, remarks which probably
contributed to Chou's inability to save certain of
his friends and proteges under attack. And Lin may
have mixed feelings about Chou, as the constitutional
provision for Lin to succeed Mao without an election
is an indirect admission that the very popular Chou
(the only Chinese leader regularly described by
non-Communists as "charming") would probably win
any such election. But the overall record seems to
support the view of diplomatic observers in Peking
that Lin and Chou are fairly close and have thus far
been a good team.*
Lin and Other Hard-Core Maoists: Lints
relations with the Other two member a of the polit-
buro standing committee, Chen Po-ta and Kang Sheng,
and with their close associate, Madame Mao, have
seemed to be more troubled and less friendly than
s on y;fair to admit that some observers,
while not disputing the record, believe that the
evidence is simply too thin to support any judgment
on the Lin-Chou relationship.
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SF[`R RT
his relations with Chou. This has been true despite
the fact that all three have the same apparent record
of simple-minded, whole-hearted allegiance to Mao
that Lin himself has. (Chou too has been loyal, but
has often indicated reservations about some of Mao's
policies; the other three have not done this.) The
four have managed to work together passably well --
under Mao's guidance and with Mao as arbiter -- during
the Cultural Revolution, but in an erratic, abrasive
fashion that has suggested a potential for serious
conflict.
Lin did not work well with any of these
three in the early years (although Chen was with Chou
and Lin in Chungking in 1942-1943). Lin had little
to do with any of the three in the years 1945-1958.
From 1958, he was forced into a closer association with
all three -- first Chen, then Kang, then the Madame --
as each was given special assignments by Mao (prepar-
ing rationales for Mao's policies and identifying Mao's
opponents). During the Cultural Revolution, these
three have been the principal leaders of the central
Cultural Revolution Group (said to be the de facto
party secretariat), and in this role and other special
assignments have seemed to cut into Lin's territory
and put Lin himself in an embarrassing position. Red
Guard and other mass organizations -- either incited
by the CRG leaders or permitted by them to get out of
hand -- attacked many of Lin's proteges and friends.
While Lin was apparently strong enough to protect all
of these military leaders (e.g., the military men iiow
on the politburo) who were not in disfavor with Mao
as well as with the CRG, he may well have resented the
way in which the CRG leaders handled their jobs. Such
resentment could not be openly expressed; Kang Sheng,
reflecting Mao's position, described all criticism of
the central CRG as "enemy activity." It is suggestive,
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however, that Madame Mao was dropped from the PLA/CRG
when it was reorganized in the late summer of 1967.
Moreover, the continued important roles of Chen and
Kang in the PLA's affairs after that time -- Chen
and Kang were made responsible, together with MAC
officers, for the reindoctrination of PLA leaders,
together
with the MAC secretary-general, for supervising po-
litical security work in the PLA -- does not necessarily
indicate that they had Lints confidence. Both of
those tasks were given the CRG leaders by Mao, not
Lin.
Kang Sheng might be the hardest of the three
for Lin to handle.
it is Kang who chiefly compromises
'U 99 control of political security work in the PIA.
There is some possibility that Lin is moving against
Kang as a man whom he does not like or trust and
regards as dangerous to him. The recent report (from
diplomatic sources) that Lin himself is now playing
the central role in party-building -- that indeed he
has taken "personal charge" of it -- may mean that Lin
himself took the initiative to induce Mao to put him
in a position to control and restrict Kang, or even
ease him out. Moreover, Chou En-lai's participation
in the task of supervising political security work in
the PLA may represent another Lin initiative; that
is, Lin, forced to accept Kang's interference in that
work, may have asked for Chou in the interest of
diluting Kang's rple. Two of the three figures known
or believed to exercise this supervision are now
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responsive or close to Lin -- Huang Yung-sheng and
Chou.* And the recent appointment of a career
military commander (the natural enemy of a Kang
Sheng) to head the General Political Department may
also make it harder for Kang to operate in the
PLA's political structure.
In sum, the evidence does not compose a
clear picture of a hostile relationship between
Lin and Chou on one hand and Chen Po-ta,, Kang
Sheng and Madame Mao on the other, but there seems
an important difference between the kind of rela-
tionship Lin has had with Chou and the kind he has
had with the other three.** There is as yet no
solid evidence that Lin is moving against any one
of the three, but it will not be surprising if he
does so move.
ou would probably support Lin in any initia-
tive against any of these three civilian radicals
which would not risk a collision with Mao. Chou
has reason to dislike all three, for attacks on
policies with which he has been identified and on
his proteges and friends, attacks which fell just
short of Chou himself. Chou is rumored to detest
Kang Sheng, and there have been some indications
that he dislikes Madame Mao.
**Again, it must be admitted that some observers
regard the evidence as too scanty to support any
Judgment.
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.%Ff.R F'T
V
Lin and His Protege: Lin's relationship with
the seventh anT aTst putative member of the super-
elite, Huang Yung-sheng, seems of critical importance.
Huang at least appears to be the model protege. The
same age as Lin, he served under Lin throughout the
1930s, served under another Lin protege elsewhere for
a few years, was back with Lin in the late 1940s and
early 1950s, and by 1952 was Lin's chief-of-staff in
the Central-South. With Lin's transfer to Peking in
1955, Huang was named (almost certainly on Lin's re-
commendation) to succeed him as commander of the
Canton MR, and kept the post for many years. Attacked
by Red Guard groups early in 1967, Huang was twice
defended by Chou En-lai as a close comrade of Lin's
(he may be an old friend of Chou's too), and Huang's
record in the Cultural Revolution was praised even
by Madame Mao (perhaps under pressure, as her young
riends had attacked him). Attacked again later in
1967, Huang was given a vote of confidence by Mao
himself. When in March 1968 Lin was obliged to find
a new chief-of-staff, secretary-general of the Mili-
tary Affairs Committee, and supervisor of political
security work in the PLA, he brought Huang up from
Canton to fill these posts. There has been every
indication since that time -- including his addition
to the politburo in April 1969 -- that Mao and Lin
have been pleased with Huang's performance, and that
Lin has a very close and friendly relationship with
him.
Lin seems to need a man of his own, in addition
to himself and his friend Chou, on the Politburo stand-
ing committee -- if not now (which would be best), then
as soon as he succeeds to Mao's position. Although Huang
does not appear to share Mao's ideological positions
to the degree that Lin does (Huang seems more represen-
tative of professional military men, a relatively con-
servative class), it is believed that Huang would be
Lin's first choice for this small group at the summit
of power . *
*Some observers, while agreeing that Huang is the
leading candidate for the standing committee, would re-
gard his appointment not as evidence of a strengthening
of Lin's hand but as evidence that the regional military
leaders had succeeded in placing their own man -- not
Lin's ^an -- on the standing committee.
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III. Lin and the Politburo
The importance of the full politburo (21 voting
members, four non-voting) is conjectural. It probably
plays an important role in decision-making when Mao and
Lin do not know what they want to do and put the question
up for a wider discussion than is possible in the five-
man standing committee. It is a voting body, but is
not known ever to have actually voted; if it has, it
seems most unlikely that Mao has ever (since 1935) lost
a formal vote. Mao's troubles of the early 1960s -- in
effecting his will -- came not from reversals in the
Politburo but from obstructionism in the Party apparatus
below the Politburo. Nevertheless, if the Politburo is
used by Lin in any way -- as a voting body or as a body
of consultants or as a deliberative body -- its composi-
tion might be of much importance.
Principal-Protege Groupings: When Mao is not
included, the 20 full members, considered in terms of
principals and proteges, seems to fall into three groups.*
One group consists of Lin and seven other active military
leaders, every one of whom is a protege and close as-
sociate of Lin, plus Madame Lin, making a formidable
bloc o. nine. Another consists of the five civilian
leaders of the central CRG -- Chen Po-ta, Kang Sheng,
Madame Mao, and two younger persons -- every one of
whom is a protege of Mao or Madame Mao. And the third,
a much looser group of six, consists of government lead-
ers and inactive old-timers, all believed closer to Chou
En-lai than to any other principal. In these terms,
Lin-Chou coalition could of course control the voting,
if there were any.
*The two members who have not appeared in public for
some months -- and may have fallen -- are included in
this figure.
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Radical-Conservative Groupings: The Politburo
can also divided along "radical" and "conservative"
lines -- that is, between those on one hand closely
identified with radical and disruptive initiatives in
the Cultural Revolution, and those on the other hand
whose roles were more concerned with maintaining or re-
storing order. This is a less satisfactory division,
because most Politburo members were concerned with the
implementation of both advances and retreats, depending
on the phase of the Revolution. It is true, however,
that some leaders have seemed to show a predisposition
to radical policies, like Mao himself, and others have
seemed to prefer if not conservative than at least more
nearly moderate policies, like Chou and most military
figures. In these terms, the "radicals" make a group
of nine, including Lin and his wife, all five central
CRG leaders, and two other central military leaders;
the "conservatives" total six, Chou and the other five
active military leaders; and the "neutrals" (inactive
or impossible to assess) total four. Expressed in these
terms, the "radicals" would not necessarily dominate a
vote.
