The Role of Military Leaders in the Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1967–70

1973 ◽  
pp. 390-415
Author(s):  
William W. Whitson ◽  
Chen-Hsia Huang
1974 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 146-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Whitson

Although many readers would probably interpret William Parish's article in the previous issue of The China Quarterly (“Factions in Chinese Military Politics,” CQ, No. 56, pp. 667–699) as an attack on my 1969 assessment of the historic role of the Field Army in post-1950 Chinese politics, I am nevertheless sincerely grateful to him for keeping the dialogue about “loyalty systems” alive. Indeed, I am struck by the irony of our respective positions. He seems to argue that, while the Field Army loyalty system apparently (according to my statistics) had little demonstrable impact on elite assignments before the Cultural Revolution, the same system apparently (according to his statistics) helps clarify factional behaviour within the PLA during and after the Cultural Revolution. The irony of this is doubled since the statistical evidence which I now have available argues that “the old boy net” of the Field Armies actually had a diminishing impact on the domestic politics of China in the late 1960s. By then the Military Region as a geo-political unit had replaced the Field Army as a temporary focus of individual and collective PLA loyalties.


2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 653-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Russo

AbstractA number of prolonged political experiments in Chinese factories during the Cultural Revolution proved that, despite any alleged “historical” connection between the Communist Party and the “working class,” the role of the workers, lacking a deep political reinvention, was framed by a regime of subordination that was ultimately not dissimilar from that under capitalist command. This paper argues that one key point of Deng Xiaoping's reforms derived from taking these experimental results into account accurately but redirecting them towards the opposite aim, an even more stringent disciplining of wage labour. The outcome so far is a governmental discourse which plays an important role in upholding the term “working class” among the emblems of power, while at the same time nailing the workers to an unconditional obedience. The paper discusses the assumption that, while this stratagem is one factor behind the stabilization of the Chinese Communist Party, it has nonetheless affected the decline of the party systems inherited from the 20th century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-105
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Mankov

The article studies the main directions of musical life of Chuvashia at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in the USSR in the 1930s. The issues of the journal “Soviet music” were used as a historic source. The article, in particular, tells about the achievements of the Republic in creating the national culture within the framework of the Cultural Revolution which were demonstrated in the days of celebrating in 1935 the 15th anniversary of the Chuvash autonomous region formation. At this, the author pays special attention to the role of Cheboksary music college in forming the musical arts of the region and which became the center of musical life in Chuvashia. The article describes the creative activities of the leading music workers and composers of the Republic of the studied period (S.M. Maksimov, V.M. Krivonosov). The conclusion is made about undoubted successes in the development of musical culture of Chuvashia in the early 1930s. It adopted more modern forms at those times. Thus, in these years in the Chuvash territory the first major musical compositions in the Chuvash language are created. In the republic there were a symphonic orchestra and a state choir, music radio broadcasting was created. Composers from Chuvashia became known both at home and abroad where their songs were performed. Composers actively studied the Chuvash musical folklore.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-379
Author(s):  
Shuangyi Li

Abstract This article examines the novel and film Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise, by the Franco-Chinese writer and filmmaker Dai Sijie, the story of which takes place against the background of the Cultural Revolution. The first part of my analysis will make clear how the film illuminates and dramatizes the special texture, aesthetic and structure of the novel, highlighting the cinematic sensibility of Dai’s literary aesthetic. I then move on to investigate the linguistic aspects of the various translations between the novel and the film in French, Mandarin Chinese and Sichuanese. The aesthetic effects of dubbing, in particular, will allow me to investigate new possibilities of reading exophone literature. Finally, this paper highlights the central role of oral storytelling in the Chinese tradition in/through various forms of translation: interlingual as well as intermedial. In so doing, this article aims to add nuance to and enrich current debates on issues such as intercultural misreading and exoticism in Dai’s works.


1972 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 444-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey Nelsen

The analytical approaches so far devoted to the contemporary People's Liberation Army (PLA) have been of three general types. First, biographical studies which explain events in terms of the individual military leaders and their inter-relationships. Second, some students of the PLA have devised analytical models of informal power structures. The behaviour of the PLA in the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” has been interpreted by some as determined by personal loyalties, latent regionalism, and cliques formed around common service in military units prior to 1949. Others have viewed the PLA as split between “professional” commanders and the political cadres in the armed forces – sometimes dubbed a “Red versus expert” analysis. These categories of studies have one thing in common; they treat PLA institutions as being manipulated by informal and extra-legal forces. The third type of study emphasizes organizational and institutional frameworks. This paper falls into the third category. It asks the question: to what extent were the military institutions the subject or object of developments in the Cultural Revolution? It concludes that the organizational structures of the PLA and the missions assigned them heavily influenced the political behaviour of military leaders in the provinces.


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