Statistics and the Field Army Loyalty System

1974 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 146-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Whitson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
Military Politics ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

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.

Factions in Chinese Military Politics

1973 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 667-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Parish
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
Military Politics ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In Chinese Studies, three themes have acquired new emphasis since the Cultural Revolution: first, the view that China is not a simple monolithic state but one with diversified interest groups and potential internal conflict. Second, the influence of the military throughout society and the extent to which its particular interests and internal conflicts shape the nature of government and society. Third, the fact that bureaucratism, though attacked in the Cultural Revolution, is likely to continue shaping Chinese society and to be a perennial threat to revolutionary ideals. This article touches on each of these themes – first, by an analysis of personal loyalty groups during the Cultural Revolution and the Lin Piao affair and, second, by an account of the changing nature of Chinese bureaucracies and of how these changes impinge on factional politics.

Factions in Chinese Military Politics

1973 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 667-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Parish
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Chinese Studies ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
Military Politics ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In Chinese Studies, three themes have acquired new emphasis since the Cultural Revolution: first, the view that China is not a simple monolithic state but one with diversified interest groups and potential internal conflict. Second, the influence of the military throughout society and the extent to which its particular interests and internal conflicts shape the nature of government and society. Third, the fact that bureaucratism, though attacked in the Cultural Revolution, is likely to continue shaping Chinese society and to be a perennial threat to revolutionary ideals. This article touches on each of these themes – first, by an analysis of personal loyalty groups during the Cultural Revolution and the Lin Piao affair and, second, by an account of the changing nature of Chinese bureaucracies and of how these changes impinge on factional politics.

The Statistical Evidence for Yang Ch'eng-wu's Manipulation of the Military Elite

1974 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 148-155
Author(s):  
David S. G. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Vice Chairman ◽  
Provincial Level ◽  
Chief Of Staff ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
Military Politics ◽  
Military Posts ◽  
The Military ◽  
Formal Establishment

William Parish in “Factions in Chinese Military Politics,” ( The China Quarterly, No. 56, p. 667) argues that military factions only assumed political importance during the Cultural Revolution. Part of this argument is based on the claim that Yang Ch'eng-wu, when acting chief of staff and secretary-general of the Central Committee's Military Affairs Committee, attempted to influence the appointment of PLA cadres to provincial revolutionary committees in favour of the 5th Field Army. This influence, he demonstrates, by considering the distribution of PLA cadres with known Field Army affiliations on two groups of provincial revolutionary committees: those formed before and those formed after 8 March 1968 – the date of Yang's last public appearance. Parish argues that a significantly greater proportion of military cadres with a 5th Field Army background were appointed to those Provincial Revolutionary Committees formed before 8 March 1968, than one would have expected given the distribution of such cadres in military posts in 1966. Since he had previously argued that military appointments before 1967 were made without reference to Field Army affiliations, he concludes that Yang was engaged in factional politics. However, Parish's account of Yang Ch'engwu's activities is very much open to question on the grounds that the available evidence suggests that most military appointments to the leading positions (i.e. chairman or vice-chairman) on Provincial-level Revolutionary Committees were determined well before the formal establishment of these institutions and before Yang's dismissal.

Control and Style: Discipline Inspection Commissions Since the 11th Congress

1984 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 24-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Young
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The legacies of the Cultural Revolution have been nowhere more enduring than in the Chinese Communist Party organization. Since late 1967, when the process of rebuilding the shattered Party began, strengthening Party leadership has been a principal theme of Chinese politics; that theme has become even more pronounced in recent years. It is now claimed that earlier efforts achieved nothing, and that during the whole “decade of turmoil” until 1976, disarray in the Party persisted and political authority declined still further. Recent programmes of Party reform, therefore, still seek to overcome the malign effects of the Cultural Revolution in order to achieve the complementary objectives of reviving abandoned Party “traditions” and refashioning the Party according to the new political direction demanded by its present leaders.

China: Party–Army Relations Past and Present

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia K. Ledberg
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
The Military

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a key political actor in the Chinese state. Together with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese state institutions, it makes up the political foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the early years after the founding of the PRC in 1949, the military played an important role in state consolidation and the management of domestic state affairs, as is expected in a state founded on Leninist principles of organization. Since the reform process, which was initiated in the late 1970s, the political role of the PLA has changed considerably. It has become less involved in domestic politics and increased attention has been directed toward military modernization. Consequently, in the early 21st century, the Chinese military shares many characteristics with the armed forces in noncommunist states. At the same time, the organizational structures, such as the party committee system, the system of political leaders, and political organs, have remained in place. In other words, the politicized structures that were put in place to facilitate the role of the military as a domestic political tool of the CCP, across many sectors of society, are expected to also accommodate modernization, professionalization, and cooperation with foreign militaries on the international arena in postreform China. This points to an interesting discrepancy between form and purpose of the PLA. The role of the military in Chinese politics has thus shifted over the years, and its relationship with the CCP has generally been interpreted as having developed from one marked by symbiosis to one of greater institutional autonomy and independence. Yet these developments should not necessarily be seen as linear or irreversible. Indeed, China of the Xi Jinping era has shown an increased focus on ideology, centralization, and personalized leadership, which already has had consequences for the political control of the Chinese armed forces. Chances are that these trends will affect the role of the PLA in politics even further in the early decades of the 21st century.

scholarly journals Mummifying the Working Class: The Cultural Revolution and the Fates of the Political Parties of the 20th Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 227 ◽  
pp. 653-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Russo
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Working Class ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

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.

The Role of the Military in the Formation of Revolutionary Committees 1967–68

1970 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 112-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Domes
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Process ◽  
High Tide ◽  
Popular Resistance ◽  
Regional Leadership ◽  
Communist China ◽  
New Type ◽  
Attitudinal Response ◽  
The Military

When, at a moment of high tide in the Cultural Revolution, the first Revolutionary Committee was established in the Manchurian province of Heilungkiang on 31 January 1967, a new type of leadership organ appeared on the Chinese scene, indicating drastic changes in the regional power structure. At the beginning, these Revolutionary Committees were supposed to act as “temporary supreme organs of power” (Lin-shih tsui-kao ch'üan-li chi-kou), in which capacity they combined the local and regional leadership of party, administration, economy and mass organizations. During the four weeks preceding the formation of the Heilungkiang Committee, violent activity by newly formed Maoist organizations in a number of Chinese provinces and cities had been answered by wide-spread popular resistance, which was in many cases instigated by the local and regional Party leadership. Facing this resistance, Mao Tse-tung, in a personal mandate to his First Deputy and presumptive successor, Lin Piao, on 17 or 18 January 1967 ordered the military to intervene in the power-struggle between Maoists and anti-Maoists. The immediate attitudinal response of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), however, was not wholly convincing. Nevertheless, this call for the military to support the faltering Maoist counterattack against “revisionist” oppositional forces marks the beginning of a definite rise in military influence on the political process in Communist China.

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