The Politburo in Action: Thus Lin Piao, whether
standing w e military leaders or with the "radicals"
in a given vote in the Politburo, would need to put
together a coalition in order to prevail. There is a
question, however, as to whether it is realistic to
expect the Politburo to vote Lin down on a matter of
importance to him. Those Politburo members more closely
associated with central CRG figures or with Chou En-lai
than with Lin would have to recognize that, in a show-
down on those lines, the means of coercion would be
almost entirely in the hands of Lints group. (Mao
successfully employed this stratagem =- displaying the
armed force at his command -- at the August 1966 plenum
which approved his plans for the Cultural Revolution.)
Similarly, those disposed to vote against a "radical"
initiative by Lin would have to recognize that the
Politburo standing committee -- which is in the hands
of the "radicals" -- could simply nullify an adverse
vote and decide the matter among its five members.
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The true importance of the Politburo seems to
lie in its potential as a sounding-board and discussion
group, which could provide Lin with counsel on those
matters on which he might feel a need for several points
of view. In such cases, the various backgrounds, pre-
dispositions, and particular experiences of the Polit-
buro's members might be honestly reflected in the dis-
cussion and might be truly helpful to Lin. The range
of knowledge and competence on the present Politburo
is considerable, although a non-Maoist would think that
Lin would do well to have on his Politburo fewer radical
ideologues and agitators of the CRG type and more
specialists in sectors of the economy -- fewer "reds,"
more experts. Apart from the omnicompetent Chou En-
lai, there is only one Politburo member (Li Hsien-nien)
with substantial experience in economic management,
and he seems to be concerned now with other things.
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1V. Lin and the Central Military Leaders
The PLA does not dominate the "national" govern-
ment: that is, the group of leaders, all in Peking, who
make the fundamental decisions on such large matters
as national defense, foreign policy, development of the
economy, and the conduct of nation-wide political cam-
paigns. As previously seen, such decisions are made by
Mao, by Mao and Lin, or by the five-man Politburo
standing committee, who may or may not consult others
first. The PLA has been, however,'.the base of power
for Mao (in recent years) and for Lin (since 1959),
the "enforcer" of those decisions that need to be en-
forced, the protector of Mao and Lin and other central
leaders, the supervisor of many central ministries, the
de facto government outside Peking for most of the
Cultural Revolution, the dominant force within most of
the local governing bodies charged with carrying out
Mao's policies, and (in the field armies) the coercive
power throughout China. The central leadership of
the PLA power-system in recent years has come to be
strikingly dominated by Lin Piao and those regarded in
this paper as his proteges.
The MAC Standing Committee: The most important
organs of the central military apparatus are: the
Military Affairs Committee (MAC), which has authority
over the entire military establishment and can send
orders directly to any component; the administrative
unit of the MAC, which handles its daily work and
supervises all political security work in the PLA (in-
cluding the work of the General Political Department);
and the General Staff or Joint Chiefs-of-Staff -- i.e.,
the Chief-of-Staff and his deputies, the planning organ
of the MAC and the source of most of the orders going
to the PLA. It is in these three key organs that Lin's
proteges are most heavily clustered.
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When the Cultural Revolution began, Lin was (as
he remains) the de facto chairman of the MAC, but its
key posts -- officers of the MAC and members of its
standing committee -- were divided about equally between
(a) old-timers who had made their careers independently
of Lin and (b) a small group of Lin's proteges. During
the Cultural Revolution, Lin purged or helped to purge
several of them (including four who were his own proteges
or joint Mao-Lin proteges), and has set aside others.*
The MAC leadership is now composed almost entirely of
Lin's proteges. The MAC leaders, who hold many other
key posts in the central military apparatus, are:
(1) Yeh Chien-ying, the only vice-chairman known to be
active, Lints deputy in the old Central-South command
and a spokesman for him in recent years, although
believed to be closer personally to Chou En-lai; (2)
Huang,Yung-sheng, Lin's "model" protege previously
discussed, who as secretary-general and chief of the
administrative unit is second in importance only to
Lin; x,3,4,5) three leaders with a common profile, Wu
Fa-hsien, Li Tso-peng, and Chiu Hui-tso, each of whom
long served with Lin, was named by Lin to a key military
post in the 1959-67 period (respectively Commander of
the Air Force, lot Political Officer of the Navy,
Director of Logistics), and has been given key posts
in political security organs of the PLA in recent years;
(6) Yeh Chun, Lin's wife and the head of his staff
office; (7) Wen Yu-cheng, commander of the Peking Gar-
rison, a joint Lin-Huang protege from the Central-
South**;(8) Liu Hsien-chuan, who long served with Lin
*The most recent to fall seems to be Hsieh Fu-chih,
not a Lin protege but a protege of the disgraced Teng
Hsiao-ping, who, surprisingly, was added to the leader-
ship of the MAC and even to the Politburo, but has now
been missing for many months.
**Wen has been missing since 1 June, together with
some of the political officers of the Garrison.
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and was brought from a district command in 1968 to a
key central post, possibly with Second Artillery (mis-
siles); (9) Su Yu, not a Lin protege, an oldtime field
army commander with a spectacular combat record who in
recent years has headed the Office of National Defense
Industries, and who is believed to be close to Chou En-
lai'; And, finally,'' (10)' Li Te-sheng, not -a' Lin protege
but the protege of a protege, recently brought from
an army command to be Director of the General Political
Department. (Seven of these persons -- the first six,
and the last -- are also members of the Party Politburo.)
The MAC Administrative Unit: The composition
of the administrative unit o the C -- the equivalent
of a Party secretariat -- has been reported only once
(in 1968); it has probably added at least one officer.
The seven reported officers as of 1968 were secretary-
general Huang Yung-sheng and six others (all discussed
above) from the standing committee -- the seven regarded
(among MAC officers) as closest to Lin, every one of
them a Lin protege in every sense.* Lin was obviously
determined to have political security work in the PLA
controlled by people he could trust. because
could trust. The officer probably added is Li Te-sheng,
the General 'olitical Department director noted above.
The General Staff: Although Lin himself is
Minister o National ense, this Ministry appears to
be a superfluous echelon, largely bypassed in recent
years, between the MAC and the General Staff.** It is
*The seven -a-re-Huang , Wu, Li, Chiu, Yeh, Wen and
Liu, numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in the previously-
given list of the MAC leadership.
**Lin may plan to name Huang Yung-sheng to this podt
and make it once again important.
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the Deputy Chiefs-of-Staff, not the Deputy Ministers of
Defense, who are members of the Politburo and of the
MAC standing committee and administrative unit; the MAC
has not even bothered to replace the deputy ministers
who were purged, and those still identified have not
been close to Lin in recent years.
The General Staff is clearly the most important
organ below the level of the MAC. Under C/S Huang Yung-
sheng, who represents the ground forces, are 10 or 11
deputy chiefs who are concurrently the commanders or
political officers of other service arms (Air Force,
Navy, possibly Second Artillery), the heads of at least
two of the three known general departments (Staff, Poli-
tical, Logistics), the probable heads of certain key sub-
departments of the General Staff Department, and two or
three other key figures.
Again the clustering of Lin's proteges, and the
occupancy of several key posts concurrently, is striking.
Of the 10 or 11 military leaders who comprise this group
(depending on whether Li Te-sheng has been added to
the deputies), four or five -- Huang, Wu Fa-hsien, Li
Tso-peng, Chiu Hui-tso, and Li Te-sheng if added --
have been encountered above as concurrently members of
the Politburo, of the MAC standing committee, and of
the MAC administrative unit; and another, Wen Yu-cheng,
on the MAC standing committee and the MAC administrative
unit. Five of those six (all but Li)are Lin's proteges.
Of the remaining five deputy chiefs-of-staffs, two are
Lin proteges, and three are not.
