INTELLIGENCE REPORT POLICY ISSUES IN THE PURGE ON LIN PIAO (REFERENCE TITLE: POLO L)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001000010049-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 62
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 3, 2009
• Sequence Number: 49
• Publication Date: October 1, 1972
• Content Type: IR

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Secret
DIRECTORATE OF
INTELLIGENCE
C0 L~Wl CVVYOr31
Intelligence Report
Policy Issues in the Purge of Lin Piao
(Reference Title: POLO L)
/k..e (~ c 4"d
Secret
October 1972
RSS No. 0061/72
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CFCR T
POLICY ISSUES IN TI-1113 PURGE' OP LIN PIAO
This study finds that the principal -- and still
unresolved -- issue behind the momentous purge of Lin
Piao and associates, has been the issue of civilian
versus military control over China's political system.
Although dramatic, differences over foreign policy -- for
example, whether China should seek improved relations
with the US and/or the USSR -- have apparently not been
central to the purge. Certain differences do seem to
have been present concerning the style and pacing of
domestic policies; but, by and large, back of the
political-military struggle for power, questions of
policy have been weapons used to attack and undermine
domestic adversaries, rather than matters of substantive
difference.
In preparing the study this Staff has benefited
from the comments and contributions of a number of other
offices of the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of
the still incomplete nature of available data, however,
the study's views represent the judgments essentially
of this Staff and of its author. Further comments will
be welcome, and should be addressed to the study's
author of this Staff.
Hal Ford
Chief, Hf/I Special Research Staff
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SF.CR'FT
POLICY ISSUES IN THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO
Contents
Page
Summary . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
i
Introduction . . . . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
1
The Issue of Civilian Versus
Military
Control. .
. .
4
The Issue of the Scale of the
Purge. .
. . . . .
. .
15
The Issue of Foreign Policy .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
22
The Issue of Economic Policy
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
31
The Issue of Rural Policy . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
39
Conclusions . . . . . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. .
44
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POLICY ISSUES IN THE PURGE OF LIN PIAO
Summary
In very broad and somewhat simplified terms, the
origin of the purge of Lin Piao's "conspiratorial clique"
is believed to be the same as the origin of the Cultural
Revolution -- Mao Tse-tung's conviction that he would
have to remove his designated successor as the leader
of a "disloyal opposition" in order to regain control
over the political apparatus in China. Demonstrating
the difficulty of delegating power within China's poli-
tical system, the Cultural Revolution and the Lin Piao
affair have been in essence struggles for control of
the political apparatus between Plao and his designated
successors. Within this larger context of a struggle
for power, policy issues become primarily weapons for
use in, rather than the causes der se of, such struggle.
The supreme irony of the Cultural Revolution,
undertaken in order to enable ilao Tse-tung to regain
control over a "bureaucratic" Party apparatus, is that
it ended with the creation of a new Army-dominated ap-
paratus even less responsive to Mao's direction and con-
trol. In a very real sense, the growing disagreement
over the respective roles of civilian and military
authority in the period from 1967 to 1971 reflected
mounting friction over the roles of Mao and Lin in the
new structure of power. When Mao first suspected and
then became convinced that Lin was opposing his efforts
to re-establish civilian Party control, the issue of
civilian versus military control became the central
issue in a protracted political struggle which would
lead in time to the fall of Lin Piao.
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SFC;R FT
Although personal attitudes and impressions are
hard to document, the record does seem to indicate
clearly Mao's growing disillusionment with the performance
of Lin Piao and the military apparatus over a period
of time dating back to the spring of 1969, when Mao
issued the first of many warnings to Army representatives
serving in the new Revolutionary Committee structure
to correct their defective work-style in these early
warnings, Mao characterized this work-style as "arrogant
and complacent" and "crude and careless," defects which
he charged had led the PLA-dominated apparatus to commit
"mistakes" in the implementation of regime policies.
Mao's growing distrust of his chosen successor
was manifested dramatically in March 1970 when Mao
decided to remove the post of Chairman of the State
from the new draft Chinese People's Republic Constitu-
tion. Lin apparently interpreted this decision, which
confirmed Chou En-lai as the de facto head of the govern-
ment, as in effect disinheriting imas t1.o successor.
This helps to explain why Lin Piao (who saw Mao with-
drawing his right to the succession), Chen Po-ta (who
was vulnerable, at a time when the policy line was shift-
ing to the Right, as the exemplar of "ultra-leftism")
and four top-ranking military leaders (who viewed Mao's
escalating pressure on the military apparatus as a threat
to themselves) banded together "to prepare and launch
a surprise attack" -- as the Party documents explaining
the Lin affair now assert -- at the Second Plenum at
Lushan in August 1970,
Since it was apparent that Lin was challenging
him as the head of a powerful military organization,
Mao was compelled to be cautious and circumspect in
takin action a ainst him.
any action 25X1
against Lin at this juncture without concrete proof of
conspiracy would have aroused opposition from military
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leaders and might have resulted in civil war. Instead,
Mao at the Second Plenum intensified the continuing pres-
sure on Lin's military apparatus by initiating a "criticize
revisionism and rectify work-style" campaign which would
dominate China's political life throughout the following
year.
Since the road to power in the Cultural Revolu-
tion of both Lin Piao and the PLA had been one of "giving
prominence to politics,' the central charge in this
campaign -- that an overemphasis on politics had resulted
in "Lefti:st deviationism" in the implementation of Piao's
policy line -- served to undercut one of the most important
justifications for Lin's and the PLA's continued right
to rule. The generally negative response of military
authorities throughout China to this rectification campaign
indicated, moreover, that they were quite aware that it
threatened their continued domination of the political
structure. The struggle between Mao and Lin for control
of the political-military apparatus had reached an impasse,
soon to explode in the bizarre sequence of events beginning
with an abortive Lin-sponsored attempt to assassinate
Mao and culminating in Lin's fiery death in a plane
crash in Mongolia.
If it is true that Plao even before the Ninth Party
Congress suspected Lin of opposing Party leadership over
the Army, there is reason to believe that Plao sensed this
opposition first in a disagreement over the scale of the
purge within the Party. This was a disagreement not only
over the extent to which the old Party was to be purged
but also, as a corollary, over the criteria to be used
in selecting new Party cadres. The implications of the
shift following the Ninth Party Congress -- to emphasize
professional qualifications rather than revolutionary
criteria in the selection of new Party leaders -- were
clear. Many of these were to be old Party cadres who,
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having been properly educated and "transformed," were
to be "liberated" and returned to positions of authority.
Sensing a threat to their continued exercise of political
power, both radical ideologues and military leaders had
reason to join forces to carry out what is now called an
"ultra-leftist" cadre policy characterized either by whole-
sale purging of old Party cadres or "failing to liberate
cadres on time."
The mechanism for carrying out this "ultra-leftist"
cadre policy was the May 7 Cadres School, an institution
to which old Party cadres were sent for a refresher course
in the study of Mao Thought -- as well as hard physical
labor -- and where through faithful performance of these
duties they could demonstrate anew their loyalty to Chair-
man Mao and I?iao's revolutionary line. The flaw in this
arrangement was that these schools were run by the PLA,
with military leaders empowered to decide whether the old
cadres had passed the test of political loyalty. The
charge that the radical ~rleologues of the Cultural Revolu-
tion Group and officers of the PLA abused this authority
to prevent the rehabilitation of veteran Party cadres and
thus perpetuate their own power is both credible and
supported by developments at the time.
A highly dramatic and visible issue, the role of
foreign policy in domestic political conflict in general
and in the Lin Piao affair in particular, must be approached
with great care. There is a strong temptation, for example,
to define a rpiori the foreign policy issue in the Lin
Piao affair in terms of a dispute concerning the triangular
relationship between China, the Soviet Union and the United
States, with one group favoring a rapprochement with the
Soviet Union and the other with the United States. In
fact, it appears that Mao, Lin, Chou and the top PLA leaders
were all agreed that the Soviet Union constituted the gravest
military threat to China and that policy differences vis-
a-vis the USSR were confined to questions of degree and
emphasis.
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The dispute concerned not so much which of the two
great powers, Russia or America, China should conciliate,
but whether China should switch from the isolationist and
confrontationist foreign policy posture of the Cultural
Revolution to a more flexible and pragmatic approach.
