XI

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

I: The Mounting Crisis, 1965–1967

Beginning in the fall of 1965 and continuing for over three and one-half years, Mao Tse-tung convulsed China in revolutionary paroxysm. Partly because of the means he chose, but primarily because he could not fully anticipate the reaction to his policies, Mao’s assault on “those in authority taking the capitalist road” shook the Chinese polity and threatened his own preeminence. The course of events was marked by sudden changes in policy and intermediate objectives and forced increasing reliance upon military participation, which brought success of one kind only to create problems of quite another order. Although Mao achieved his primary goal of removing his opponents from positions of power at the center, control over the provincial party apparatus eluded his grasp. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was in essence the struggle over the manner in which political reconstruction of the provinces would proceed and which groups would rule.

The Decision to Initiate the “Cultural” Revolution

Sometime in the early fall of 1965, Mao Tse-tung decided that the threat to him implicit in the Soviet Union’s call for unity over Vietnam precluded the continuation of his plan for gradual recapture of power in the provinces. To preserve his own position, it would be necessary first to remove those in the central committee who favored a policy of unity. His method would be an extension of the one he had employed previously—the creation of ad hoc extra-legal organs to penetrate the established structure. Initially, Mao needed to capture the central media and military command posts. These would permit him to control and shape the flow of information and enable him to use without obstruction the centrally commanded army corps, if necessary. As Lin Piao bluntly put it at a Politburo meeting the following May, when he spoke of Mao’s actions as necessary to prevent a coup d’état:

Mao’s immediate targets would be Lo Jui-ch’ing, who “controlled military power,” P’eng Chen, who “controlled the General Secretariat,” Lu Ting-yi, “commander in chief of the cultural and ideological war front,” and Yang Shang-k’un, head of “confidential affairs, intelligence, and liaison.”² All four would fall before the major opponents, Liu Shao-ch’i and Teng Hsiao-p’ing, would be ousted during the fall of 1966.

Moving against unsuspecting opposition, Mao initiated his plan at a Central Work Conference and Politburo Standing Committee session which met during September and October. At the conference Mao called for criticism of Wu Han, vice-mayor of Peking and author of several works implicitly critical of Mao’s policies. Toward this end, a five-man “cultural revolution group” was appointed to study the class struggle on the cultural and ideological fronts and report its findings to the Politburo Standing Committee. P’eng Chen, mayor of Peking and first secretary of the Peking party apparatus, under whose wing writers critical of Mao, including Wu Han, had been protected, was named head of the group. This assignment constituted the first step of Mao’s plan to entrap P’eng Chen. After the conference, Mao withdrew from public view to Shanghai, where he planned the next phase of the campaign. Remaining in seclusion, Mao ostensibly was preparing an “article” for publication.³

In early November, Mao Tse-tung moved again, this time on both international and domestic fronts. On November 11, the article “Refutation of the New Leaders of the CPSU on United Action” appeared in People’s Daily and Red Flag, indicating that the issue of cooperation with the Soviet Union over Vietnam had been decided and clearing the way for Mao to concentrate on his domestic opposition. At the same time, on November 10 in Shanghai’s Wen Hui Pao, Mao opened an attack on the “cultural” front, which was triggered by Yao Wen-yuan’s critical article, “On the New Historical Drama, the Dismissal of Hai Jui.” Yao’s article generated an outburst of criticism against major writers, playwrights, and later even high party officials, like Chou Yang, who were in charge of literary affairs. It constituted a challenge to those who publicly but indirectly opposed the “Thought of Mao Tse-tung.”

Perhaps the most critical step taken during the preliminary stage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was Mao’s removal of Lo Jui-ch’ing, chief of staff of the PLA and vice-chairman of the Military Affairs Committee.⁴ At a Central Committee “conference,” convened by Mao in Shanghai on December 8, Lo was subjected to severe criticism. Chou En-lai himself reportedly examined him “many times” in an effort to “help” and to “reeducate” him. A work group was set up to investigate Lo’s errors, which were further exposed at a “conference on political work in the army and among the ranking cadres of the Party and the Army.” Apparently arrested in early March, Lo was held “under the direct supervision of the Central Committee” from March 4 through April 8, 1966, during which time “face to face” struggle was conducted against him. Throughout, Lo Jui-ch’ing remained “extremely hostile to the thought of Mao Tse-tung.” On one occasion, March 18, he sought to commit suicide by jumping from an upper story of the building in which he was being held. He injured himself in the attempt, but survived.