Other Central Military Leaders: The other key
figures of the central military Leadership are the other
leading officers of the principal service arms and the
three general departments, other specialized service
headquarters (artillery, armored, engineers, railway
engineers, signal, public security, eta), the National
Defense Scientific and Technological Commission (research
and development of advanced weapons), the Office of
National Defense Industries (production of advanced
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weapons), and the Peking Garrison. The picture is less
striking at this level. Whereas Lints proteges occupy
the great majority of posts at the very top level dis-
cussed above, at this second level they occupy fewer
than half. At this level they fill more than half of
the leading posts only in certain arms and headquarters
and offices which Lin presumably regards as especially
sensitive -- the Air Force, Artillery, and 2nd Artillery
(missiles). On this reasoning, an abundance of Lin
proteges would be expected too in the General Political
Department and the Peking Garrison, but this is appar-
ently not the case at this time.*
s Of-1968-69,
the General Political Department was
inactive, and its work of indoctrination and surveillance
was being handled by two special bodies, the Political
Work Group and the Support-the-Left Group. The more
important of the two, the Political Work Group, charged
with investigating PLA leaders from army-level up, was
apparently led by the Lin protege Wu Fa-hsien; the other
was a mixed group. The Political Work Group may still
exist, as yet another supervisory authority over the
reconstructed General Political Department, but this
seems unnecessary, as the MAC administrative unit, com-
posed of the same Lin proteges, already exists for this
purpose. The Political Work Group has not been heard
from in the past year, and probably faded away as the
General Political Department began operating again late
in 1969. However, the Political Work Group very prob-
ably assembled the new General Political Department,
which means that hard-core Lin-men were satisfied as to
the reliability of the GPD's new leaders, even though'
most of those identified in the GPD do not seem to be
Lin proteges themselves. Lira's control over the GPD is
put into question not by the GPD leadership but by the
fact that supervisory authority was divided -- as of
1968 -- between the MAC and Kang Sheng's political
security apparatus. The latter may, as before, work
through special political security groups in the poli-
tical departments at all levels. However, as previously
suggested, Chou En-lai's role in supervising political
security work at least dilutes Kang's role.
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There is a large group in the central military
leadership -- several dozen people -- in unidentified
posts of sufficient importance to rate a mention of
their occupants on ceremonial occasions. Many of these
are military positions at lower levels than those
discussed above -- e.g., junior deputies in the service
arms and headquarters, the directors of unpublicized
military organs (e.g., ir..;;elligence), and the leaders
of military schools. Many others, however, are the
chiefs and deputy chiefs of Military Control Commissions
in central government ministries, unspecified key figures
in ministries from which the MCCs have been withdrawn,
and key figures in the central Party apparatus now being
constructed. There are several of Lin's proteges in
this group, but they seem to be a small minority.
Lints Domination: In sum, Lin Piao seems to
dominate a central military leadership to the degree
he wants to -- overwhelmingly (on this readings at the
top level, to a degree never before seen, largely
through a small number of proteges in concurrent posts
in the three most important organs; and selectively
at the second level, although this may increase as
new leading figures are identified. He does not seem
to concern himself much with lower levels of the central
leadership: he is content with a mixture of old-timers,
proteges of other top-level and second-level leaders,
and promising young people.
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V. Lin and the Regional Military Leaders
The headquarters of the 11 Military Regions (MRs)
have been in effect China's regional governments since
the destruction of the Party's regional bureaus in
1966-67. The commander and political officer of each
of these MRs are powerful figures, with authority (un-
less Peking chooses to exercise it directly) over the
armies disposed in them; moreover, one or the other
always heads the "revolutionary committee" (government)
of the province in which the MR headquarters is located.
The commanders and political officers of the 36 or more
armies disposed in these MRs are also powerful f.'.gures;
while subject to orders from the MRs or directly from
Peking, they command the forces on which the leaders in
Peking primarily depend for the imposition of their will
outside Peking. The commanders and political officers
of the 24 Military Districts (MDs) are normally less
important, in that they normally control only PLA security
forces, garrison commands, and the militia; but some
have been concurrently (and first) the leaders of
armies sent into sensitive areas, some have been given
command of major tacticn* units in emergencies, and
many have been important in the Cultural Revolution as
the heads of "revolutionary committees" in those pro-
vinces not dominated by the MR leaders.
The Purged and the Proteges: When the Cultural
Revolution began, the 11 s were dominated by the
Party's regional bureaus (generally coterminous), which
were of course parts of the Party machine directed by
Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping. The regional first
secretaries, stronger in their own right than the mili-
tary commanders of these regions, were also the first
political officers of all of these MRs, thus doubling
their strength, and usually the first secretaries of
the Party committees of the MRs. Most of the military
commanders of the MRs, unlike the secretary - political
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officers, were apparently not marked for purging when
the Revolution began; however, a few were under suspicion,
others came under suspicion with the purge of certain
central military figures to whom they had been close,
and others ran afoul of the Revolution Itself.
All 11 of the Party-machine figures who were
regional first secretaries and first political officers
were brought down in the early stages of the Cultural
Revolution. At the same time, however, Lin Piao
strongly expressed his confidence in several of his
regional military commanders. At least four of them
-- Huaag unY g-shong of Canton, Chen Hsi-lien of
Shenyang, Hsu Shih-yu of Nanking, and Han Hsien-chu of
Foochow -- were summoned by Lin in August 1966, to-
gether with a few central military leaders, to be told
about Lin's plans for the conduct of the Cultural
Revolution in the PLA. A fifth apparent favorite of
Lin's, Yang Te-chih of Tsinan, may also have been present.*
*Four of theme five had been pretty firmly established
as proteges of Lin Piao long before the Cultural Revolu-
tion began. All five, the some age as Lin or a little
younger, had served under Lin in their early careers
and had gone on to important regional posts in the 1950s.
Lin had probably arranged for Huang to succeed him as
commander of the Canton MR in the early 1950s, and,
soon after becoming Minister of National Defense in
1959, had named Chen, Hsu and Han to key posts (respectively
commander of the Shenyang MR, deputy minister of national
defense, and commander of the Foochow MR). The fifth
? of these figures, Yang Te-chih, became commander of the
Tsinan MR soon after Lin returned to action in Peking
in 1959, but it is not known whether Lin recommended
him for the post; Yang's status was in some question
for a time after the fall of Peng Te-huai in 1959, owing
to his close association with Pang, and he may have been
on probation in Lin's mind; by spring 1960, however,
he was confirmed as the Tsinan commander, and from early
1962 seemed clearly in good favor. As it turned out,
Yang was to have the easiest time of any of the regional
commanders in the Cultural Revolution. Again, it must
be admitted that some observers see these men -- and
other MR leaders -- not as Lin's proteges but as inde-
pendently powerful figures with whom he must "compromise."
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In the course of the Revolution, Lin has continued to
show great confidence in those five, but has replaced
the military commanders of the other six MRs. The
Peking MR was reorganized in 1967; Chengtu twice, in
1966 and 1967; Kunming in 1966-67; Wuhan in 1967;
Sinkiang in 1968; and Lanchow in 1969. In each case
but one (Lanchow), the replaced commander was purged.
The leaders of the armies disposed in the MRs
and MDs, and the commanders and political officers of
the MDs, were also a problem for Lin. The armies were
in better shape than the MRs and MDs, but their poli-
tical departments were responsible to the MR political
officers (that is, Party-machine figures); and most of
the MDs, like the MRs, were dominated by Party-machine
types who were concurrently first secretaries and fii.
political officers. In the course of the Revolution,
Lin ias changed the commands of several of the armies,*
and has replaced 20 of the first political officers of
the MDs and 19 of the military commanders of the MDs.
Several of the MDs have been reorganized twice.
In these various reorganizations, many of Lin's
proteges have moved into key positions, or have been
promoted from key positions to higher and dominating
positions. It seems apparent in these reorganizations,
just as in the reorganizations of the central military
structure, that Lin has been concerned to get his
proteges -- men he has good reason to trust -- into
the top-level positions, not into the second-and-third
level positions: that is, to place them as commanders
of MRs, for example, rather than MDs. Nevertheless,
*A precise figure for the armies cannot be provided;
most of their leaders, when the Revolution began, were
not known. There is general agreement that the purge
of the armies has been substantial, but on nothing like
the scale of the MR and MD headquarters.
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he has not installed in these top positions as many
proteges as he might have; he could, if he chose, have
placed them in _e_vveery top-level post in each MR, by
taking some from- other MRs saturated with them (Canton
and Foochow), or -- probably -- in command of every
army, by moving up some deputy commanders of other
armies. But he has not done this, he has often been
content with the man in place, and has sometimes as-
signed proteges of other leaders (even disgraced leaders)
to key positions.
The Four Most Important MRs: The generally-
accepted 'strategic areas" of na -- so defined
for a combination of political, military and economic
regions -- center on Peking, Shenyang, Nanking and
Canton. Peking too regards them as the most important.
The largest numbers of armies are in these four M':is.
Both the commander and the first political officer of
one of these (Nanking) are on the Party politburo, the
commander of another (Shenyang) is there, the political
officer of another (Peking) is there, and the ea-
commander of the fourth (Canton) is there. No other
MRs are represented on the politburo.
The Shenyang MR, the center of the Northeast
region once commanded by Lin, seems secure under Chen
Hsi-lien, named to the post by Lin in 1959, shown to
be in Lin's confidence during the Cultural Revolution,
and added to the Politburo in 1969. (The first poli-
tical officer is an old Party cadre restored by the
Revolution.) The senior deputy commanders are also
Lin's proteges. Most of the known army commanders in
? this MR are Lift-men or at least out of Lin's old forces.
The military districts subordinate to this MR are
apparently still being reorganized, and may or may
not show the same pattern.