Lin Piao is clearly on record as one of the principal
art-hitects of what might be called the "revolutionary
model" of foreign policy which dominated China's foreign
relations during the Cultural Revolution. Since Chou
En-lai personified the post-Cultural Revolution turn toward
what might be called a\"nationalist model" of foreign
policy, the dispute over the issue of foreign policy in
a real sense was a dispute between these two leaders,
each striving to enlist support for his views. The record
shows, moreover, that Chairman Mao backed Chou throughout
most of this struggle, providing decisive support in the
final showdown debate when Lin stood up in a Central Com-
mittee meeting to oppose the proposed visit of President
Nixon to China.
Lin based his opposition to President Nixon's visit
not so much on considerations of power as of ideology,
portraying negotiations with the United States as a betrayal
of the Chinese and world revolutions. It seems fairly
clear, moreover, that although Lin used the Soviet Union
as a counter in his argument against the Nixon visit, he
did so more from a desire to score debating points or to
strengthen his ideological argument than from any prior
understanding with the Soviet leadership. Just as Mao
and Chou had earlier attacked policies with which Lin was
directly associated as "ultra-leftist," Lin and his mili-
tary supporters were now attacking the Piao-Chou policy
of negotiations with the United States as "too rightist."
With respect to economic policy, the central charge
leveled against Lin Piao is that, whereas Liu Shoo-chi
had committed the Rightist error in the early 1960's of
overemphasizing production at the expense of politics,
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Lin and his colleagues were guilty of the "ultra-leftist"
error of overemphasizing politics at the expense of pro-
duction. Although grossly exaggerated and distorted,
there is an element of truth in this indictment of the
military-dominated apparatus for having handled poorly
the complicated task of rebuilding the economy following
the disruption of the Cultural Revolution, The end
result of radical ideologues and military leaders together
controlling the implementation of economic policy in the
period following the Ninth Party Congress was an "ultra-
leftist" tendency to go beyond Plao's policy guidelines,
a tendency expressed first in setting unrealistic goals
and then in resorting to coercion in an attempt to achieve
these goals.
Characterized as "Chairman Plao's new economic
line," these guidelines were reminiscent of the economic
strategy which had produced the Great Leap Forward, only
this time presented in a more reasoned and moderate vein
in an apparent effort to take account of earlier mistakes.
A central feature of these guidelines was Mao's call for
a sustained high rate of economic development to be achieved
primarily by mobilizing China's huge underemployed labor
force to carry out Leap Forwards in agriculture and medium-
and-small-scale industry. In this effort to undertake
simultaneous Leap Forwards in both industry and agricul-
ture -- the entire undertaking to rely heavily on political
indoctrination and ideological incentives -- there was
ample room for controversy in the allocation of blame when
the effort began to founder in early 1970.
Among the reasons for revising China's Fourth
Five Year Plan at or shortly after the Second Plenum in
August 1970, the basic reason was that the attempt to
carry out a "practical" Leap Forward had failed. Another
reason for the change was the need to reverse the trend
toward decentralization of economic and administrative
power and to re-establish centralized control over the
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economy. A third reason, revealed by Chou En-lai in dis-
cussing a dispute within the leadership over "guns versus
butter," was the difficulty which had been experiences?
in attempting to shift the burden for the development of
China's agriculture and local industry to the provincial
level.
In this debate over the age-old question of "guns
versus butter" (which would be discussed in the press as
the question of whether industry should be developed with
"electronics" or "steel" at the center), there was a
natural basis for alliance between the radical planner,
and the military. For to the extent that the ideological
view of Chinese man (as willing to subordinate individual
to collective or national goals) prevailed, there would
be more funds available in the central budget for the
development of advanced weapons and military industry.
That such an alliance, whether tacit or overt, did in fact
exist is suggested, moreover, by the content of the public
discussion of this issue.
Another policy issue was the undertaking following
the Cultural Revolution to reform China's rural communes.
This constituted an atte,upt to revive a number of the
original features of China's commune system. This time,
however, these radical reforms were not to be imposed
from above by administrative fiat, but rather were to be
accepted "voluntari.ly" by a peasantry whose ideological
consciousness had been raised as a result of the Cultural
Revolution.
The vehicle for the "voluntary" introduction of
these reforms was a nation-wide campaign initiated in
the fall of 1968 of learning from and emulating the model
Tachai agricultural production brigade, a collective farm
so advanced that it had eliminated private plots, merged
production teams and instituted a system of income dis-
tribu,ion combining both socialist and Communist features.
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Simply put, the problem facing the "leading comrades" at
all levels in carrying out the "learn from Tachai" campaign
was how to persuade China's peasants "voluntarily" to pro-
duce more and consume less in order to accelerate economic
development.
That this campaign was based on a utopian view of
human nature was demonstrated by reports of rising peasant
discontent throughout 1969-1970. Confronted with these
reports and with a threatened decrease in production, the
t-daoist leadership was compelled step by step to abandon
these radical rural reforms, so that by the Second Plenum
in August 1970 it had returned once again to the rural
institutional system to which China had retreated in the
early 1960's. In explaining how this nation-wide "learn
from Tachai" campaign (which clearly had the approval of
Chairman Mao at the outset) had gone so badly awry, the
basic charge against Chen Po-ta and Lin "iao concerning
rural policy is not that they opposed Chairman Mao, as
was the case in foreign policy, but rather that they
encouraged -- with evil intent -- the "overzealous im-
plementation" of Mao's rural policy guidelines.
Although other policy issues appear now to be
largely settled, the central policy issue in the Lin
Piao affair -- the issue of civilian versus military
control over China's political system -- has yet to be
resolved.
/Mao and Chou are quite aware teat t e
task of regaining control over an Army-dominated political
apparatus is much more formidable than the earlier task
undertaken in the Cultural Revolution of regaining con-
trol over a Party-dominated apparatus. Relying once again
on a rectification-and-purge campaign to accomplish this
difficult task, Mao informed regional military leaders
more than a year ago (even before Lin's abortive coup
attempt) that the time had come for the PLA to give up
the political role it had played during the Cultural.
Revolution and concern itself with military affairs.
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The amount of progress achieved during the past
year in returning political power to civilian Party
leadership in Communist China is difficult to determine.
Party documents indicate that more than 30 central and
regional military leaders have been purged as members of
Lin Piao's "conspiratorial clique," and many more military
leaders are missing. Nearly all of the key military region
commands have, as Mao directed, made self-criticisms and
expressed their determination hereafter "to respect, sup-
port and observe" civilian Party leadership. Several
well-documented meetings of central and provincial leaders
in Peking in recent months, together with the rehabilita-
tion of a number of Party figures, also suggest that
progress is being made in the civilianization of China's
political structure.
Until such time as the identity of those holding
the top positions in the new Party and government apparatus
is known, it would be prudent to reserve final judgment
on the outcome of this effort to return China to civilian
rule. It would also be prudent, however, to recognize
that Mao Tse-tung has demonstrated repeatedly his ability
in the face of great odds to rectify and purge, if not
finally to control, the political apparatus in China.
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Introduction
By 1964 IIao Tee-tung had lost ef-
fective control over much of the Party
hierarchy set up by his 'successor,' and
also over the state administrative ap-
paratus... Liu Shao-ch'i and his like-
minded comrades-... utilized the Mao cult
in theory and slighted Maoism in practice...
Mao was convinced that the people and
Party rank and file were with him but
were misted by his disloyal opposition.
-- Edgar Snow, "Aftermath of the Cultural
Revolution," in The New Republic, 10 April
1971.
Mao Tse-tung said that his object
in launching the Cultural Revolution had
been to renew the leadership and to re-
store to the revolution that spirit that
had characterized it in 1949. It was
misleading to look for policy motives
-- for instance, economic or foreign
policy -- behind it.
-- Edgar Snow, Comments On His Visit
to China, March 1971.
In very broad and somewhat simplified terms, the
origin of the purge of Lin Piao's "conspiratorial clique"
is believed to be the same as the origin of the Cultural
Revolution -- Mao Tse-tung's conviction that he would
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have to remove his designated "successor" as the leader
of a "disloyal opposition" in order to regain "effective
control" over the political apparatus in China. As Liu
Shac-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping were charged with corrupt-
ing the Party and state apparatus with a form of Rightist
"revisionism" in the early 1960's, so Lin Piao and Chen
Po-ta are now charged with corrupting the post-Cultural
Revolution apparatus with a form of Leftist "revisionism,"
the end result in each case being the sabotage and failure
of 1lao's "correct" policies. As the latest and most
striking example of a recurring phenomenon in the Chinese
Communist political system, Lin and Chen are being used
as scapegoats for the failure of Mao's Cultural Revolu-
tion policies.