While Mao Tse-tung was marshalling his forces in Shanghai, his opponents were active in Peking, now thoroughly aware that the level of the struggle had been raised to the Central Committee. Perceiving an opportunity to outmaneuver Mao in his absence from Peking, Liu Shao-ch’i convened a Politburo Standing Committee meeting in early February to consider the P’eng Chen Committee’s report. Termed the “February Outline Report,” it was approved on February 8 and disseminated on the 12th. P’eng, who evidently drafted the report without consulting K’ang Sheng, Mao’s man and a member of the five-man cultural revolution group, sought to “channel the political struggle in the cultural sphere into so-called pure academic discussion.”⁵ In an obvious slam at Mao Tse-tung, the “report” noted:

. . . we must not behave like scholar-tyrants who are always acting arbitrarily and trying to overwhelm people with their power . . . we should guard against any tendency for academic workers of the Left to take the road of bourgeois experts and scholar-tyrants.⁶

On March 28, Mao Tse-tung sharply criticized the “outline report,” clearly stung by its contents. “It was wrong to draft this outline,” he said. Reacting to the criticism contained in the report, Mao said, “those who detain and suppress the manuscripts of the leftists and shield the anti-communist intellectuals are ‘big academic overlords,’ and the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee is the demon king’s palace. We must knock down the demon king and get rid of the demons!”⁷ Mao, in replying to the “outline report,” broadened the scope of his attack to include Lu Ting-yi, who was director of the Propaganda Department, as well as Minister of Culture. It would take less than two months to depose Lu Ting-yi, once P’eng Chen was out of the way. The same would be true of Yang Shang-k’un, the fourth of Mao’s initial targets, liaison and recording secretary for the Central Committee Secretariat.

In the meantime, on March 26, Liu Shao-ch’i had departed for a state visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan, remaining out of the country until April 19. His absence gave Mao the opportunity to take formal action against P’eng Chen. At a meeting of the Central Committee Secretariat on April 9–12, attended by Chou En-lai and K’ang Sheng but not Mao Tse-tung, K’ang “systematically criticized and repudiated a series of grave mistakes made by P’eng Chen.”⁸ Despite P’eng’s attempts to defend himself by maintaining that he had no intention of opposing Chairman Mao, the secretariat’s members decided to draft a notice for the purpose of repudiating the “outline report” and to set up a new cultural revolution drafting group for the approval of Mao and the Politburo Standing Committee.

A few days later, on April 18, the PLA became publicly involved in the struggle at the top for the first time. The editorial in Liberation Army Daily flatly charged that the corrosive literature of the “anti-Party black line” in the literary world would inevitably have a deleterious effect on the military. The following day Liu Shao-ch’i returned to Peking, setting the stage for a major confrontation between the Mao and Liu groups, which occurred from May 4 through 18.

Mao Tse-tung Takes the Offensive

Mao Tse-tung summoned the party’s leaders for an enlarged Politburo Standing Committee Conference in Hangchow, outside of Shanghai, which opened on May 4. To ensure against unwanted disruption, he “dispatched personnel and had them stationed in the radio broadcasting stations, the armed forces and the public security systems.”⁹ During the succeeding two weeks, the Liu and Mao groups battled over two issues: P’eng Chen’s “February Outline Report” and the “errors” of Lo Jui-ch’ing. On the 16th of May, the Mao group emerged victorious from this conference, obtaining approval of four important measures. First, the “February Outline Report” was repu-diated on the ground that it obscured the “sharp class struggle” taking place, violated the “basic Marxist thesis” that all class struggles are political struggles, and turned the political struggle into an “academic discussion.” Secondly, “P’eng Chen alone, usurping the name of the Central Committee,” was blamed for the outline’s contents. The four other members of the group, particularly K’ang Sheng, were absolved of all culpability. Thirdly, the conference decided to dissolve the group of five and set up a new group, “directly under the Standing Committee of the Politburo, in charge of the cultural revolution.” Finally, both P’eng Chen and Lo Jui-ch’ing were removed from posts of responsibility.¹⁰

Mao Tse-tung’s triumph in the May confrontation laid the basis for the next step to be taken against his opponents inside the central committee as well as carrying the “cultural revolution” to the country as a whole. Creation of the Cultural Revolution Group directly under the Politburo Standing Committee gave Mao the instrument he could use to shape a political apparatus independent of the party, which would then be directed to attack the party at every level of operation. Headed by Mao’s wife, Chiang Ch’ing, and including K’ang Sheng, Ch’en Po-ta, Yao Wen-yuan, and Chang Ch’un-ch’iao, the new “group of five” in charge of the cultural revolution would function as the mobilizing and directing agent for cultural revolution groups throughout the country later in the year. The dismissal of Lo Jui-ch’ing allowed Mao and Lin Piao the unhindered use of the army corps and P’eng Chen’s removal opened the way for the capture of the Peking apparatus, which came in early June, and with it control of the national media organs.

Both groups prepared for the clearly imminent showdown. Stationing troops at key points in and leading to Peking, Maoist forces took control of the city. On June 1, a People’s Daily editorial entitled “Sweep Out All Monsters and Ghosts” hinted that a major change had occurred in the city; three days later it was confirmed with the announcement of the reorganization of the Peking municipal committee, headed by new first secretary Li Hsueh-feng. Liu Shao-ch’i and his supporters immediately responded to Mao’s act. Convening a Central Work Conference, Liu attempted to gain control of the forces Mao was unleashing by sending out party work teams to provinces to channel the ferment into non-destructive areas. Both Mao and Liu were repeating to a great extent the methods each had employed during the Socialist Education Movement earlier. Mao urged the creation of “mass organizations” in the schools, which he hoped to use against the party; Liu sent the party’s “work teams” to protect the party apparatus.