The Nanking MR is commanded by Hsu Shih-yu, an-
other named to a key post by Lin.,_in...195 whose troops
protected Mao and Lin in their winter ret a of 1965-66,
who was working with Lin on hip2Th for the Cultural
Revolution even prior to mid-1966, wa protected by Mao
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and Lin during the Revolution, and was added to the
Politburo in 1969. (The first political officer, an
old Party cadre who helped Mao to launch the Revolu-
tion, spends little time here and has apparently been
replaced de facto by a Lin protege.) Most of the
leading figures of armies and MDs here sees to be
proteges of Hsu himself, presumably thought reliable
for that reason.
The Canton MR, commanded until 1968 by the
model Lin protege Huang Yung-sheng (then brought to
Peking as Lin's first deputy), is commanded now by
Ting Sheng, also a Lin protege from the 4th Field
Army but not as close to Lin over the years as several
others who were available. Ting was promoted from
another area, apparently for exceptional service.
Virtually all of the leading figures -- military and
political -- of this MR, of the armies disposed in
it, and of the subordinate MDs, are proteges of Lin
and/or Huang. This MR seems to be just as solid as
Shenyang and Nanking.
Among the four key MRs -- and now in fact among
all 11 MRs -- Peking is the curious and inexplicable
exception. Neither the acting commander nor the poli-
tical officer is a Lin protege, nor are their senior
deputies*; and in the Peking Garrison -- the immediately
available coercive force -- only the commander is known
to be a Lit man, and he is missing. However, some of
the armies in this MR are commanded by men who are Lin's
* n began the Cultaral Revolution with one of his
long time proteges -- Yang_Yung -- in the key post of
commander of this MR. Purged in 19.67, Yang is the only
Lin protege among the 60-odd tonal military leaders
known or believed purged. There are several Lin
proteges among the missing, but some of these have
been reported under rehabilitation (perhaps saved by
their ties with Lin), and most are expected to show up
eventually.
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proteges or out of his old forces, and his proteges
are beginning to appear in the MD commands.
The Seven Lesser MRs: The seven other MRs all
sees to be in generally good shape, from Lin's point
of view. The Tsinan MR is commanded by a Lin favorite,
Yang Te-chih, the acting political officer is a long-
time Lin protege, and there may be others in the armies
there. The Foochow MR under Han Hsien-chu is a model,
with all of the leading posts in the MR, and others
in the armies and the MDs, held by proteges and personal
friends of Lin's. The Wuhan MR is commanded by Lin's
protege and friend Tseng Szu-yu and has some other
Lin-men in the MR headquarters. The Chengtu MR is
commanded by two figures described by Lin as "old
friends," one of whom is in fact his protege, the
other apparently favored by Mao for his support at a
critical time; the subordinate Tibet MD is dominated
by Lin's proteges, and there may be others in the
armies. The Kunming MR has also been led by two men
described by Lin as his "old friends," who have appar-
ently been reorganizing the armies and MDs; that one
of the two who fits the pattern of a Lin protege has
just now died; and the other may replace him in the
top post. The Sinkiang MR, troublesome until 1968,
has been stable for the past two years under two of
Lin's proteges, one of whom may have been transferred
recently to the less satisfactory Peking MR.
The Lanchow MR, as of summer 1970, was an ex-
ception, and an important one, because it contains the
ancillary PLA headquarters (at Sian) and a number of
China's most sensitive military facili;,ies. Neither
the commander nor the political officer was a Lin
protege, and the senior figures throughout the MR were
old-timers in the area no had had ties with two
purged military leaders. In recent months, however,
Lin has sent into this MR a strong army commanded by
his longtime proteges, and has installed another pro-
tege, Pi Ting-chun, as the new commander of the MR.
(Pi's profile resembles that of Ting Sheng in Canton.
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He was serving with Lin as early as 1937, but has been
closer over the years to other Lin proteges -- Hsu
Shih-yu, Chen Hsi-lien, and Han Hsien-chu -- than to
Lin himself.) Pi seems to have become the head of
the MR Party committee, a post reportedly held pre-
viously by the first political officer. Lin may in-
creasingly arrange for his proteges to get these key
Party posts.*
In sum, Lin's position with respect to the Mili-
I tary Regions seems very strong. Almost all of the MR
commanders are his proteges. So are several of the
first political officers, and the others have seemed
also to serve him well tn the Cultural Revolution. Many
other leading figures in the MRs, and in the armies
disposed in them, are Lin's proteges. Only the Peking
MR still seems to require reorganization. Lin's pro-
teges do not dominate the relatively unimportant mili-
tary districts to anything like the degree that they
dominate the powerful military regions, and Lin does
not seem to feel a need for this degree of domination
at the lower level. But Lin's men are still reorganiz-
ing the MDs, and additional proteges of Lin's are ex-
pected to appear in them as well.
* n t e past, the first political officer was almost
always the first secretary of the Party committee of
,the military region or other organization. Lin mma be
changing that, making the military commander normally
the dominant figure. Evidence is inconclusive. Only
two first secretaries -- or untitled heads -- of Party
committees in the MRs had been credibly reported earlier:
Chang Chun-chiao in the Nanking MR, who is the first
political officer, and Lung Shu-chin in the Sinkiang
MR, who is the military commander. If Pi is now the
head of the Party committee in the Lanchow MR, two of
three would be military commanders.
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VI. Lin and the State Machinery
As Lin himself observed, the PLA in 1967 was
forced to take over the state machinery, regarded by
Mao and himself as being almost as unsatisfactory as
the Party apparatus which controlled it. Lin said at
the time that the PLA did not intend to remain in the
state machinery longer than necessary. But it is still
there, and is evidently to stay.
The Central Government: The Military Affairs
Committee had control of the National Defense Scientific
& Technological Commission (research and development of
advanced weapons) long before the Cultural Revolutii-
began, and in spring 1967 it took over the Office of
National Defense Industries (production of advanced
weapons), which directs the work of the important
ministries of heavy industry. The MAC was apparently
to keep control of these organs permanently. Those
organs -- staff offices, other ministries and commis-
sions, bureaus and special agencies -- which were to
be supervised only temporarily by the PLA were placed
under Military Control Commissions. These MCCs were
apparently installed in almost all central government
organs, including the Ministry of Public Security and
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Many of the PLA leaders in the state machinery
have been identified, but only a few have been tied to
particular posts. Some of them are proteges of Lin
Piao -- e.g., the head of the ministry believed to be
concerned with nuclear weapons -- but most of them
are not. Lin has apparently not been interested in
establishing himself strongly -- through proteges --
in the state machinery across the board.
In recent months the central government has been
briskly reorganizing, consolidating the ministries and
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reducing their number, deactivating the Military Control
Commissions and appointing top officials. In the pro-
cess, PLA officers who have presumably been the leaders
of MCCs in the ministries are being appointed as civilian
officials. For example, in recent weeks a PLA leader
has been listed in second place among officers of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another has been named
the new Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. Many other
career military men have appeared in the nova in such
a way as to indicate that they will be named to similar
posts. In general, these men are not well-known figures.
This means that they are not Lin'N longtime proteges,
the sense in which "protege" has been used in this paper.
The chances are that they are not even more recent
proteges. The appointments of PLA officers at this
level are probably handled not by Lin or even by the
MAC standing committee but by some lesser body such as
the MAC administrative unit in consultation with Chou
En-lai's State Council.
Beyond the purview given him by the MAC's control
of the NDS&T Commission and the NDIO and by the MCCs in
the ministries, Lin apparently relies of Chou En-lai
to tell him what he needs to know about the work of the
government. There is some evidence that Chou clears
with Lin (as the Party vice-chairman with a need-to-
know) the important decisions made by Chou himself and
by the state machinery.
Provincial Machiner : There is no regional state
machinery, and, s nce 1907, no regional Party machinery
outside the MR commands; as noted above, the MR commands
have been the de facto regional governments. However,
there has been a provincial government machinery, in
the form of the "revolutionary committees" in which
power is theoretically shared equally by PLA represen-
tatives, old Party cadres, and representatives of mass
organizations (students and workers). These committees
were not up largely by Chou En-lai and the central CRG,
but there is much testimony that the PLA has dominated
their operations on the spot from the start. This would
be expected, as the weapons, the Support-the-Left troops,
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and the security departments of the committees themselves
are all in the hands of the PLA. This has not, however,
been a stable domination, which the PLA figures could
impose if left to themselves. Mao intervenes periodi-
cally to improve the relative positions of the Party
and mass components, telling the military to avoid
coercion and work patiently for agreements, a policy
which, as noted above, institutionalizes conflict in
a novel way.
Of the 26 provincial revolutionary committees,
some five to seven are apparently being reorganized,
and their present leading figures are not known.* Of
the remainder, proteges of Lin Piao are the chairmen
of 10, and are the first vice-chairmen of two or three
others. Two other provincial committees are headed
by Party cadres who worked under Lin in the old Central-
South apparatus and who may have been sponsored by his
in recent years. Several of Lin's proteges are in
positions in yet other committees -- for example, as
one of several vice-chairmen -- which are less important
but in which they can at least watch what goes on.