Demonstrating the difficulty of delegating power
within China's political system, the Cultural Revolution
and the Lin Piao affair have been in essence struggles for
control of the political apparatus between Mao and his
designated successors. To Mao, the fact that the apparatus
is not responsive to his directives and policy guidelines
is evidence that his successor is attempting to expand
his power base by creating an "independent kingdom."
To his designated successor, familiar with Mao's political
work-style, the fact that Mao then launches a rectifica-
tion campaign against his apparatus -- the Party in the
case of Liu Shao-chi, the Army in the case of Lin Piao --
is a clear sign that in time he too will have to under o
this process of "rectification.
It is in this context of mounting distrust and
suspicion between Flao and his successor that the role of
policy and policy issues in the Cultural Revolution and
the purge of Lin Piao must be viewed. Within this larger
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context of a struggle for power -- with Plao convinced
that his successor is conspiring to take away more and
more of his power, and his successor convinced that Mao
is intent upon disgracing and purging him -- policy
issues become primarily weapons for use in the struggle,
rather than the causes, per se, of such struggle. The
struggle over policy issues, moreover, has not involved
competing policies so much as charges of defective
implementation of Maoist policies. Whereas Liu Shao-
chi was charged with sabotaging Mao's policies from the
Right through willful obstructionism, Lin Piao and
Chen Po-ta are now charged with sabotaging Mao's policies
from the Left by carrying them to excess -- and with
evil intent.
In sum, policy issues in the Maoist political
system are concerned basically with considerations of
prestige and power. To the victor in policy struggles
(so far Mao) belongs the spoils of infallibility, to the
vanquished the ignominy of political disgrace and almost
certainly, in the case of Lin Piao, death.
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The Is:iue of Civilian Versus Military Control
The Army... has now taken power in
7,000 local units [of government] ... By
and by we want to pull the Army back from
its dominant position in the local units.
But that can only be done after we have
found new leaders.
-- Lin Piao, Speech at Central Committee
Work Conference, 30 March 1967.
There is a certain uneasiness among
some Party members about the power role
inherited by the Army following the break-
up of the Party bureaucracy during the
Cultural Revolution... .7s there not a
tendency for high military officers to
become overlords of the Party? An 'army
dictatorship' ?
-- Edgar Snow, "The Army and the Party,"
in The New Republic, 22 May 1971.
The supreme irony of the Cultural Revolution, under-
taken in order to enable Mao Tse-tung to regain "effective
control" over a "bureaucratic" Party apparatus, is that
it ended with the creation of a new Army-dominated ap-
paratus even less responsive to Mao's direction and con-
trol. As indicated by Lin's statement cited above, P4ao
and Lin were agreed in the early stages of the Cultural
Revolution that this dominant political role of the Army
was only a temporary expedient until the violence and
disorder of the Cultural Revolution subsided and "new
leaders" could be found. To understand the most important
of the many policy issues in the purge of Lin Piao, it
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is necessary to understand how Hao and Lin cane to dis-
agree on the central issue of civilian versus military
control over China's political system.
In a very real sense, the growing disagreement over
the respective roles of civilian and military authority
in the period from 1967 to 1971 reflected mounting fric-
tion over the roles of Piao and Lin in the new structure
of power. As Hao turned away from the "destructive"
please of the Cultural Revolution (centering on the destruc-
tion of his opponents entrenched within the old Party
and government apparaty ) to the "constructive" phase
of defining post-Cultural Revolution domestic and foreign
policies and building a new political apparatus, he began
to turn increasingly to Chou En-lai for advice and assist-
ance, and to stress the need for rehabilitation of civilian
"veteran Party cadres" as more experienced and expert in
carrying out these complicated tasks. Sensing Mao's
increasing reliance upon Chou En-lai, and 11ao's concurrent
shift toward a more moderate policy line as a threat to
his position as the successor, Lin then began to turn to the
Army (his other major base of power aside from Mao) and
to Chen Po-ta (the architect of a number of the Leftist
policies of the Cultural. Revolution) for support in a
struggle for the succession, When Mao first suspected
and then became convinced that Lin was opposing his efforts
to re-establish civilian Party control, the issue of
civilian versus military control became the central issue
in a protracted political struggle which would lead in
time to the fall of Lin Piao.
Although personal attitudes and impressions are
hard to document, the record does seem to indicate clearly
l.iao's growing disillusionment with the performance of Lin
Piao and the military apparatus over a period of time,
dating back at least as far as the Ninth Party Congress
in the spring of 1969.
t e sequence o
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events which culminated in Lin's abortive coup attempt
began in early 1969 when Mao issued the first of many
warnings to Army representatives serving in the new
Revolutionary Committee structure to correct their
defective work-style. Mao in these warnings characterized
this work-style variously as "arrogant and complacent"
or "crude and careless," defects which he charged (for
example, in his 28 April 1969 speech to the First Plenum
of the Ninth Central Committee) were responsible for
"mistakes" in the implementation of regime policies.
Coupled with this early warning against Army mistakes in
policy implementation was the charge appearing in an
August 1969 Red Flag article that these "leading cadres"
in the new structure of power were violating the require-
ment of "collective leadership"; that is, were slighting
or suppressing the viewpoints of the civilian components
of these Revolutionary Committees, and thus were guilty,
as subsequently charged, of "one-man rule."
In a series of articles published in November 1969,
Mao's criticism intensified with the leveling of a new
and more serious charge against the PLA-dominated appara-
tus: that its defective work-style resulted from ideolo-
gical shortcomings and a bourgeois world outlook. An
important 5 November People's Daily editorial criticized
this work-style as "bureaucratic, subjective and formalistic,"
in contrast with Mao's practical and realistic work-style.
In what appears in retrospect to be a significant allu-
sion, a commentary in the November 1969 issue of Red Flag
refuted the argument that "so long as one has a correct
main orienta`.ion, the question of work-style is a minor
matter." Since Lin Piao is now attacked for advancing
this very argument (as he in fact did), it appears that
Mao and Lin may already by the fall of 1969 have had dif-
ferences of opinion over the reliability and loyalty of
the Army-dominated political apparatus.
Strengthening the view that the issue of civilian
versus military control may already have surfaced was a
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significant alteration at this time of the formula express-
ing command and control over the People's Liberation Army.
Whereas previously the standard formulation had been
"personally founded and led by Chairman Mao and directly
commanded by Vice-Chairman Lin," leadership of the PLA
was now depicted (in the authoritative 1 October 1969
National 1)ay editorial) as "founded and led personally
by Chairman Mao and commanded directly by Chairman Mao
and Vice-Chairman Lin' un erlining supplied). Although
this change to cal attention to Mao's direct command
25X1
role was short-lived and generally interpreted at the time
as demonstrating heightened regime concern over the pos-
sibility of a Sino-Soviet border war, it now appears
that this change re-
ecte disagreement between Mao and Lin over the degree
of control each should exercise over the PLA.
the concurrent decision to begin
de-emphasizing the cult of Mao Tse-tung" was also a
sign of tension between Mao and Lin,
In view of the fact 25X1
that Lin Piao had been the principal sponsor and benefi-
ciary of Ilao's cult, Nao's criticism of the excessive
implementation, not to mention disloyal exploitation, of
his cult appears to have been directed, at least, in part,
against Lin.
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It was at just about this time, in November 1969,
moreover, that the Central Committee launched an investi-
gation (reportedly under the direction of Chou En-lai)
of the "5/16" group, a hypermilitant Red Guard organiza-
tion which in 1967 had engaged in conspiracy to seize
power and in 1969 generally symbolized the extremism,
violence and Leftist excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
Although perhaps intended more as a warning to Chen Po-
ta and other radical ideologues at this stage, many of
the charges of "ultra-Leftism" leveled against the "5/16"
group at this time (e.g. their "desire for instant Com-
munism" and their persecution of "veteran Party cadres")
would be leveled subsequently against Lin Piao and his
military supporters.
As a final indication of a growing divergence
throughout 1969 between 11ao and Lin, the recent Party
documents purporting to explain the Lin affair charge
that Lin's conduct and behavior toward Mao changed fol-
lowing'the Ninth Party Congress in April of that year.
In a criticism remarkably similar to one made earlier
against Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping for their con-
duct in the period preceding the Cultural Revolution,
it is charged that Lin "isolated himself, and took no
notice of, nor did he seek the advice and opinions of
Mao Tse-tung." In fact, this changed relationship re-
sulted more, it is believed, from a change in the conduct
and attitude of A1ao who, as noted above, turned away from
Lin to rely increasingly on Chou En-lai and to espouse
more moderate policies following the Ninth Party Congress.