The purge of the Peking organization included the purge of the top officials of Peking University. Coupled with the announcement on June 2 that admission to higher schools would be suspended for six months, it signaled activists in the provinces to emulate the pattern observed in Peking through the press. Soon officials in charge of the schools and newspapers in virtually every province began to topple. But results in the provinces were mixed. Nothing like the wholesale purges in Peking occurred, which may be attributed primarily to the appearance of the party’s work teams, sent out by provincial party headquarters. The work teams limited the scope of the movement, making scapegoats in the cultural field in order to protect the ultimate target, the provincial party leaders themselves.

Although Mao immediately cautioned against the excessive use of the work teams,¹¹ it took him over a month and a half before he could place a check on their activities. His opportunity came at a Central Work Conference which convened from July 20 and continued through the end of the month. At the meeting of July 22, which included the party’s regional secretaries as well as members of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, Mao made the following remarks:

Six days later, on the 28th, Mao issued, through the Peking Municipal Committee, the Central Committee’s decision to abolish the work groups, which were “no longer capable of meeting the . . . revolutionary demands” of arousing the masses to topple those in authority taking the capitalist road in universities, colleges, and schools. As soon as the work groups were abolished, schools were instructed to form a “temporary or preparatory committee to make preparations for the election of the cultural revolution committee of the whole school.”¹³ Once the cultural revolution committee was established it would have the authority to conduct the cultural revolution in its own institution and elsewhere, if necessary.

Mao was now prepared to confront his opponents. He had succeeded in creating what in effect was a personal apparatus, based on his “thought” and independent of the party, in all of the higher schools in the country. Still inchoate, the nucleus nevertheless had been created. At the same time, he had stripped power from the work groups, the instruments of his opponents. Presumbably, the final task of attacking and capturing the provincial party and state apparatuses would occur with minimal opposition. Therefore, the Central Work Conference, which decreed the abolition of the work groups, determined to convene the Eleventh Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party. The plenum, which opened on August 1 and continued through the 12th, represented the culmination of Mao Tse-tung’s drive to oust his opponents in the Central Committee and laid the ground rules for the campaign to take command of the provincial power structure.

Ultimately, a party congress (the Ninth) and a National People’s Congress (the Fourth) would have to be convened to give formal sanction to the acts of the Maoist group against Liu Shao-ch’i and others. Such congresses would, in turn, require assembling delegates from the provinces. Since Liu’s strength lay principally in the party, state and, to some extent, the military apparatuses in the provinces, no decision made at the top could be permanent unless the basis of Liu’s strength were removed. Therefore, the extension of the struggle to the provinces was necessary for Mao Tse-tung to make his solution stick in the center. At this stage of the struggle, Mao’s intention was to gain control of the provincial power structure, not to destroy it. The shift to the policy of destroying the provincial apparatus would occur only in January 1967, when it became apparent that Mao could not oust Liu’s supporters from the apparatus.

The Great “Proletarian” Cultural Revolution—Initial Strategy

The means Mao Tse-tung employed in the cultural revolution were the classic ones of divide and rule combined with piecemeal assault on isolated positions. He applied this principle and tactic at every level of the party, state, and military apparatuses in a relatively bloodless fashion, considering the magnitude of the endeavor, but not without violence. At the Eleventh Plenum, Mao and his opponents hammered out the procedural guidelines for the ensuing round of battle, adopting on August 8 the “Decision of the CCP Central Committee Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.”¹⁴ The resolution, comprising sixteen points, starkly reflected the organizational methods which had characterized the struggle to date; Mao relied on ad hoc mass organizations, while Liu acted through the party’s apparatus.

A narrow victory for Mao in the Central Committee, the Eleventh Plenum signaled the extension of the struggle to the entire country and to all levels of the power structure. If the struggle during the “socialist education campaign” had been restricted to the commune structure in the countryside and schools, the sixteen-point decision shifted it to the “big and medium cities,” where the “key points” of attack were to be “cultural and educational units and Party and government leadership organs” (point XI11).¹⁵ Indeed, as stated in point V, “the focus of this movement is on the purge of those powerholders within the Party who take the capitalist road.”

The resolution reflected the narrowness of Mao’s victory in a curious way, by the inclusion of contradictory instructions, which represented the strengths of both the Mao and Liu groups. In this composite resolution, however, Mao’s position clearly dominated. Employing the technique once again of ad hoc mass organizations, Mao gained acceptance for the creation of “cultural revolutionary groups . . . committees and . . . congresses” as permanent mass organizations, the “power organs of the proletarian cultural revolution” (point IX). Once established, these “forces should be concentrated on attacking a handful of extremely reactionary bourgeois rightists and counterrevolutionary revisionists. Their . . . crimes must be fully exposed and criticized, and they must be isolated to the maximum extent” (point V).