It can be argued that Lin is making an effort
to dominate these committees through his proteges, but
the appearance of this is probably deceptive. Lin
does of course have an interest in having reliable
leaders in all of the provinces, just as in the military
districts. But, just as it was found that Lin felt no
need to install his proteges in the Military District
commands, he does not appear to be trying to install
then in most of these provincial committees, an equivalent
*The leading figures are the chairman and the first
vice-chairmen. In most cases, either the chairman or
the first vice-chairman has had long experience in the
area; sometimes both have had. In the few cases in
which neither has had this history, there are others
on the committees who have worked a long time in those
areas.
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level of power. The exceptions are the provinces in
which the MR headquarters are located. There the com-
manders or political officers of the MRs are concur-
rently the chairmen of the revolutionary committees.
In other words, each holds the provincial post in order
to facilitate his tasks in the far more important MR
post. In provinces which do not contain an MR head-
quarters, few of the revolutionary committee chairmen
are Lin's proteges. If Lin felt it necessary, he
could probably put proteges into almost all of those
chairs. Moreover, even if the assumption here -- that
Lin does not feel a need to dominate the lower levels
to the degree he does the higher -- is mistaken,
control of the new Party committees in the provinces
would be more useful to
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VII. Lin and the Emerging Party Aooaratus
As noted above, the true base of power for Mao
and Lin in recent years has been the PLA, not the Party.
While Mao and Lin are both committed in principle to
restoring the primacy of "the Party", some years will
probably be required to make this actual. The present
situation -- in which "the Party" consists largely of
the Party apparatus in the PLA -- is presumably agree-
able to Lin for the time being, as he is the head of
the military establishment, and the military Party ap-
paratus is responsive to the MAC. But he must turn
his attention to constructing an overall Party apparatus
which, by the time that he becomes the head of the Party,
will be as responsive to him as the military Party ap-
paratus is now. He cannot, of course, know how such
time he will have to work in.
The Old Central A aratus: Prior to the Cultural
Revolut on, a central Party apparatus under the Polit-
buro standing committee -- and apart from the MAC --
consisted essentially of: the Party secretariat, i.e.,
the secretary-general (the Party's chief executive of-
ficer) and several secretaries, each of whom had some
large area of concern (e.g., political security, propa-
ganda, agriculture) and supervised one or more of the
Party's central departments; the staff office, an
administrative organ for the secretariat which had also
some sensitive political security responsibilities
(records of Party meetings, personnel files, protection
of Party leaders); the central departments (e.g., or-
ganization, propaganda, political security, foreign
liaison, united front work, various political depart-
ments for sectors of the economy); the central control
commission, which examined and dealt with violations
of discipline by Party members; a political research
office (under Chen Po-ta) responsible to Mao personally;
and a special five-man group, also not up by Mao,
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charged with purging the arts. Except for the staff
office the director of which was replaced), this entire
structure was destroyed in the early stages of the
Cultural Revolution, and most of its ranking personnel
were purged.
The Cultural Revolution Grou : As noted pre-
viously, a central Cultural Revolution Group set up
in the spring of 1966 had become the de facto secre-
tariat by the end of 1966,* and in 1967 certain of its
officers were given the central roles in rebuilding
the Party. The Party congress of 1969 did not estab-
lish a new Party secretariat, and the central CRG has
reportedly continued to function as the de facto
secretariat. With Chen Po-ta missing since 1 August
and out of action (if not favor), the effective
secretariat has seemed to consist of Kang Sheng,
Madame Mao, the Ideologues Chang Chun-chiao and
Yao Wen-yuan, and Wang Tung-hsing (long Mao's body-
guard and since 1966 the head of the sensitive
staff office).
These officers -- all of them Politburo members --
have continued to be-'7treated in Peking's media as the
most prestigious group below the level of the Polit-
buro standing committee -- more so than the military
leaders as a group. This treatment seems to reflect
Mao's view of them, all of whom have records of absolute
fidelity to Mao. This group would not seem satisfactory
to Lin, however, as a Party secretariat. Some of them
*The special five-man group was abolished and replaced
by the CRG, the political research group was absorbed
by the CRG (headed by the same person, Chen Po-ta), the
central control commission was set aside, the central
departments were put out of business one by one, and
finally the secretaries themselves -- with a few excep-
tions -- were purged. The process was complete by
early 1967.
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have clashed seriously with people close to Lin if not
with Lin himself, and in any case there is no person
close to Lin in this group. Moreover, these five of-
ficers do not have the range of the old secretariat.
Kang and Wang can answer for one very important function,
political security; Kang, Chang and Yao have been con-
cerned in recent years with organizational work; Chang,
Yao, and Madame Mao have had much experience with propa-
ganda work; and Kang is an old hand in liaison with
foreign Communist Parties. But this de facto secretariat
clearly needs to have someone to handle liaison between
the Party apparatus and the Military Affairs Committee
and at least one person to coordinate the work of the
economic departments.
The Politburo standing committee as a whole probably
reviews the key appointments both in the Party center
and in the provinces, and Mao probably keeps for him-
self the power to resolve disputes.
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It is impossible to judge whether Lin is in any
way responsible for the current inactivity of Chen Po-
ta. However, apArt from this, it seems likely that
Lin is taking or has already taken action to change the
composition of the central CRG. Lin has among his
proteges in the PLA structure specialists of the kinds
the secretariat seems to require -- men who have acquired
considerable competence in liaison with non-military
organs and in non-military affairs generally in recent
years. It is possible that PLA figures are already
working on the CRG, without publicity, in some such
status as the alternate secretaries of the old secre-
tariat.
The Subordinate Apparatus: The organization of
the central Party apparatus, a ow the level of the
central CRG, is conjectural. Peking has spoken of
"central departments" in the old sense, but it has
identified only the United Front Work Department as
active again.*
It may be that, in accordance with Mao's and
Lin's expressed determinatirn to simplify all ad-
ministrations, the central Party apparatus has been
simplified -- at least nominally. It may be divided,
as the revolutionary committees in the provinces
seem to be, into four large functions! areas: admin-
istration, political work, production, and security.
If no, there are probably various departments within
these areas.
As for administration, the chances are that the
"central committee" staff office, which for some years
has seemed to be subordinate directly to the politburo
standing committee, has been taken over again by the
*The nera Political Department is subordinate to
the MAC, not the CRG.
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de facto secretariat. Wang Tung-hsing as an officer
of the central CRG would thus supervise himself as
head of the staff office.
The political work area would include the work
of the old departments of organization and propaganda,
united front work, and liaison. Any combination of
Chen Po-ta, Kang Sheng, Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-
yuan could supervise this.
The production area would include the work of
the several old departments concerned with economic
planning, finance and trade, industry and commerce,
and agriculture and forestry. No one known to be an
officer of the secretariat is qualified to supervise
this area.
The security area would be concerned both with
political security (the party, especially the leader-
ship) and public security (the populace). The chances
are that the de facto political security directorate,
believed to exist in recent years, subordinate at
first to Mao directly and then (like the staff office)
to the Politburo standing committee, has now been re-
absorbed by this de facto secretariat. Kang Sheng
and Wang Tung-hsing as officers of the CRG may super-
vise themselves as heads of the security area, and
may concurrently head some of the departments of this
area, e.g., a reconstituted Social Affairs Department
or (a later name) Political Security Department.
Various PLA officers at the Central Coswai t tee
level, who are in unidentified posts in Peking, are
nimost certainly working in the central Party apparatus.
'these men, including proteges of Lin, appear in the
Central Committee lists on ceremonial occasions rather
than in the lists of those working in the central ap-
paratus. The latter lists are composed mostly of un-
known or little-known figures, all below the Central
Committee level, who have rise.i on the Cultural Revo-
lution. However, many PLA leaders -- both commanders
and political officers, when last seen -- have been
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identified on these lists; more than one-third of the
thus-far identified cadres of the central Party appara-
tus are known to be PLA officers, and as any as half
may be. It seems apparent that Lin means to have PLA
^en in at least the sensitive departments of the central
Party apparatus.
One such department is the reconstructed poli-
tical security department under whatever name.* Known
and suspected political security specialists appear on
Peking's lists of those working in the central Party
apparatus; some of them are ALA officers. Moreover,
the PLA political officers identified on these lists
are experienced in similar work and some have probably
been assigned to this area in the apparatus. Lin is
,well aware, from Mao's experience in the years before
the Cultural Revolution, of the importance of having
one's own men in political security work -- if not
directing it, then watching from above and below those
who do direct it.
Others identified on Peking's lists for the
central apparatus have been specialists in united front
work, liaison, and economic organizational work. No
cadres from the old organization and propaganda depart-
ments have been identified, but, again, the PLA poli-
tical officers can easily be redirected to these kinds
of work, and some probably have been.