Feeling himself "isolated" from Mao, Lin then turned for
support to his other major source of power, the Army.
In this way, then, the larger problem of civilian versus
military control was being transformed into a personal
struggle between Mao and Lin for control of the structure
of power in China.
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I1ao's growing distrust of his chosen successor in
the fall of 1969 was manifested dramatically in ?larch
1970 when Mao decided to remove the post of Chairman of
the State from the new draft Chinese People's Republic
Constitution. Lip apparently interpreted this decision,
which confirmed Premier Chou En-lai as the de facto head
of the government outranking Lien Piao in boT of LLin's
government positions of Vice Premier and Minister of
National Defense, as in effect disinheriting him as the
successor. Although Chou, to whom Mao had turned more
and more in the year following the Ninth Party Congress,
for advice and assistance, had in some ways already become
the de facto successor, this action suggested that Mao
intern d`F intime to designate Chou as his de jure succes-
sor.*
Following this momentous decision, two developments
in mid-1970 set the stage for the dramatic confrontation
which would. take place between Mao and Lin at the Second
Plenum in August. First was the movement instructing the
PLA to study Mlao's thought on Party-building, centering
on "Article 5 of the Party Constitution" -- the article
which specifies civilian Party leadership over the Army.
The second was publication in the authoritative 1 July
Party anniversary editorial of a new set of criteria for
it is interesting to note that following the purge
of Lin Piao, Tung Pi-wu has once again appeared regularly
in the position of "acting Chief of State," a position
in which he was identified briefly in October 1969 and
then not again till February 1972. This suggests that
Lin's interpretation of Mao's March 1970 decision was
correct -- that it was directed not at the office but
at the man who was supposed to inherit that office.
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R c
selecting Communist Party members, which differed sharply
from those advanced by Lin Piao in August 1966 at the out-
set of the Cultural Revolution. Lin on that earlier oc-
casion had defined a loyal Maoist (one therefore entitled
to Party menibersliip) as one who eagerly studied Mao thought,
attached great importance to political and ideological
work, and was filled with revolutionary zeal; the 1 July
1970 editorial redefined a loyal Maoist as one who was loyal
to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and to Chairman
ilao's proletarian revolutionary line (featuring the
combination of theory with practice), who trusted the masses
and practiced collective leadership, and who, after making
mistakes, was willing to conduct self-criticism. By
omitting any reference to Lin's three criteria, redefining
;Taoism in less Leftist terms (P1ao would soon tell Couve
de Murville in October that he was a "center-Leftist")
and continuing to attack (indirectly) the "arrogance and
complacency" of PLA representatives serving in the new.
structure of power, this editorial helps to explain why
Lin Piao (who saw Mao withdrawing his right to the succes-
sion), Chen Po-ta (who was vulnerable, at a time when the
policy line was shifting to the Right, as the exemplar of
"ultra-Leftism") and four top-ranking military leaders
(who viewed Mao's escalating pressure on the military
apparatus as a threat to themselves) banded together "to
prepare and launch a surprise attack" at the Second Plenum
at Lushan in August 1970.
This attack, contained in speeches by Lin Piao
and Chen Po-ta, was directed at those leaders (Kang
Sheng directly, Chou En-lai indirectly) who, in drafting
the new State Constitution, had deleted the post of
Chairman and a provision extolling the "genius" of Mao
Tse-tung. By so doing, Lin and Chen charged, Kang and
Chou had revealed their opposition to Mao's leadership
and Mao's thought and, accordingly, should be criticized
and presumably purged. Attempting to use Mao's name,
prestige and position (in Lin's proposal that Mao should
become the first Chairman of State under the n'dw Constitution)
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in order to win majority support, the strategy of what
would come to be known as Lin Piao's "conspiratorial
clique" backfired when 11ao rejected both the proposal for
a State Chairman (reminding Lin that on six earlier oc-
casions he had told him "ive do not need a Chairman of
the State") and the view of "genius" which Lin and Chen
had propounded in their speeches. Choosing this overt
test of struggle in an effort to protect himself and
his military structure of power, Lin was forced to
retreat on the political battlefield (withdrawing the
minutes of his speech and dissociating himself from Chen
Po-ta) and to turn from openly-declared political combat
to the clandestine plotting of a coup d'etat as the last
act of a desperate man seeking to reclaim by force what
had once been granted to him and then taken away -- his
right to rule China as 11ao's successor.
Since it was apparent to Mao that Lin was challeng-
ing him as the head of a powerful military organization
(he subsequently referred to this struggle at Lushan as
the tenth major struggle between opposing "lines" and
"two headquarters" in the history of the Chinese Communist
Party), llao was compelled to be cautious and circumspect
u takin action against him.
any action
against Lin at this juncture without concrete proof of
conspiracy would have aroused opposition from military
leaders and might have resulted in civil war. Instead,
Mao at the Second Plenum intensified the continuing
pressure on Lin's military apparatus by initiating a
"criticize revisionism and rectify wvork-style" campaign
which would dominate China's political life throughout
the following year.
As the latest in a long series of rectification
or "line" struggle campaigns considered necessary when-
ever there is a basic change in policy line in China,
it is important to note the similarities between the
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sFc`.R FT
"criticize revisionism and rectify work-style" campaign
and its predecessor, the Cultural Revolution. A central
feature of both was to transfer responsibility for the
failure of the preceding policy line from Mao who had
originated it to the political apparatus which had im-
plemented it. The strategy for both was to hold a few
"class enemies" at the top primarily responsible for the
mistakes committed in carrying out the previous policy
line, accusing them of formulating and spreading a "revi-
sionist" ideology which then corrupted the work-style
of leading cadres at intermediate and lower levels of
the apparatus. Whereas the Cultural Revolution had, at
a time when the policy line was shifting to the Left,
attacked Rightist "revisionism" and the resulting
"bureaucratic" work-style of the Party apparatus, the
objects of attack in the campaign initiated at the Second
Plenum, at a time when the policy line was shifting to
the Right, were a form of Leftist "revisionism" and the
resulting work-style of "arrogance and complacency" of
the PLA-dominated political apparatus.
Within this larger strategy, a common tactic in
both campaigns was to identify the "class enemies" at
the top either singly or in small groups at different
stages, worLing upwards to reach the number two man in
the Chinese Communist leadership held ultimately respon-
sible for the conduct of the political apparatus under
his control.
Lin was not deceived by Mao's
initial tactic of focusing exclusively on Chen Po-ta
(attacked as an "ultra-Leftist" and "political swindler")
in the early months of this latest rectification campaign.
As early as the winter of 1970-1971, Lin sensed that he
would be the ultimate target of this campaign and by
spring of 1971, his suspicions hardened to a conviction,
he was already engaged in plotting a desperate coup d'etat
as preferable to the certain fate of political disgrace
which lay before him.
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Although primary responsibility for the failure
of the preceding policy line was assigned to a few "class
enemies" in the central leadership in Peking, leading
cadres at the regional and provincial levels (the civilian
Party First Secretaries in the Cultural Revolution and
the military leaders who dominated the political apparatus
following the Cultural Revolution) were also held partially
responsible for the mistakes committed in carrying out
the previous policy line. This responsibility resulted
from ideological failings which, in the period preceding
the Cultural Revolution, had caused them to deviate to
the Right by overemphasizing production at the expense of
politics and, in the period following the Cultural Revolu-
tion, had caused them to deviate to the Left by overempha-
sizing politics at the expense of production. The three-
fold remedy for this latest error of "Left deviationism"
was, by means of the "criticize revisionism and rectify
work-style" campaign, for leading military cadres: (1) to
remould their thinking (by studying P.iao's philosophic
works and thus learning how to "integrate theory with
practice" and to adopt a "realistic and scientific" ap-
proach to problems); (2) to rectify their work-style (cor-
recting the defects of "arrogance and complacency" and
overcoming the tendency toward "one man mule" by respecting
the collective leadership of civilian Party committees) ;
and (3) to demonstrate their loyalty to Mao and their will-
ingness to return to the correct Maoist line by engaging in
self-criticism.