Exposure and criticism of the handful was precisely what Liu Shao-ch’i and his supporters were determined to minimize, if not prevent, and the resolution reflected their intentions. Point VI noted that “the minority must be protected because sometimes truth is in the hands of the minority.” Point XI stipulated that “criticism by name in the press must first be discussed by the Party committees at the corresponding levels, and in some cases approved by the higher Party committees.” Finally, in point XIII, the right of the “party committee” was asserted concerning the issue of integrating the “cultural revolution” with the Socialist Education Movement.

Despite efforts of the Liu group to lodge control of the cultural revolution in the hands of the “party committees,” as they had during the socialist education campaign, Mao Tse-tung succeeded in isolating the leaders of the state and party apparatuses “to the maximum extent.” Point XIV forbade the provincial party leaders from employing either the military or economic forces under their control in the cultural revolution. Point XIV also contained Mao’s “guarantee that the cultural revolution and production will not impede each other,” provided that the masses were “fully” mobilized and “satisfactory arrangements” were made. “It is wrong,” continued the resolution, “to set the great cultural revolution against the development of production.” Most important, point XV prohibited the use of military force. The “cultural revolutionary movement and the socialist education movement in the armed forces” would be conducted by Mao’s organs, the Military Affairs Commission and the PLA’s General Political Department.

The effect of these stipulations was to restrict, at least on paper, the kinds of responses beleaguered provincial party leaders could make to Mao’s initiative. Although the “broad masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres constitute the main force. . . . Large numbers of revolutionary youngsters . . . have become brave vanguards . . . firmly launching an attack against those open and covert bourgeois representatives” (point II). In other words, the workers, peasants, and soldiers in the provinces, whom the provincial party leaders could mobilize in their defense, were to remain outside the sphere of direct and widespread involvement. Their role was differentiated from that of the “brave vanguards,” who, consisting almost totally of students acting under Mao’s direction, would attack the presumably supine provincial party leaders. The legitimation of their actions was contained in point XVI. The “guide of action” would be the “thought of Mao Tse-tung,” which was to be “regarded as a compass to the cultural revolution.” Finally, the party committee themselves, “at various levels must abide by the successive directives of Chairman Mao.”

The sixteen-point resolution of the Eleventh Plenum laid the ground rules for the assault on the provincial power structure, but only dimly and implicitly reflected the political infighting and strategic maneuver of which it was the product. In a major political change, the plenum’s assembled leaders voted to enlarge the Politburo Standing Committee from seven to eleven members. Added were T’ao Chu, Ch’en Po-ta, Li Fu-ch’un, and K’ang Sheng. Within the enlarged standing committee, Liu Shao-ch’i was demoted from position number two to position number eight and T’ao Chu promoted to position number four. In a related move. Sung Jen-ch’iung, boss of the party’s Northeast Regional Bureau was promoted to alternate status on the Politburo. These decisions alone constituted a substantial victory for Mao, who now commanded a clear majority in the enlarged standing committee. The promotions of T’ao Chu and Sung Jen-ch’iung were a manage de convenance by which Mao divided his opponents.¹⁶

The principal danger in Mao’s plan to attack the entire provincial power structure was the possibility, if not the likelihood, of broad-based armed defiance of the party center in Peking. There was no certainty that regional and provincial leaders would willingly suffer removal from entrenched positions of power. Mao had to take precautions to prevent the formation of regional opposition, which would most likely coalesce around the strong regional party secretaries, all of whom commanded significant military forces. For example, although the first secretary of each of the six regional bureaus had no formal provincial party post, he was first political commissar of one of the military regions under the jurisdiction of his bureau.¹⁷ At a minimum, the regional bureau itself included the first and second secretaries from each of the provincial party committees in its region. The first secretary of the provincial party apparatus also was political commissar to the corresponding military district. Therefore, each regional bureau leader, in addition to having direct control of military forces at the regional level, could exercise control at the district level, too, through the provincial secretaries subordinate to him in his bureau.

It was imperative that Mao Tse-tung disestablish the regional apparatus before proceeding with the attack on the provincial power structure. The difficulty was that before the Eleventh Plenum Mao controlled only one, the North China Bureau, of the six regional party, bureaus. This he had secured in June when he captured Peking. The East China Bureau, being without a chief, Mao disregarded for the time being, but the remaining four bureaus (Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Central South) represented immediate threats. Mao’s achievement at the Eleventh Plenum was to divide the four regional bureaus by “allying” (temporarily) with two of the regional secretaries, T’ao Chu and Sung Jen-ch’iung.¹⁸

Mao’s “alliance” with the Northeast and Central South bureau leaders, if it can be termed that, was an important strategic victory, for it precluded the possibility of the development of “northern” opposition based on the Northeast regional bureau as well as a “southern” opposition based on the Central South regional bureau. Moreover, by controlling Manchuria, north China, and the Central South area, which consisted of the Wuhan and Canton military regions and the provinces of Honan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kwangsi, and Kwangtung, it left possible only one opposing regional combination—Southwest and Northwest.¹⁹ (See map of China’s military regions and party regional bureaus.) Because of this preoccupation with preventing the development of regional opposition, the considerable difficulties which quickly developed in the Southwest, Northwest, and East China areas never became insurmountable problems. In fact, because of the early immobilization of all the regional bureaus as functioning organs, no significant regional, as opposed to provincial, opposition to Mao Tse-tung ever evolved during the cultural revolution. With no significant exceptions the principal problems which occurred during the cultural revolution were all restricted to provincial dimensions, although at times provincial crises threatened to spill over and become regional ones.