Provincial Part Committees: As noted previously,
all of the first secretaries of-Re Party's regional
bureaus, and almost all of the first secretaries of pro-
vincial Party committees, were purged in the early stages
*There ^ay e a separate Public Security Department
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of the Cultural Revolution; the Military Region head-
quarters became the only regional authorities, while
the provincial committees were replaced provisionally
by provincial "revolutionary committees." Beginning
in early 1967, these committees were directed to form
Party "core groups" which in turn were to reconstruct
full-scale Party committees. These Party committees,
when formed, were to operate within the "revolutionary
committees," and were to exercise "absolute leadership"
within them. In other words, the Party committee was
to use the established machinery of the revolutionary
committee, and was to be the stable and controlling
element.*
The PLA members of the revolutionary committees
have apparently taken the lead in forming these "core
groups," which, to judge from the few known examples,
have normally been composed of the leaders of the exist-
ing revolutionary committees. The composition of the
core groups has reportedly had to be approved by the
national leadership in Peking -- notably by the central
CRG, although it seems likely that the MAC also has a
voice. The composition of the Party committees must
also be approved by the central CRG -- and again,,
probably, by the MAC -- before the committee can begin
to operate.
Many counties -- more than 100 -- have produced
approved Party committees, but as of aid-December only
one province had done no. The process of forming these
committees has moved very slowly -- in part because
Mao and Lin have emphasized that these committees are
to be composed of true Maoists, and it is necessary
* em ere of the Party committee can, in general, be
expected to take command of the key departments of the
revolutionary committee -- certainly the political and
security departments, probably the administrative and
production departments.
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for the three components of the revolutionary commit-
tees (the military, the old Party cadres, and the mass
representatives) to agree among themselves as to which
of themselves are the most true. Beyond this, it seems
likely that some agreements have been reached but have
then been rejected by Peking. Such rejections ^ay
reflect differences in Peking itself, e.g., between
the CRG and the MAC.
There are members of the CCP Central Committee
in all three categories -- military, cadres, and mass --
in almost every one of the provinces. The selections
for the Central Committee were reportedly made (in
early 1969) by the central CRG, the body which has to
approve the composition of the provincial Party com-
mittees. It was apparently the CRG's intention -- ap-
proved by Mao and Lin -- to have its selections for
the Central Committee serve in the Party core group
in each province and to be named then as the core of
the full-scale Party c..mmittee. in other words, the
same people -- the CRG at the top, and the Central
Committee members in the provinces -- were to dominate
the process from start to finish.
There is no single category which now dominates
the provincial revolutionary committees. "Military
men" dominate most of them, but these are divided into
career militay commanders and career political officers.
The others are headed, with few exceptions, by career
Party-machine men who are now acting as political of-
ficers.
In choosing the heads of the provincial Party
committees, there are three possible strategies. One
is to return to the pre-1954 emphasis, in which men
who were rima~~ril~y militay leaders took regional or
provincialParty posts as their second posts. (Lin
Piao himself, in the period 1949-54, was the commander
of the Central-South Military Region and of the great
4th Field Army,and was concurrently first secretary
of the Party's Central-South Bureau.) Another r.i to
return to the course of the late 1950s and early 1960s,
in which primarily political men -- important chiefly
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as leaders in the Party apparatus -- were installed as
the first secretaries of Party regional bureaus or
provincial committees and took as their second posts
those of first political officers of the military re-
gions and districts. Peking could do this now, by
naming civilian Party figures (acceptable old Party
cadres) to head all of the new provincial Party com-
mittees and assigning them as political officers con-
currently. The third course would be to name as the
heads of the new provincial Party committees -- as the
heads of the "revolutionary committees" are now -- a
^ix of people, some primarily military commanders,
some primarily political officers, and some primarily
civilian Party cadres.*
This third course will probably be chosen. The
first two categories combined will probably be, then
as now, much larger than the third. (There ^ay be two
or three mass representatives, a fourth category, in-
stalled as First Secretaries.) Thus men identified
primarily with the PLA will dominate most of the pro-
vincial Party committees.
In the present situation, the principle of Party
"control" of the ^ilitar y is expressed chiefly as
^ilitar Party control of the military, through the
military Party committees running up to the MAC. This
will probably be true for some time to come. If as
expected military commanders are chosen to head some
of the new provincial Party committees, Mao and Lin may
*It will be-fa-possible in any given case to judge
the single dominant i1gure until the first secretary
is identified, as this person will have far more
power than anyone also on the committee. This does
not mean that he alone will count -- just that this
post will dispose of more power than three or four
lesser posts as simple secretaries or standing com-
mittee members.
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choose to improve appearances immediately, and prepare
the ground for a transfer of allegiance eventually,
by requiring them to divest themselves of their mili-
tary titles and uniforms.* This would not be necessary,
in the cases of men who are to be both provincial Party
secretaries and political officers.
One simple solution would be to name the poli-
tical officer as the first secretary and the military
commander as his senior deputy, in which case both
could continue as PLA officers concurrently with their
Party roles. This arrangement, which would not pose
the problem of the military commander as first secre-
tary, has been noted in a few instances at the county
level.**
**Of the one provincial Party committee thus far
announced (Hunan, not the seat of an MR headquarters),
the first secretary is an old Party cadre who had been
the acting chairman of the revolutionary committee,
the next-ranking secretary is a career political of-
ficer who has been first political officer of the
Hunan ND for the past year or so, and the deputy
secretary is a career military commander who has been
commander of that MD for the past two years or?-so.
Only this third-ranking secretary is regarded as a
protege of Lin's. The three are ranked in the Party
hierarchy precisely as they have been ranked -- one,
two, three -- in the press for several months, a
pattern that may be followed in other provinces.
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It is not clear, however, that Mao and Lin are
ready to emphasize the primacy of the "civilian" Party
apparatus at this time. Some military commanders may
simply take over the Party committees concurrently
(like Lin in 1949-54) and may wear a third hat as chair-
man of the "revolutionary committee" and even a fourth
as head of the military Party committee. In such in-
stances, these commanders would continue to be respon-
sible to two hierarchies -- the military Party system
answerable to the MAC and the "civilian" (really mixed)
Party system said to be answerable primarily to the
central CRG. Peking would have to take care to ensure
that the same orders are passed down the two chains of
command. Moreover, in the absence of a regional Party
organization, the Party committee of a Military Region
headquarters would presumably be superior to all pro-
vincial Party committees; so Peking would have to work
out some system to prevent conflict between those
military Party committees and the provincial committees,
the military members of sh ich would have to obey the
MR Party organization.
As noted previously, at present the revolution-
ary committee of every province in which a Military
Region headquarters is located is chaired by either
the military commander or the political officer of
that MR, apparently to facilitate the control of all
developments in these critical centers of power. While
Lin and other military leaders may feel secure on this
point now (with the mass organizations under control),
this consideration may persist for a time. If no, the
military men chosen as heads of the new provincial Party
committees may be mainly from this group. And if no,
most will probably be proteges of Lin Piao.
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VIII. Lin's Prospects
Mao, now 77, may die or become incapacitated at
any time, but he may conceivably last for some years
yet (he might decide to live forever), and Lin's own
health is not robust. Lin, although only 63, might
die first, or might die soon after becoming Party
chairman. Assuming that Lin does outlast Mao for a
substantial period, his prospects seem fairly good
for holding the post as long as his health holds.* He
would seem, at least, to have more going for him than
:lily one else has, and more than outside observers have
generally been willing to credit to him.
Lin Without Mao: In considering Lin as the suc-
cessor, one must begin from the recognitioi of what
he has accomplished in recent years. He has trans-
formed the PLA, from its state of uneven competence and
low morale in 1959, into a formidable force and in-
strument. In the Cultural Revolution, he has accomplished
the almost incredible feat of massively purging the PLA
at the same time that he has used it successfully as
Tile prinal instrument of the Revolution. Such a man
has got to be taken seriously.
*If his health does not hold and he and Mao both
die in the next few years, Chou En-lai and Huang Yung-
sheng will probably be the dominant figures. A Chou-
Huang alliance might soon lead to the suppression of
the civilian radicals of the central CRG. If Chou
too dies, the military leaders around Huang will prob-
ably dictate the choice of a successor, but there does
not seem to be any individual after Chou so outstand-
ing as to be acclaimed the Leader; thus a collective
would be likely.
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It is true that Lin has never in his adult life
been without Mao, the source of his authority and as-
surance. It is probably also true that Lin, without
Mao, would never have dared to make the demands on
the PLA that he has made. And it is probably further
true that, if Mao had not been standing behind Lin,
the PLA would not have responded as it has. In other
words, it seems likely that only Mao, among Chinese
leaders, can command such awe that heavily-armed men
will meekly accept their ruin at his hands, and that
other heavily-armed men will try persistently to carry
out policies which can result in their own ruin if
anything goes wrong or if the great man changes his
mind.
But it does not follow from this that Lin will
simply come apart when Mao goes, or will soon be blown
away. Lin seems to be made of sterner stuff than that,
and to have more assets than that. Even if it is Mao's
will rather than Lin's which is commanding, Lin will
begin with Mao's clear and emphatic mandate. He will
also benefit from the common interest of Chinese leaders
in appearing at a time of crisis to be unified and to
be moving forward with confidence. He will have his
record in the Cultural Revolution, which should inspire
at least respect and caution. And he will have what
seem to be formidable organizational assets and un-
equalled opportunities to increase them.