Since the road to power in the Cultural Revolution
of both Lin Piao and the PLA had been one of "giving
prominence to politics," the central charge in this
campaign -- that an overemphasis on politics had resulted
in "Leftist deviationism" in the implementation of Mao's
policy line -- served to undercut one of the most important
justifications for Lin's and the PLA's continued right to
rule. The generally negative response of military author-
ities throughout China to this rectification campaign
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indicated, moreover, that they were quite aware that it
threatened their continued domination of the political
structure. This response, in well-documented instances
at the Military Region level (e.g., the Canton MR) was to
ignore the campaign's injunctions to change course, carry
out self-criticism and obey the directives of the civilian
Party apparatus. Further, a number of regional and pro-
vincial military commanders continued, in the face of
mounting evidence that both Lin and the Army's political
role were under Maoist attack, openly to praise Lin Piao
and glorify the Army. Although this was true in a number
of provinces throughout the early months of 1971 (e.g.
Shantung, Sinkiang, Kwangsi and Iiupeh), it was most
gra.phicall ? illustrated in Fukien where, as late as April
1971 in his Party Congress speech, the Foochow MR Commander
Han Hsien-chu assigned almost as much prominence and praise
to Lin Piao as he did to Mao.
This striking manifestation of resistance to the
"criticize revisionism and rectify work-style" campaign
confirmed what Mao already knew -- that in Lin and his
military supporters he faced a powerful adversary against
whom he would have to move cautiously both at the center
and in the provinces. Apparently feeling that the time
had come, Mao in August and early September 1971 conducted
an inspection tour of the Canton and Nanking Military
Regions aimed generally at "educating cadres, achieving
unity and denouncing conspiracies and intrigues" and
specifically at seeking assurances of support from these
regional military leaders in an impending showdown with
Lin and his group of military leaders. The struggle
between Mao and Lin for control of the political-military
apparatus (the issue of civilian versus military control)
had reached a flaslipoint, soon to explode in the bizarre
sequence of events beginning with an abortive Lin-
sponsored attempt to assassinate Mao and culminating in
Lin's fiery death in a plane crash in Mongolia.
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The Issue of the Scale of the Purge
The other thing the Chairman [Mao]
was most unhy about [concerning the
Cultural Revolution] was the maltreatment
of 'captives' -- Party m'mbers and others
removed from power and subjected to re-
education... Maltreatment of [these]
captives... had slowed the rebuilding
and transformation of the Party.
-- Edgar Snow, "A Conversation with Mao
Tse-tung," in Life, 30 April 1971.
I was told [by a Chinese official]
that the first disagreement between the
two hierarchies [the political and mili-
tary] concerned the scale of the purge
within the Party... The supporters of a
more radical purge... dreamed about a
pure and hard Party, but they came up
against Mao Tse-tung who... wished to
limit the damage... and against Chou En-
Zai who was anxious not to break the
tool [the Party].
-- Claude Julien, "The Lin Piao Mystery,"
in Le Monde, 30 December 1971.
If it is true)
that Mao even before the Ninth Party Congress suspected
Lin of opposing Party leadership over the Army, there is
reason to believe that Mao sensed this opposition first
in a disagreement over "the scale of the purge within the
Party." Beginning in the fall of 1968 (when the task of
rebuilding the Party was first undertaken) and continuing
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right up to the dramatic events of September 1971, this
was a dispute not over the need to purify the old Party
apparatus (a central aim of the Cultural Revolution) but
over the manner in which and the extent to which, this
purge was to be carried out. The outcome of this struggle
between two groups of "radicals" (including Lin Piao, Chen
Po-ta and probably Kang Sheng as well) and "moderates"
(including on this issue Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai)
within the top leadership would determine, of course,
who would control the new post-Cultural Revolution struc-
ture of power.
There is good evidence that Mao, who initiated
the attack on high-ranking Party cadres at the outset
of the Cultural Revolution, had become alarmed by reports
of widespread violence and of the wholesale purge and
replacement of old cadres in the nation-wide "purification
of class ranks" campaign carried out by the military-
dominated apparatus in the fall of 1968. Reacting to
this early example of "maltreatment" of Party cadres,
Mao directed that no further arrests be made without
prior approval at the provincial Revolutionary Committee
level and further instructed (in the 1969 New Year's
Day editorial) that in carrying out this campaign there-
after "the target of attack must be narrowed and more
people must be helped through education." This new
emphasis on moderation in "class struggle" was extended
at the Ninth Party Congress to provide "a way out"
("liberation" and "suitable work") even for "bourgeois
reactionary academic authorities" and "capitalist roaders
in power." Intended to signal the end of the "destructive"
phase of the Cultural Revolution, the new emphasis on
unity and conciliation at the Party Congress also indi-
cated a desire to get on with the final "constructive"
phase of the Cultural Revolution in which the central
task was reconstructing the Chinese Communist Party.
Addressing the First Plenum of the new Central Com-
mittee immediately following the close of the Congress,
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OL" 1~1'L" l
Mao stressed the need to "be careful and prudent" in
rebuilding the Party, citing the previous "mistake"
which had resulted iron "carelessness" of "arresting...
too many people." Asserting that it is "always better
to unite more people" including even "those who oppose
us," Mao then repeated an earlier instruction that it
was the responsibility of the military to solve the wide-
spread problem of factionalism, quarreling and disunity
at provincial and local levels of the new political
structure. As the de facto government already held
responsible for solving~l other problems in their
local areas, the military apparatus was now informed
that it was also responsible for rebuilding a united
civilian Party which would then replace it as the right-
fui ruler of China,
This reminder to the military that its dominant
political role was only temporary and transitional was
made more pointed in accompanying editorials (for example,
the 17 February 1969 People's Daily editorial entitled
"To Be Good at Translating the Party's Policy Into Action
by the Masses") pointing out that "veteran Party cadres"
were better qualified, because of their "richer experi-
ence and better understanding of the Party's policies",
to undertake the complicated tasks of the new "construc-
tive" stage of the Cultural Revolution. Whereas Lin Piao
had stressed simple political virtues (the eager study
of Mao thought, the earnest promotion of political and
ideological work, and revolutionary zeal) as the criteria
for selecting new leaders during the initial "destructive"
stage of the Cultural Revolution, now more emphasis was
to be placed on professional qualifications in selecting
Party leadership cadres, In terms of the familiar Maoist
dialectical formulation of the ideal cadre -- both "red
and expert" -- the pendulum was now swinging back from
the earlier Cultural Revolution extreme of excessive reli-
ance on "redness" to a position in which "expertness" was
now considered to be of at least equal if not greater
importance in the selection of new leaders..
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The implications of this shift from revolutionary
to professional criteria (a shift undoubtedly encouraged
by Chou 1,n-lai in the interest of administrative effici-
ency) in the selection of new Party leaders were clear
-- most of these were to be old Party cadres who, having
been properly educated and transformed, were to be "liber-
ated" and returned to their former or similar positions
of authority. Sensing a threat to their continued exer-
cise of political power, both radical ideologues and
military leaders, not only in Peking but also at pro-
vincial levels, had reason to join forces to carry out
what is now called an "ultra-leftist" cadre policy char-
acterized either by wholesale purging of old Party cadres
or "failing to liberate cadres on time,"
The mechanism for carrying out this "ultra- leftist"
cadre, policy was the May 7 Cadre School, an institution
to which old Party cadres were sent. for a refresher course
in Mao Thought study and hard physical labor and where
through faithful performance of these duties they could
demonstrate anew their loyalty to Chairman Mao and Mao's
revolutionary line. By mid-1970, 100,000 cadres from the
central political apparatus and some one million cadres
at the provincial level had been sent down to these schools
in the countryside for study and labor, The flaw in this
arrangement was that these schools were run by the PLA,
with military leaders empowered to decide whether the old
Party cadres had passed the test of political loyalty and
were thus entitled to return to positions of authority in
the new political apparatus. The charge that the Cultural
Revolution Group radical ideologues and the PLA abused
this authority to prevent the rehabilitation of veteran
Party cadres and thus perpetuate their own power -- a
charge first intimated by Mao to Snow in December 1970
and now explicitly stated -- is both credible and supported
by developments at the time,
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There are a number of indications, for example,
that beginning in the fall of 1969 Mao was turning to
Chou En-lai for advice and assistance in dealing with
this coalition of radical civilian and military leaders
intent upon perpetuating the power structure and olicies
of the Cultural Revolution.
as early as October 1969 Chou had been entrusted with
full authority to prepare for convening a National People's
Congress (which would then approve a new State Constitu-
tion and establish a new Central Government apparatus)
and that one of the reasons why the Congress was post-
poned on several occasions in the ensuing year was that
the continued practice of "military control" was considered
incompatible with the NPC idea of rule by the people
(i.e. civilian rule). Thus, if Chou was not yet in a
position to challenge military dominance in other areas
(for example, at provincial and local levels of the new
political apparatus) he could at least (with Mao's
authorization) keep the military from moving in to
dominate the slowly emerging Central Government structure.