In the long run, of course, by virtue of the vital importance of the Northeast and Central South regions, Mao could not afford to bank on a “permanent alliance” with the first secretaries there. He would be forced to take command of these areas himself, or at least split them up, to prevent any one leader from controlling an entire region. Perhaps it was for this reason that Mao gave roles at the center to both Huang Yung-sheng of the Central South and Ch’en Hsi-lien of the Northeast regional bureaus. They would act as counterweights to both T’ao Chu and Sung Jen-ch’iung. For the moment, however, the situation at the top was well in hand. It would now be possible to begin the assault on the provincial power structure, without undue fear of immediate regionalization.

The Red Guards, Mao’s Student Left

University and higher school students had been involved in the Cultural Revolution since early May 1966.²⁰ Initally, they held struggle meetings to criticize Wu Han and other literary figures. Their criticism was all long-range, affecting none of them personally. After the May 16 circular criticizing P’eng Chen, students were encouraged to criticize local authorities. Their teachers became targets. In early June the dismissal of P’eng Chen and sharp newspaper attacks on other high party officials in Peking signaled students to emulate these acts in their own localities. The presence of the party’s work teams, however, muted the ferocity of student criticism and diverted the main thrust away from local party officials. Despite this, by the end of July, “cultural revolution groups” had been organized by the activist groupings which had emerged in virtually every higher school more or less spontaneously from the struggle-criticism activities of the previous months.

The Eleventh Plenum’s sixteen-point resolution exhorted the “brave vanguards” to further criticism of party leaders, but provided no specific guidelines as to how this should be done. Many groups formed, but membership and organization of any particular group remained ill-defined and fluid. The method of organizing the students remained a problem until August 18, when Mao Tse-tung, at a mass student rally and review before T’ien An Men in Peking, accepted the armband of a student group which called themselves “Red Guards.” This symbolic act expressly indicated approval of the name, method, and actions of this particular student group. The message was clear. All should become “Red Guards.” Mao’s symbolic act, combined with specific instructions that only the most revolutionary students (the “five kinds of red” students)²¹ could participate, gave greater organizational cohesion, even though the “five red students” comprised only about 10 percent or less of the student body of any given school.

From August 23 until the end of October these student groups moved out of the schools and into the cities smashing the “four olds” (old customs, habits, thoughts, and culture) and merged with other student groups. Street by street, “Red Guard” groups of students systematically and repeatedly terrorized all who could be labeled one of the “black elements,” or backward classes. By early September, as the groups from various schools coalesced, it became specifically acknowledged that their sole authority was Mao Tse-tung and their direction was his “thought.” The party’s officials at provincial, municipal, and university levels came increasingly under suspicion.

The “great exchange of experiences” was one of the “five great activities” in which the students participated.²² It involved traveling to Peking and other cities. The transportation system, both rail and bus, was made available to the students for this purpose, as were lodging and meals, at no expense. Beginning on August 18 and lasting through November, nine mass rallies were held in Peking, involving some eleven million student Red Guards who came from all over China to see Chairman Mao and the new second in command, Lin Piao. On the way to and from Peking, as well as in their home areas, these groups of students participated in attacking the “four olds.” The result of their actions by early October was that all China was in tumult. Yet the party leaders had managed to “deflect the spearhead” of student attacks from themselves by cooperating in no small measure with them and in many instances organizing student groups of their own as a protective measure. Thus, by the time that Mao convened a Central Work Conference on October 8, 1966, most provincial party leaders had suffered considerable fright, but had lost little actual power.

At the Conference, attended by the secretaries of the party’s regional bureaus, provincial, district, and hsien committees, Mao threatened his listeners, stating plainly that the previous two months of the cultural revolution had not yet produced the results that he had hoped for. He noted that “at the last meeting [Eleventh Plenum] I did not have any confidence at all. I said that my instructions might not necessarily be carried out, and, as I had expected, many comrades still failed to understand them adequately.”²³ Continuing, Mao said:

If, upon your return, you still do things according to the old rules and regulations, maintain the status quo, oppose one group of Red Guards and let another group of Red Guards protect you, I think things will not change and the situation will not take a turn for the better. Naturally, we cannot ask too much. Not all the broad masses of cadres of the Central Committee’s bureaux, provincial Party Committees, district Party committees and hsien Party committees will see the light. There are always some people who fail to arrive at a right perception of things, and a few will take the antagonistic stand. But I believe that the majority can be won over.²⁴

In closing, Mao noted that “the time is too short, and we are not mentally prepared for the new problems.” Whether the “new problems” Mao referred to were those he faced because of the intransigence of the party secretaries or those he was about to create for them is not clear from the text. In any case, the cultural revolution moved into a new stage after the October Central Work Conference, the last such assemblage of party secretaries to be held.