Lin and Chou: The most critical relationship
would seem to be at with Chou En-lai, if both Lin
and Chou last. Lin seems to need Chou badly -- as by
far the most intelligent and able man in the leader-
ship, with the best record as a manager of all kinds
of affairs. Unlike the other members of the Politburo
standing committee, Chou can do many things for Lin
that Lin cannot do for himself. (Chen Po-ta could of
course be useful, to help Lin to formulate his version
of Mao's "thought," and Kang Sheng could of course be
useful, to the degree that Lin were willing to let a
man not close to himself do his police work for him;
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but Chou seems really indispensable, as the only member
of the super-elite with any substantial knowledge of
the non-Communist world and of the economy.) And Chou
would seem at least for a while to need Lin, as the
holder of the mandate and as a Maoist protector against
those elements of the leadership who may feel now, or
come to feel, that Chou is not a true Maoist. Thus it
would seem likely that, while their predispositions
differ, they would get along the way Mao and Chou have
got along: Lin would value Chou for the many reasons
that he should, Chou would work within the boundaries
set by Lia, and they would oe a stron? artnership.
It is true that calculations of mutual need have
sometimes been mistaken.* And there id a potential for
serious conflict in the Lin-Chou relationship. The
main reason for thinking so is not that Chou is likely
to challenge Lin, but that Lin's tendency is to be
suspicious and mistrustful; he seems to trust compara-
-tively few people. Chou has seemed to be established
as one of those few, but this could change. With Mao
gone, the very popular Chou, believed to be more popular
than Lin even with PLA leaders, and the only Chinese
leader with the stature to challenge Lin, might be seen
increasingly by an insecure and apprehensive Lin as
*About ten years ago, surveying the visibly troubled
Chinese leadership in the wake of the Leap Forward and
commune programs and the split with Moscow, the present
writer tried to guess which of Mao's lieutenants -- among
the many who had reason to wish for another leader --
might be disposed to challenge him. In considering
Liu Shao-chi and his proteges, it was concluded that
Mao and Liu would need each other for mutual protection
against other elements of the leadership whose record
in recent years had been better. As is now well known,
soon after that time Liu among others began to work
against Mao; and Mao, after transferring his base of
power to tht. PLA, slid not need Liu.
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the central figure of a military-moderate cabal work-
ing against himself and all true Maoists.
On balance, the probability seems to be for a
continuing good relationship between Lin and Chou, who
are not expected to divide sharply on policy. The
possibility of a deterioration is simply one of the
many factors in the picture of the Chinese leadership
that require a continuing assessment.*
Lin, Chen and Kan g. Lin's relations with the
other two ^em ers of e Politburo standing committee,
Chen Po-ta and Kang Sheng, will probably continue to
be strained in some respects -- at leabt, less amiable
than with Chou. Lin seems more likely, now and in the
future, to work with Chou to limit tie influence of Chen
and Kang, than to work with Chen and/or Kang to limit
the influence of Chou. As noted above, however, there
is a chance that Lin will come to distrust Chou after
Mao's death, and in this event Lin might regard Chen
and Kang, if still in place, as the true Maoists at
his side.
If Chen, now missing, has fallen from Mao's
favor and a Vacancy has been created on the Politburo
standing committee, Lin will probably do his best to
*Clues ^ g come from developments in the PLA and
the government, as each already has a hand in the
other's area of primary concern -- Chou in the PLA,
Lin in the government. If now, while each has direct
access to Mao and thus an opportunity to work against
the other, Chou seems to be trying to arrange a purge
of Lin's proteges in the PLA, or Lin seems to be trying
to surround and bind Chou with unqualified military
^en, one might reasonably forecast a showdown struggle
after Mao goes. There is, however, no present evidence
of this.
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place one of his own proteges -- one would suppose
Huang Yung-sheng -- on it. This would appear to
give Lin effective control of the standing committee
-- himself, Chou, and Huang or some other protege --
at the time of Mao's death without the need for
making changes in the leadership at an already agitated
time. If Lin cannot manage this now, he and Chou will
probably act together to change the composition of the
standing committee soon after Mao's death.
The Politburo: If the politburo is to be a
voting body, n w l probably be able to dominate it
even without changing it. The chances tro, however,
that it will not be a genuine voting body under Lin,
just as it has not been under Mao. Lin will probably
make much greater use of it as a discussion group, in
which various points of view are heard and considered.
Chou En-lai will probably prevail on Lin to add some
economic specialists to the Politburo.
The Military Leaders: The Chinese military
leadership w continue to constitute Lin's principal
base of power, as the men he can call upon to enforce
his decisions. Lin will almost certainly continue to
dominate the central military leadership through the
three critical organs, the Military Affairs Committee,
its administrative unit, and the General Staff. This
domination will depend on the continued fidelity of a
handful of Lin's longtime proteges and close associates,
especially Huang Yung-sheng, the second-ranking military
leader (who has a share in several of Lin's key proteges
and has others of his own). In this connection, Lin
is probably right about his military comrades -- that
is, that while most of them are not Maoists to the
degree that Lin is, they will nevertheless be loyal
to him.
It is probably true that most military leaders
have mixed feelings about Lin, and that he has alienated
at least a few of those still in place. Although a
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lifelong military man who is most comfortable with
other military men, he has been above all faithful to
Mao. This has meant unwavering support of Mao in his
periodic purges, humiliations and reindoctrinations
of the PLA. However, the surviving members of the
central military leadership are for the most part men
whom Lin has favored for many years and has advanced
and protected in the Cultural Revolution, men who
have reason to be loyal to him. So long as Lin does
not make demands on these men so extreme that they
cannot be met, and does not threaten or attempt to
carry out another great purge for failure to meet such
demands, a revolt by the central military leadership
seems quite unlikely.* If, however, Lin were to make
extreme demands and threaten or begin to carry out
such a purge -- if, in other words, he were to behave
just like Mao -- there would seem to be a strong pos-
sibility of a coup by his own proteges. That is to
say: there is undoubtedly a limit to what can be
demanded of any group of men, and the limit has prob-
ably been reached under Mao. If Lin were to attempt
to put them all through it again -- men who have
*Lin has g ven such thought to the possibility of
a coup, and (in a 1966 speech Justifying a great purge
of the Party) has even pointed out to other Party
leaders that most of the attempted coups in other
countries in the past decade -- most of those of which
there is a record -- have been successful. Mao and
Lin have constructed an elaborate system of mutual
surveillance to prevent such an attempt against them-
selves, and in normal circumstances this would probably
be reliable. That is, a successful conspiracy would
probably require the participation of a substantial
number of officers -- to seize and hold strategic
centers -- and it would be very difficult to recruit
these without encountering some who would refuse and
who would expose the others. But in extreme circum-
stances -- e.g. the threat of another Cultural Revolu-
tion -- the chances would be be er.
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served him well, aud who are entitled to expect decent
treatment in return -- the chances are that he could
not get away with it.
The most important military leaders outside
Peking are also men who have reason to be loyal to
Lin, and to remain so except in an extreme situation.
Lin will probably continue to think it important to
dominate the 11. Military Region headquarters -- the
centers of real power outside Peking -- through his
proteges there. He may be acting now, or may act
soon, to place more of his proteges in the Peking MR
headquarters -- the only one in which neither the
commander nor the political officer is a Lin protege --
and in the Peking Garrison, the very sensitive poli-
tical security force in the capital. There is an out-
side chance of a rebellion by one of these regional
commands, but no regional center could hold out for
long agains* the central authority; regional rebellions
would be expected only if some part of the center were
to lead the way. More of Lin's proteges will probably
appear as commanders of Military Districts as well as
MRs, but this level of power is not critical, and Lin
will not try to blanket the MDs with his men.
The State Machiner : The state machinery will
remain of much ess Importance in the structure of
power than is the military structure. The MAC will
probably retain control over the research and develop-
ment of modern weapons, and of the public security
apparatus. PLA officers will probably take over
-- whether as PLA officers or as civilians -- a number
of the ministries.* In general, Lin probably will
not try to install his proteges throughout the state
machinery, but will rely heavily on Chou En-lai to keep
him informed and on the reconstructed Party apparatus
*The new Constitution provides for continuing FLA
participation in the government.
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within the state machinery to supervise and direct it.
This will probably be true at the provincial level too;
that is, Lin will probably not aim at the chairmanships
of revolutionary committees per se, but will seek to
place proteges at the heads Ut e emerging Party com-
mittees in the most important provinces, some o whom
may head the revolutionary committees concurrently.
The Emerging Part% A aratus: The now emerging
central Party apparatus 0010w the Politburo level) will
steadily increase in importance, and within a few years
will rival the MAC and the rest of the military Party
apparatus as a power system. Lin can be expected to
supervise closely the reconstruction of this apparatus.