Another development in the fall of 1969 was the
holding in November of a national leadership meeting at
which a series of important policy decisions were made,
two of which concerned this ongoing struggle for control
of the post-Cultural Revolution political apparatus.
First was the decision, apparently made at this time,
to abolish the Cultural Revolution Group (which had been
charged with carrying out most of the Leftist policies
and programs of the Cultural Revolution) and to demote
its head Chen Po-ta to a position of relative unimportance
(there is no record of Chen making a speech or even a
private statement relating to policy after October 1969).
The second was the concurrent decision to initiate
the campaign noted earlier against the "5/16" group, the
militant Red Guard organization active in 1967 which now
symbolized both the discredited policies of the Cultural
Revolution and those who continued to promote these
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policies. A central charge in the anti-"5/16" group
campaign as it unfolded in 1969-1970 was that it had
been guilty of "ultra-leftism" in its attitude and
behavior toward Party cadres -- specifically, that it
had "wrongly accused people.. hung tip the cases of
cadres for years... [and] wanted to exclude all veteran
cadres." These charges would be extended a year later
to apply to Chen Po-ta (explicitly) and Kang Sheng
(implicitly) and then further extended another year
later to apply to Lin Piao and his supporters throughout
the military apparatus.
Lin's responsibility for tine "ultra-
leftist" ca re policy is traced back to the three criteria
he had formulated in August 1966 (with P1ao's approval)
for defining a loyal Maoist -- criteria which stressed
the simplified study of Mao thought, the primacy of
political and ideological work, and revolutionary zeal.
These criteria, it is now charged, were used by his
military apparatus following the Cultural Revolution
to strike at and purge systematically without cause
veteran Party cadres (employing the argument among others
that "the older the cadres, the more outmoded they are")
in order to appoint friends and proteges to positions of
authority in the new political apparatus. To correct
this unjust and corrupt use of power, there has been in
recent months a campaign to rehabilitate veteran cadres
(90 to 95 percent at local levels), including even the
much-maligned Commander of the Wuhan Military Region
Chen Tsai-tao, who in mid-1967 had achieved notoriety for
allegedly leading a mutiny against Peking.
With the fall of Lin Piao and his principal sup-
porters, the issue of the scale of the purge appears to
have been largely resolved, with Chou En-lai on record
as estimating that not more than one percent of the
membership has been expelled from the Party as a result
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of the Cultural Revolution. In the struggle over this
issue, a struggle which began in the spring of 1969,
Mao and Chou have emerged victorious, with the result
that more experienced and expert civilian Party cadres
are now beginning to take over from the military cadres
who, since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution,
have dominated the structure of power in China.
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The Issue of Foreign Policy
A highly dramatic and visible issue, the role of
foreign policy in domestic political conflict in general
and in the Lin Piao affair in particular must be approached
with great care. In addition to the usual difficulty of
attempting to ascertain the positions adopted by leaders
of opposing factions or interest groups on the domestic
political scene, there is the complicating factor that
the actions undertaken by foreign governments have a signi-
ficant impact on the development and outcome of the internal
1leadership debate on foreign policy. There is he further
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complicating factor that Chinese officials have, in briefing
non-Communist Westerners, tended to exaggerate the import-
ance of foreign policy out of a desire to minimize the still
potentially explosive central issue in the Lin Piao affair
of civilian versus military control in China. Finally,
there is a strong temptation to define a priori the foreign
policy issue in terms of a dispute concerning the triangular
relationship' between China, the Soviet Union and the United
States, with one group favoring a rapprochement with the
Soviet Union and the other with the United States. In
fact, it appears that Mao, Lin, Chou and the top PLA leaders
were all agreed that the Soviet Union constituted the gravest military threat to China and that policy differences vis-
a-vis the USSR, if any, were confined to questions of
degree and emphasis.
The evidence, as illustrated by the quotation
cited above, indicates that the role of foreign policy
in the Lin Piao affair was more tactical than causative
or fundamental in nature. The dispute, moreover, con-
cerned not so much which of the two great powers, Russia
or America, China should conciliate, but whether China
should switch from the confrontationist and isolationist
Foreign policy posture of the Cultural Revolution to a
more flexible and pragmatic approach. _An intensive
review...-of the record indicates, furthe.rmore.,.....th.a.t-._the
impact of developments abroad upon-this internal policy
debate, while significant, was not decisive, The effect
of"these develolments, principally those in Southeast
Asia, would be one of slowing down but not reversing the
trend toward moderation in China's relations with the outA11'
side world.
In contrast with other policy issues, Lin Piao
is clearly on record as one of the principal architects
of what might be called the "revolutionary model" of
foreign policy which dominated China's foreign relations
during the Cultural Revolution. In his famous treatise
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on people's war published on 3 September 1965, Lin pro-
claimed the need to promote revolution abroad patterned
after the Chinese revolutionary model, a model featuring
rural-based armed struggle which would then surround and
finally capture the cities. In his speech commemorating
the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution on 6 Novem-
ber 1967, Lin depicted this model (which Chairman Mao "with
genius" had created) as a "great new development" in both
the Marxist-Leninist theory and practice of revolution and,
as such, having general validity throughout the world.
And in the accompanying joint People's Dailyy. Red Flag
and Liberation Army Daily editoria on this occasion,
Chairman Mao was haile as "the greatest teacher and most
outstanding leader of the, proletariat in the present era"
and China was declared to be "the center of world revolu-
tion."
In practice, as is now well known, this effort to
propagate Mao's thought and thus promote revolution abroad
embroiled China in controversy with nearly every important
government of the world. The realization that, as a re-
sult of the provocative and self-defeating foreign policy
of the Cultural Revolution, China stood isolated in the
face of a major threat to its national security then pro-
duced a turn to the Right toward a more pragmatic and
moderate foreign policy, a process which began hesitantly
in the fall of 1967 and has proceeded through several
fairly well-defined stages up to the present. Since Chou
En-lai personified this turn toward what might be called
a "nation.alis_t model of__ foreigr__policy,__as _.L.in Piao had
personified the_._p_rece.ding "revolutionary._jnode.l.," the
dispute over the issue of foreign policy in a real sense
has been a dispute between these two leaders, each striv-
ing to enlist support for his views. The record shows,
moreover, that Chairman Mao backed Chou throughout most
of this struggle, providing decisive support in the final
showdown debate when (as noted above) Lin stood up in a
Central Committee meeting to oppose the proposed visit
of President Nixon to China.
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The first stage in this protracted process of re-
treating from Left (the "revolutionary model") to Right
(the "nationalist model") in foreign policy extended from
the fall of 1967 through the summer of 1968 and was marked
by the return of Premier Chou En-lai to a dominant role
in foreign affairs. Speaking to workers in this field At
in December 1961, Chou reminded his listeners that like
it or not Peking had no choice but to deal with other
countries primarily as sovereign states and governments and
quoted Mao as stating that China during the preceding sum-
mer had been guilty of "great-power chauvinism." Also
revealing a new awareness of the nationalist sensibilities
of Communist Parties and other governments throughout the
world, the Chinese leadership in a Central Committee deci-
sion in_ 1.1.~1968 directed that Chinese propaganda intended
for - foreign audiences would no longer refer to China as
"the center of world revolution" or to Mao Tse-tung as
"the leader" of the international Communist movement or
as "the leader of the peoples of the world" -- views which
Chou En-lai would subsequently (in mid-1971) characterize
as "ultra-leftist." That Mao in 1968 was already dis-
sociating himself from these "ultra-leftist" views was
indicated by his instruction in September to a Japanese
revolutionary group that, instead of blindly initiating
China's revolutionary model, it should "integrate the uni-
versal truths of Marxism-L?,ninism with the concrete
practice of its own revolution."