After the conference, Mao altered both the scope and depth of the Red Guard assault, hoping to place sufficient pressure upon the party secretaries to topple those who would not shift to Mao’s side. On November 3, Lin Piao in a speech reported in People’s Daily declared that “all the masses” should “criticize the Party and government at all levels.” Later in the month, the workers and peasants, whom the party sought to isolate from the struggle earlier, were now specifically enjoined to enter the fray. At the same time the “five red” criterion for Red Guard membership was dropped, increasing student participation. This meant the rapid expansion of the student assault organizations, which heretofore had been relatively small. The “revolutionary groups” were now augmented greatly in size and were more diverse in composition. The month of December saw the formation of cultural revolution groups and other mass organizations in factory, commune, and commercial enterprises, as well as the amalgamation of various student groups. Mao and his supporters in Peking were clearly building a large shock force of the masses which they hoped would simply overwhelm the “power holders” in the party apparatus.

Despite the fact that the month of December revealed the arrest of P’eng Chen (December 4) and the publication through wall posters of the “confessions” of Liu Shao-ch’i and Teng-Hsiao-p’ing (December 25), party officials in the provincial apparatuses showed no inclination to surrender to the frantic and sometimes hysterical groups which stormed their headquarters. In fact, by the end of the year, most party officials had surreptitiously matched the buildup of “Maoist” forces among the masses with those of their own. Peking referred to this development as “using the Red Guards to attack the Red Guards” and “waving the Red Flag to oppose the Red Flag,” but there was little Mao and his men could do about it. For the most part, the formation of groups to counter “Mao’s forces” was spontaneous. It was dangerous to remain isolated, a fact which ordinary citizens soon discovered. Spontaneously, “self-protection” groups arose to dot the countryside. Many of these were sponsored by local party officials as a self-defense measure. By this time virtually everyone realized that, as one student in Kwangtung put it, “we were involved in a real power struggle between Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch’i. . . . We knew in a general way that we would probably be mobilized for even more intense activities in the future. We were prepared to await the new signals from Peking. . . .”²⁵ The “more intense activities” were not long in coming, the first signals appearing at the turn of the year.

The Attempt to “Seize Power”

By the end of the year the rampaging Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels presented a confusing spectacle in China’s large and medium-sized cities. Although Mao had succeeded in building an attack force of students, workers, and peasants, the party’s provincial leaders had responded with similar methods to build self-protection units of their own. Pitting Red Guard group against Red Guard group, their tactic was to broaden the scope of the conflict and to muddle things by involving greater and greater numbers of workers and peasants in the struggle. In addition to encouraging those who had been “sent down” previously to return to the cities, the provincial party leaders enticed workers and peasants to leave their posts in factories and communes to go to the cities. This tended to clog the rail and bus lines, making it difficult for the Maoists to use them. The net effect of the injection of thousands of workers, peasants, and students into what was already a chaotic situation was incredible disorder. Although the Maoists were nowhere defeated by such tactics, they were not victorious. The result was a stand-off in the cities.

A level of conflict and chaos was acceptable, even desirable—if Mao and his supporters could control and channel it in the intended direction. Toward this end, concerted efforts were made to limit the numbers entering the cities and to point the Maoist revolutionaries toward the party offices and prevent them from diffusing their energies in what were from Mao’s viewpoint unproductive activities. To forestall workers’ and peasants’ inundation of the cities, Peking issued on December 15 a directive which urged the rural masses to participate in the cultural revolution, but “in their localities and under the single leadership of the cultural revolution committees of communes and brigades in their localities.”²⁶ Similarly, the students were enjoined to desist from “exchanging experiences” and ordered to return to their own schools. On December 31 Peking issued still another circular instructing the PLA to provide short-term (two to three weeks’) military and political training for revolutionary teachers and students of universities and middle schools.²⁷ The school itself would be the physical site for the PLA’s activities and the principal type of instruction would be “formation training,” which would enable the Maoist groups to coordinate rapid movement in groups. Indoctrination in the major documents of the cultural revolution would accompany the physical training.