It seems very likely that Lin will try to change the
composition of the de facto Party secretariat, if he
has not already done so. Those added will probably be
PLA figures, now in the MAC and its subordinate bodies,
who in recent years have acquired additional skills.
As the central Party apparatus subordinate to
the secretariat gets sorted out, proteges of Lin will
very probably appear at the top level, while proteges
of his proteges (other PLA leaders) will probably ap-
pear at lower levels. As a general proposition, the
strength of Lints men in the apparatus seems likely to
increase in strength as the apparatus itself increases.
Lin will probably make a special effort to get control
of the political security department -- as vital to his
survival -- or at least to restrict its role in the
affairs of the PLA. Lin will almost certainly put his
own man at the head of this department after Mao's death.
As the Party committee system in the provinces
get reconstructed, proteges of Lin will probably be
well represented there too. Most of the new Party com-
mittees will probably be headed by men who either remain
organizationally a part of the PLA or at least have
made their careers in the PLA. Lin may experience some
difficulty in bringing such men to identify themselves
with, and respond smoothly to, a reconstructed Party
apparatus. However, Lin does not seem to see organiza-
tional loyalty as the central problem. That is, what
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Lin wants is what Mao has wanted -- lieutenants whose
allegiance is primarily to himself, not to an abstract
"PLA" or "Party."
Lin as a "True Maoist": Lin has been previously
been described, In the rs paper in this series and
in this one, as a "true Maoist." The essential char-
acteristic of the true Maoist -- exemp.ified by Lin
above all others -- has been his loyalty to Mao person-
ally, his identification with Mao in all circumstances,
his willingness to subordinate his own interest to Mao's,
and in particular his readiness to take the blame for
Mao'. mistakes. (For many years, those who have attempted
to place the responsibility for failure on Mao's policies,
rather than on their own misunderstanding or faulty
execution, have been purged.) And the Cultural Revolu-
tion has been in fact -- rather then in theory -- con-
cerned above all with examining and testing this loyalty
to Mao personally, not to any body of doctrine, In
this sense, all of the members of the Politburo stand-
ing committee, including Chou En-lai, and most of Peking's
other current leaders, have been true Maoists.
The term "true Maoist" has also implied, however,
a high degree of acceptance of Mao's "thought." (This
has been clearly implied in another term used to describe
Lin -- "reliable revolutionary successor," which it was
the declared purpose of the Cultural Revolution to pro-
duce.) At the center of this "thought" has been not
so much a set of ideological propositions as a faith
-- in the eventual perfectibility of the Party cadre,
and in his ability to transform even common men. In
practice, the "thought" calls for unremitting political
indoctrination, which instills moral incentives and
produces the indomitable revolutionary will. The will
thus produced in the cadres, and to a lesser degree in
the masses, is mobilized in great campaigns -- whether
destructive, like the campaigns against counter-revo-
lutionaries, or constructive, like the Leap Forward and
"people's commune" programs, or both, like the Cultural
Revolution. The aim of these campaigns is to create
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a new Chinese society, egalitarian, austere, and self-
purifying through class struggle, which is to serve
as the model and liberating instrument for other peoples.
Because Mao's own predispositions are radical
and militant, calling for maximum advance on a revolu-
tionary line, Mao's "thought" is sometimes equated with
just these features of his thought. However, Mao's
"thought" does provide for periods of retreat and con-
solidation, sobriety and caution. His leadership for
many years has shown this pattern: of militant advance
until such time as the real world (e.g., human nature,
or Soviet and American military strength) compels a
retreat. He is skilled in retreating: no other head
of any Communist Party has shown such an ability to
survive as has Mao. Observers who have failed to
recognize that retreat and consolidation are also fea-
tures of Mao's "thought" have sometimes incorrectly
concluded, in periods of retreat and consolidation,
that Mao was no longer the leader.
The "true Maoists" among Mao's lieutenants -- in
the sense of those loyal to him personally, whether in
advance or retreat--have seemed to be divided among
themselves in an important way. On one hand, there are
those who associate themselves most happily with periods
of militant advance, and on the other those who seem
to work beat in an atmosphere of sobriety and caution.
Lin Piao's predispositions have seemed to be, like Mao's,
radical and militant. Most other Party leaders, in-
cluding Chou En-lai and almost all of the military
leaders, have seemed to be less no. Chou in particular,
and the military leaders for the most part, have seemed
to serve Mao well even in periods of militant advance,
but their preference has seemed to be for the less glar-
ing colors in the spectrum of Mao's thought.
while Lin might soon be deposed or forced to make
substantial modifications in Mao's policies, he would
begin as a "true Maoist radical." This formulation has
proved misleading for some readers, when taken as imply-
ing that Lin accepts only the radical features of Mao's
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thought, that he is a partisan of blind, insensate
militancy, and that he would immediately initiate
radical policies where they did not already exist.
Lin in fact has subscribed to the full range of
Mao's "thought," has associated himself when neces-
sary with periods of retreat and consolidation,
might find himself in such a period (like the pre-
sent period) at the time of his succession, and
might well remain in it or even initiate such a
period if not already in it.
Yet the formulation "true Maoist radical" was
intended to convey a sense of Lin's predisposition to
be radical and militant: that is, to be more inclined
to initiate radical policies, to push them harder,
and to stay with them longer, than would either a
"non-Maoist" or a relatively conservative leader like
Chou and the military men. The present survey of
Lin's proteges and peers does not sees to discredit
the proposition that Lin is more radical and militant
than most of those men are. It does, however, qualify
the conclusion -- implied in the formulation "true
Maoist radical" -- that Lin's predispositions are
fully as radical and militant as Mao's own.
The survey suggests that they may not be.
Because the question must be answered: why does Lin
seem to prefer the relatively conservative leaders
like Chou and the military men, over the more radical
and militant types tike the leaders of the Cultural
Revolution Group?* One possible answer -- assuming
that he does indeed prefer Chou and the military --
is that he does not see Chou and the military as
posing any threat to him personally, whereas he does
see the Cultural Revolution Group types as posing such
a threat. But another possible answer is that Lin's
*Some observers would any that this is a false ques-
tion, that he does not prefer these men, but is forced
to work with them.
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emphatic association with the most radical and militant
features of Mao's thought -- so that he seems clearly
in the "radical" camp when the leadership is divided
on those lines -- reflects not so much his own predis-
position as his sense of what loyalty to Mao entails.
That is, when Mao clearly favors a "radical" line, Lin
feels obliged to state his own favor in even stronger
terms; and when Mao fails to make his position clear,
as is often the case, Lin feels obliged to state his
own position in terms which he knows to be in accord
with Mao's predisposition. This is perhaps the true
meaning of Lin's notorious formulations to the effect
that he and others will faithfully carry out Mao's
policies "even when we do not understand them."
Abiding features of Maoism in practice -- the
emphasis on absolute loyalty to the leader personally,
the absolute responsibility borne by the cadre, the
critical importance of political indoctrination and
moral incentive, the imperative of class struggle,
the inescapable need for great national campaigns
aimed at extracting the maximum from the human
material -- can and probably will continue under Lin,
as will the examinations and purges which inevitably
accompany all of this. Rut it is possible to continue
on these lines without reaching the extremes which
Mao has reached in the past 15 years. It is possible,
in other words, to follow a Maoist course but to
impose less of a burden on the human material, to
place less strain on one's personal relationships
with other leaders, to begin the periods of retreat
and consolidation earlier, and to remain in them
longer. Those leaders whom Lin seems to like best
-- Chou and the military men -- are expected to in-
fluence his in this direction, the more easily if
his predispositions are indeed less extreme than
Mao's.
It has also been contended in this paper that
Lin's self-interest coincides with the course that his
friends and favorites are likely to urge on him: that
is, that he cannot behave as Mao In his manic periods
has behaved, without a high risk of being overthrown.
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This does not mean that Lin's policies will not be
onerous for the Chinese or offensive to other coun-
tries; they certainly will be. Indeed, as other
observers have remarked, it may be harder for Lin
to make a sudden reversal of a militant policy -- say,
Mao's presen policy toward the Russians -- than it
would have been for Mao, because he will not have
Mao's stature and prestige. But even Mao did not
pursue his extreme policies to a suicidal end, and
Lin seems even less likely to do no.
If the two judgments expressed above are
correct -- that Lin will take counsel from Chou
and from his own military comrades, and for this
reason and others will conduct himself with a decent
regard for the real world -- Lin should be able to
survive for some time as Mao's successor. The length
of time cannot be forecast, because it depends on
factors -- and the interaction of factors -- which
cannot be assessed at this time.* These include the
state of Lin's health at the time of succession, his
progress toward solving China's problems through what-
ever combination of policies, and the willingness of
Chinese leaders to be content with something less than
total solutions.
*Many observers have concluded that Lin is not
credible as a long-term successor. It is not hard
to agree with this judgment, because Lin himself
does not seem to have the prospect of a long term;
it would be surprising if he were to live out the
decade.
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