The second stage in this slow process of moving
toward the Right in foreign policy lasted from the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 through a series
of border clashes with the Soviet Union in 1969 and the
Cambodia military campaign in the spring of 1970 to the
Second Plenum in August 1970. Within this stage two
distinct and contradictor_t.rQu.1s_a.ppear. The first was
in the extreme ideological and confrontationist tradition
of the Cultural Revolution, consisting of an intensified
attack on the Soviet leadership (now excoriated as "social
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imperialist" and "social-fascist"), a solemn declaration
(subsequently identified as Maoist) of the arrival of a
"new historical stage of opposition to United States
imperialism and Soviet revisionism," and the launching
of a massive "war preparations" campaign in which (as
Lin Piao put it) "all work" was to be "observed, examined
and approached from the standpoint of ware" This "war
preparations" campaign justified: (1) in politics, the
continued domination by the military of the political
apparatus; (2) in economic&, t1ig?_priority development of
of Lin Piao's interpretation of Mao's ~thought vinywhichr11flia%~y
"
d
"
re
ness
(revolutionary zeal, austerity and sacrifice)
outweighed "expertness" (professional qualifications) as
the most important element in Ptaoism, D.i_rect.ed against
the.-Soviet. Union (designated "the principal._.e.nemy!').; this
..campaign was adefinite asset to Lin Piao_in the struggle
already underway for control of the polit.ical._ apparatus
in China.
The same trend was manifested, moreover, in the
revolutionary manifesto issued _l..Y,-Chairman _P. ao on 2 0 Ma diz
'--
1970', entitled "People of the World, Unite and Defeat t e
US Aggressors and All Their Running Dogs." Reacting to
the combined South Vietnamese and United States military
intervention in Cambodia three weeks earlier, the Chinese
leader -- in what would subsequently be referred to as
"Mao's new evaluation of the international scene" --
declared in effect that the United States had now displaced
the Soviet, Union as China's number one enemy, The personal
insults and hostile rhetoric formerly reserved for the
Soviet Union and the Soviet leadership were now heaped
on the United States government (engaged in "fascist rule")
and on President Nixon (the prepetrator of "fascist atroci-
ties"). This new hostile and confrontationist posture
toward the United States was revealed even more clearly
in a 25 June 1970 joint editorial entitled "People of Asia,
Unite and Drive the U.S. Aggressors Out of Asia," in which
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it was stated unequivocally that "one's attitude to the
United States is the principal criterion for judging a
true or sham revolutionary."
The other -- and contradictory -- trend throughout
this period was one clearly associated with Chou Fn-lai
which sought to substitute negotiation for confrontation
and to adopt a more flexible foreign policy stance at a
time of national danger. This flexible approach was to
be applied towards both superpowers, first toward the
United States in the tentative invitation in November
1968 (later withdrawn) to resume the Warsaw talks, and
then toward the Soviet Union in the October 1969 agreement
to negotiate the Sino-Soviet border dispute. It was in
keeping with this flexible strategy of playing the United
States and the Soviet Union against each other that Chair-
man Mao, on the day following the United States military
intervention in Cambodia in the spring of 1970, osten'a-
tiously sought out the chief Soviet negotiator on the
reviewing stand at May Day for a friendly chat, including
an injunction to get on with the border talks.
Keeping in mind that Chairman Mao (as well as
Premier Chou) is renowned as a master of tactics, a close
reading of the ensuing 20 May statement suggests, more-
over, that it was intended not only for use in the struggle
against China's enemies abroad but alsc for use in the
continuing struggle for control of the political apparatus
at home. For it was by virtue of the much-quoted dictum
contained in this statement -- "The danger of a Lew world
war still exists.., but revolution is the main trend in
the world today" -- that Mao then set about de-emphasizing
the---"war preparations" campaign _wathin_China_-and_ thus_de-
pr~._v_ed_,Lin Piao and~liis military supporters of a_ major
justification for.the.. continued _ dominanc.e_of~._th? u i L t,ary.
While appearing -t-'o' defer to the Lin Piao strategy of
espousing revolutionary struggle abroad, it appears in
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retrospect that an equally important if not more important
objective of Mao's in issuing this 20 Play statement was
to undercut Lin's and the military's right to rule at home.
This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that
Peking, following the issuance of this statement, did not
in fact significantly step-up material support for revolu-
tionary armed struggle throughout the world. In authori-
tative explanations of this 20) May statement in July and ~.r-- T
August 1970, Chou En-lai and rang Sheng were quite explicit
in pointing. out that revolutionary organizations abroad
would have to rely on their own resources and that, since
in most areas of the world "no revolutionary possibilities
existed," China, rather than providing political, military
and financial support to revolutionary groups abroad,
would seek to promote the interests of world revolution
thereafter by relying primarily on state-to-state relations.
Underlining the need (in accordance with Mao's teachings)
to "combine Marxism-Leninism with reality in each country,"
these officials criticized the mistakes of "left-extremism"
and "great-nation chauvinism" in China's foreign relations
during the Cultural Revolution, citing as one example the
mistake of claiming universal validity for China's revolu-
tionary model. Since Lin Piao was the only prominent
Chinese leader on record as having committed this mistake,
it appears that Mao's 20 May statement, far from represent-
ing a return to the "ultra-leftist" foreign policy line
of the Cultural Revolution, was being used as a tactical
weapon in the accelerating struggle between the proponent
of civilian (Maoist) versus military (Lin Piao) control
over the political apparatus within China.
It is in this larger framework of a struggle for
power, then, that the last stage of turning to the Right
in foreign policy -- a stage represented by the dramatic
debate within Peking's top leadership over President
Nixon's visit -- must be understood. Although the terms
of this debate are now fairly well known, the timing and
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occasion can only be deduced on the basis of related
developments. It is of crucial importance, in attempt-
ing to ascertain when the debate took place, to know
when the proposal for a visit reached China's top policy-
makers. This, according to Edgar Snow, had taken place
"by late autumn of 1970" when "several urgent and
authentically documented inquiries reaching China had
indicated that the President wished to know whether he
or hir, representative would be received in Peking."
This suggests that the debate took place no earlier than
the: Second Plenum (Au ust-Septem. er_,.,19-IQ) and probably
at an expanded Politburo meeting held in November to sum
up and criticize the errors committed by Chen Po-ta.
That the debate (characterized as one between Lin and
Chou, with Mao coming down on the side of Chou) was held
no later than November is suggested by Mao's assurances
to Snow (in their conversation of 18 December 1970) that
President Nixon "would be welcome" -- that "he could just
get on a plane and come." The actual invitation would
not be tendered, however, until sometime the following
spring, only after the new crisis in Sino-American rela-
tions occasioned by the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos
had been resolved.
As indicated in the quotation cited at the beginning
of this discussion, Lin based his opposition to President
Nixon's visit not so much on considerations of power as
of ideology, portraying negotiations with the United
States as a betrayal of the Chinese and world revolutions.
This was probably dictated by tactical considerations,
since it was difficult to deny that the Soviet Union with
more than a million armed men posed on the Sino-Soviet
border represented a graver threat to China's national
security. It seems fairly clear, moreover, that although
Lin used -;ie Soviet Union as a counter in his argument
against the Nixon visit, he did so more from a desire to
score debating points (he is reported to have said, for
example, "If Mao can invite Nixon,__why__carL't.._.I_inv.i.te_
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l3rezhiiev?'!,J or to strengthen his ideological argument
(the USSR depicted as a "socialist" country and there-
fore deserving at least equal if not favored treatment
compared with a "capitalist" country) than from any prior
understanding with the Soviet leadership. What does seem
clear is that the ex post facto charge against Lin of
collusion with the7oviet anion in plotting the anti-Mao
coup is fabricated.. A standard charge against all Chinese
leaders indicted as "class enemies," the charge that Lin
Piao carried on "illicit relations with foreign countries" is
is supported by no other evidence than that in a last "DO
desperate effort 'he sought to escape to the Soviet Union e?vld
rather than await disgrace and imprisonment, if not death,
in China. ..r ~.~ t,~ 1?.!Y
Just as Mao and Chou had earlier attacked policies
with which Lin was directly associated as "ultra-leftist," cjruvy,I\(G4
Lin and his military supporters were now attacking the 7A~:a
Mao-Chou policy of negotiations with the United States
as in effect Rightist. In fact, t.Le char.ge._..that Mao's
foei_gn.policy was ."too__Right.ist_"in its betrayal offorth
Vietnam and the lofty Marxist-Leninist principle of
The evidence strongly suggests, then, that the issue-of
foreign policy was more a tactical weapon for use in, than
a?fuadamental cause of, the political struggle which
would lead to the fall of Lin Piao.
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The Issue of Economic Policy
There are two ways to construct our
country. One is the Russian way, giving
emphasis to materials, machines, mechani-
zation, and so-called material incentives...
The other way is our way Zed by Chairman
Mao in which revolution leads mechaniza-
ti'n. In comparison, man is more important
than machines.
?- Lin Piao, Address at the Chinese Com-
munist Party Central Committee Work
Conference, 25 October 1966.