Shanghai, a key “demonstrator” city in Mao’s plans, was particularly chaotic, prompting him to act there first. On the 4th of January, Maoist revolutionary rebel forces led by Chang Ch’un-ch’iao, a member of the Central Committee Cultural Revolution Group, took over the party and newspaper offices in the city. Four days later, a mass rally was held in Peking whose major purpose was to announce publicly the overthrow of China’s Khrushchev, Liu Shao-ch’i, and his chief collaborators. The surprise addition to the list of those overthrown was T’ao Chu, who only four months before had been promoted to the number four position on the Politburo Standing Committee! His fall coincided with a strong Maoist move in Canton to oust the members of T’ao’s apparatus there. That the events in Shanghai and Peking were interconnected quickly became clear. On the next day, January 9, People’s Daily exhorted Mao’s legions to emulate the example shown in Peking by “seizing power” in the provinces and routing out all of the henchmen of China’s Khrushchev, and on the 11th, the Shanghai power seizure was held up to the nation as a “brilliant example” of “correct policy.”²⁸ The next few days saw the Mao group in Peking simultaneously urging the masses on while funneling them against the party offices in the provinces.

Of course, the provincial party leaders sought to turn the mass movement to their own advantage, which Mao strove to prevent. On January 11, the same day that Shanghai was publicly held up to be the example for genuine revolutionaries all over China to follow, Peking issued three “notices” condemning the tactics of the opposition. Decrying what they called “economism,” the Maoists excoriated the small handful of “capitalist roaders,” who were “corroding” the masses with material benefits, using “money to win over the revolutionary masses.” Unless we concentrate on strengthening “our own revolutionary fighting will,” the notification stated, it will be easy for the small handful to “utilize” the masses for their own ends.²⁹

It was immediately obvious that merely issuing notices would be insufficient, so Mao increased the level of force and degree of involvement of the public security forces and PLA, a decision which created a minor crisis in Peking. The chaos made it increasingly difficult to distinguish a genuine from a sham revolutionary. It became apparent that not all groups which assaulted and ousted party officials were pro-Maoist. The attacks on radio stations were a case in point. It being vital to ensure control over the mass media, Mao instructed the local military forces to take over all broadcasting stations, regardless of who controlled them. The revolutionary masses were encouraged to attack the stations, thereby deposing incumbent party officials, but they were then ordered to “pull out at once,” giving place to the local PLA, which would operate them. The army, in turn, would rebroadcast only those programs originating in Peking, which enabled Mao to transmit directives to the masses while at the same time precluding the radio stations from being used to mobilize opposition to him and his supporters.³²

Since the command to “seize power” had been issued on January 9, the level of violence had risen alarmingly. Concerned that the movement was beginning to spread out of control and therefore to his disadvantage, Mao instructed the public security forces to become more directly involved by moving to protect the revolutionary left and damp down the level of violence. A Chung Fa (central issue) of the 13th declared that the public security forces must protect “the revolutionary masses and their organizations.”

The revolutionary masses were also called upon to “assist and supervise” the public security organs themselves to ensure that they should carry out their functions and “uphold revolutionary order.” Implicit in the Chung Fa was the recognition that respect for Mao’s “thought” had evaporated and had to be enforced. It was deemed to be an “active counterrevolutionary deed” punishable under the law to write or shout reactionary slogans or to vilify Chairman Mao and his close comrade in arms, Lin Piao.

Crisis in Peking over Greater PLA Involvement

Mao recognized that the public security forces were inadequate to perform the task of channeling the masses toward the desired targets. In fact, despite official decrees, the majority of the public security personnel of the larger cities moved to support the conservative groups against the revolutionaries.³⁴ Therefore, on the 14th, in a move which had been under discussion for several days, Mao ordered increased participation by the PLA in the struggle. The question of greater involvement by the PLA created a minor crisis at the top in Peking. Apparently, many high-ranking military leaders had gone along with Mao’s scheme on the understanding that the military would not become directly involved, but balked when he sought to raise the level of PLA participation in early January. The January crisis over the role of the military in the cultural revolution was the first of five such crises (the other four occurring in April and August 1967, March 1968, and the spring of 1971).

Each crisis, except the last, was resolved in favor of an increased role for the military and each decision resulted in a reshuffle of the military leadership in Peking. In January the issue was over the use of the military to guard key points in Mao’s effort to restrict the scope of the movement and direct it squarely against the party offices. The head of the PLA Cultural Revolutionary Group, Liu Chih-chien, who was appointed the previous May, 1966, opposed this decidedly more open role for the military, but was overruled. In consequence, he was dismissed and replaced by Hsü Hsiang-ch’ien. The group itself was enlarged at this time and Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife, named to it as advisor.³⁵ The reorganization was made public in wall posters in Peking on January 12 as the PLA’s organ, the Liberation Army Daily, attacked the “power holders inside the army taking the capitalist road.” Wall posters at this time also carried attacks on Ho Lung and other high-ranking military leaders, who had been opposed to the decision.

The upshot of this first crisis was a compromise. Mao obtained greater participation for the PLA in guarding key points, but in return he would attempt to keep the military out of direct conflict with the masses.³⁶ The January 14 “notification,” issued down to the hsien and regimental levels, stated that the local PLA would henceforth assume the responsibility “for guarding the local radio stations, prisons, warehouses, roads and bridges”; the masses were not allowed “to encircle, attack, and occupy and sabotage these places.”³⁷ In fact, “hereafter, no person or organization may attack the organs of the People’s Liberation Army,” which not only was charged with making preparations for war and national defense, but also was assigned the new task of “defending the great proletarian cultural revolution.” Events were now moving so quickly, however, that active defense of the cultural revolution became necessary in less than a week after the promulgation of the “notification.”