The emergence of the situation of
great Zeap forward is the inevitable
result of the development in depth of
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu-
tion... A new Leap Forward in industrial
and agricultural production is bound to
appear after every great political
campaign... This is 'spirit being turned
into material.'
-- Canton Radio, 30 December 1969.
One of the most distinctive elements of Hao's
thought is reliance on political indoctrination to
motivate and control human thought and behavior. The
ultimate expression of this political indoctrination,
"mass-line" approach to economic development was the
Great Leap Forward. A central purpose of the Cultural
Revolution, as indicated in the quotations cited above,
was to arouse the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses
preparatory to a new Leap Forward in economic development.
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The central charge now leveled against Lin Piao
with respect to economic policy is that, whereas Liu Shao-
chi (following the Soviet revisionist example) had com-
mittel the Rightist error in the early 1960's of over-
emphasizing the material factor, Lin and his colleagues
are guilty of the "ultra-leftist" error of overemphasizing
the human, spiritual factor in the production process.
In ideological te'rlms, this overemphasis of the subjective
factor is said to derive from the "bourgeois world out-
look of idealism and metaphysics." Although Lin, Chen
Po-ta and other of their supporters at the top are held
primarily responsible, leading cadres at intermediate and
lower levels of the apparatus are also held responsible
for having implemented this "ultra-leftist" economic
policy line.
Although grossly exaggerated and distorted, there
is an element of truth in this indictment of the military-
dominated apparatus for having handled poorly the complicated
task of rebuilding the economy following the disruption
of the Cultural Revolution. In much the same way as it
performed badly its task (assigned at the Ninth Party
Congress) of rebuilding the political system, the end
result of radical ideologues and military leaders to-
gether controlling the formulation and implementation of
economic policy in the period following the Ninth Patty
Congress was an "ultra-leftist" tendency to go beyond
Mao's policy guidelines, a tendency expressed first in
setting unrealistic goals and then in resorting to
coercion in an attempt to achieve these goals.
Mao's policy guidelines were first outlined in an
unpublished speech by Premier Chou En-lai on 4 May 1969
and then discussed at greater length in an authoritative
October 1969 Red Fla article entitled "China's Road of
Socialist Industria ization." Although characterized by
Chou as "Chairman Mao's new economic line," it was in many
ways reminiscent of the eccnomic strategy which had
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produced the Great Leap Forward, only this time presented
in a more reasoned and moderate vein in an apparent ef-
fort to take account of earlier mistakes. Vague and con-
tradictory and perhaps inherently unworkable as these guide-
lines were, it is not surprising that those leaders at
both central and local levels responsible for interpreting
and implementing them eventually came to grief.
As spelled out in Chou' s speech and the Red Flag
article, Mao in his new economic line called for a sus-
tained high rate of economic development (as opposed to
the low projections of economic growth which he attributed
to Liu Shao-chi) by asserting that "we have unlimited pos-
sibilities for developing our economy unceasingly and at
a very rapid pace without parallel in capitalist economies."
This was to be achieved in the modern industrial sector
by rejecting Liu Shao-chi's doctrine of "trailing behind
foreign countries at a snail's pace" and instead (as Mao had
put it five years earlier) "making maximum use of advanced
techniques so that our country can be built into a social-
ist modern power within a not long historical period."
This was to be achieved primarily in the non-modern
sector, however, by mobilizing China's huge underemployed
labor force to carry out Leap Forwards in agriculture and
medium-and-small-scale industry. To make this approach
more appealing to the peasants (who were expected, under
the doctrine of self-reliance and local self-sufficiency,
to finance this local industrial effort), the rapid develop-
ment of local industry, it was stated, would bring about
agricultural mechanization quickly and would, furthermore,
by reducing the differences between town and country,
facilitate the advance to Communism. In this effort to
undertake parallel Leap Forwards in industry (in both the
small-scale and locally-financed and the large-scale
centrally-financed industrial sectors) and simultaneous
Leap Forwards in both industry and agriculture -- the entire
undertaking to rely heavily on political indoctrination
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and ideological incentives -- there was ample room for
controversy in the allocation of blame when the effort
began to founder.
Another feature of this "new economic line" -- the
decentralization of administrative and economic power so
that China, as Mao told Snow, could stimulate "regional
and local initiatives" -- would also create difficulties
in its implementation. One difficulty was the divergence
which began to develop among provinces in late 1969 and
early 1970 in the understanding and execution of Mao's
vague policy pronouncements. Aligned on one side were
zealots in such provinces as Heilungkiang and Kiangsi stress-
ing revolutionary courage and daring as a prime requisite
for promoting Leap Forwards in industry and agriculture
and criticizing "rightist conservative cadres who failed
to see the revolutionary zeal of the masses imbued with
Mao Thought." On the other side were more moderate leaders
in such provinces as Liaoning and Kirin who stressed the
need for a practical and realistic work-style, warned against
the setting of unrealistic goals and pointed out the danger,
in criticizing Liu Shao-chi's Rightist revisionist economic
line, of going to the opposite Leftist extreme of neglect-
ing production and equalizing the distribution of income.
The problem of drafting China's Fourth Five Year
Plan in accordance with the vague and contradictory pro-
visions of Mao's "new economic line" was further complicated
by the fact that at the time it was being drafted in 1969-
1970 China was in the grips of a "preparations against
war" campaign in which all work, including economic work,
was, according to Lin Piao's injunction, to be "observed,
examined and approached from the standpoint of war." This
provided an opportunity' for military leaders at the Center
to call for greater emphasis on the development of advanced
weapons and military industry in the drafting of the Five
Year Plan. That this opportunity was exploited is suggested
by the criticism, explicit and implicit, leveled against
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the first draft of this Plan after it was changed at (or
shortly after) the Second Plenum in August 1970.
The new draft of China's Fourth Five Year Plan,
flected a basic decision to reject the Great L
F
eap
orward
approach in favor of a more realistic economic strategy;
to shift investment resources away from the development
of technologically advanced and military industry toward
basic industry in a more balanced development of the national
economy as a whole; and, at provincial and local levels,
to place greater emphasis on the development of agricul-
ture as opposed to local industry and, as a result, to
stretch out the timetable for achievin ricultural mech-
anization.
In what was probably an
implicit reference to Chen Po-ta and other radical economic
planners in China, Mao cautioned against those who promised
spectacular development in the economic field within a
short period and urged the Pakistani President to be candid
in explaining the true status of the economy to his people.
The 1971 New Year's Day editorial repeated an old Mao
statement that it would take "several decades" to over-
come China's economic backwardness, indicating publicly
both the shift away from a Great Leap Forward approach
in the drafting of China's Fourth Five Year Plan and Mao's
endorsement of this change in plan.
Among the reasons for this shift toward a more
realistic strategy of economic development, the basic
reason was that the attempt in 1969-1970 to carry out a
"practical" Leap Forward had failed. Despite periodic
injunctions (for example, in February and March and again
in November 1969) to "leave enough leeway" in the drawing up
of production plans, the practice of escalating production
targets to demonstrate revolutionary zeal (for example,
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provinces within five years) had become widespread.
Another reason for the change was the need to re-
verse the trend toward decentralization of economic and
administrative power and re-establish centralized con-
trol over the economy. What had happened was that the
provinces (and the administrative subdivisions within
the provinces) had abused the power entrusted to them,
it was charged, to overemphasize the development of local
industry at the expense of agriculture. Kiangsi Province
was a case in point. Whereas only eight months earlier
Kiangsi had been hailed as a national model and pace-
setter, the provincial leadership in Kiangsi admitte.i
in a long December 1970 editorial of self-criticism that
it had been guilty of "blind development, departmental-
ism and excessive decentralization" in its development
of local industry. In this admission of "blind develop-
ment" of local industry, there was evidence that still
another mistake of the earlier Great Leap Forward period
-- the diversion of scarce human, financial and material
resources from the agricultural to the industrial sector -
had been repeated. This admission was then made explicit -
in a subsequent People's Daily discussion of "leftist"
errors committed in carrying out agricultural mechaniza-
tion, errors consisting of an excessive accumulation of
funds from China's peasants and the allocation of exces-
sive amounts of labor from agriculture to the development
of local industry.
A third reason, revealed by Chou En-lai in dis-
cussing a dispute within the leadership over "guns versus
butter" which he claimed had been a central issue in
a "critical policy debate" preceding the fall of Lin
Piao, was the difficulty which provincial officials had
experienced in attempting to "persuade workers, peasants
and soldiers to accept directives from Peking