That significant groups within the military leadership were reluctant to accede to direct PLA involvement is apparent from the high turnover in their ranks during the cultural revolution. The reasons are also clear. The possibilities for clashes with the aroused masses were limitless, as was the prospect for potentially widespread civil conflict between army units. As long as military dissidence did not reach the point of open defiance and challenge to the legitimacy of the party center, isolated cases of dissidence among the military leadership were an acceptable risk for Mao Tse-tung to take. For Mao, the alternative was the loss of political power. Therefore he pushed the military into greater and greater involvement in the cultural revolution. Where the directive of the 14th left open the date when the army would assume responsibility for guarding certain places, a directive of the 19th called for immediate action. It declared:

As Mao edged the army toward total involvement in his plans, the need for its participation became more urgent. The call for power seizures by the Maoist revolutionaries had caused tremendous confusion in the provinces. Throughout China, but particularly in the area of the East China Bureau, which Mao had discounted earlier, the Maoists had had little success in storming the provincial party apparatus. Not only had incumbent leaders held on through one subterfuge or another, but the burgeoning strife threatened to develop into a regional problem as distinct from separate provincial conflicts. Anhwei, Chekiang, Kiangsi, and Fukien constituted a solid block of linked provinces. Excluding the province of Shantung, the entire East China regional bureau was spiraling out of control. It became necessary to “solve” the problem of incipient regionalism there, particularly because these provinces included a total of seven army corps (roughly 275,000 men) and 165,000 troops in the regional forces. The emergence of organized regional opposition there would constitute a direct threat to the survival of Mao Tse-tung and had to be dealt with swiftly.

In response to the East China situation, which Mao may have felt was only a forerunner of things to be expected in the near future, he pushed the reluctant military leaders into full involvement in the cultural revolution. It may be surmised that Mao himself moved far more precipitately than he should have at the time, a conclusion which derives support from the zigzag course of events during the last week in January. On January 21, Mao instructed the PLA of Anhwei province to “support the broad masses of the left,”³⁹ which it was hoped would forestall the disintegration of the Maoist position in East China. Fearing the worst, two days later the order was applied to all of China and to the entire PLA, both regional and army corps forces. The directive of January 23 stated flatly the future policy which would govern the army’s role in the cultural revolution:

Transmitted to every soldier in the PLA, the directive instructed army commanders to “send out troops” when “genuine proletarian Leftists ask the army for help.” By the same token, “counterrevolutionary organizations . . . must be resolutely suppressed.” If the army met with resistance in carrying out its duties, it was instructed to “strike back with force.” The army was not to side with the handful of party power holders “who persist in the bourgeois reactionary line” and not be “an air raid shelter” for the opposition.

There was great difficulty with the directive. It did not specify precisely how army commanders could identify “genuine proletarian Leftists” from among the many revolutionary groups making that claim. Actually, the directive could not have been more specific than it was. Mao’s first objective at this point was to commit the military to his side, the “revolutionary left.” Once committed, the manner of their involvement could be specified later with greater precision. Still, the way in which commanders responded to the directive must have created a quandary for Mao Tse-tung. Given the firm but general order to support groups which they could not easily identify, many commanders tended to respond to the demands of the party political commissars, from whom they had taken orders all their professional lives.⁴¹ Indeed, party officials demanded their support. At best, some commanders declared support for the “left,” but actually did nothing. At worst, commanders responded to the demands of their party superiors, the provincial party secretaries, and stepped in to support them or their surrogates. In most cases, the effect of the “support the left” order was to frustrate the takeover of the provincial party apparatus by the Maoists.

Within days, Mao perceived danger in the general order for PLA intervention and strove to restrict PLA involvement, for the most part, to regional forces and to reserve use of the army corps for a later date. In certain troublesome areas, the armed forces were instructed to postpone the cultural revolution altogether, while in others the top levels of the army command were to carry out a cultural revolution, but troops were to be left undisturbed. This latter action was aimed directly at the Southwest and Northwest bureaus, which Mao split by decree. Two orders issued on January 28 contained these instructions. The first declared that:

In terms of the party’s regional bureau system, the order included all of Central South (the Wuhan and Canton military regions) and East China (Tsinan, Nanking, Foochow) bureaus and parts of the Southwest (Kunming) and Northwest (Sinkiang) bureaus, effectively splitting the latter two. It pointedly demonstrated Mao’s continued concern with the development of regional opposition and his determination to prevent it. The order also left Mao free to deploy troops in the North China and Northeast China bureau commands, which were not restricted.

The second order of the 28th sought to immobilize certain military commands outside the “postponed” area, while leaving their troops untouched by the effects of the cultural revolution. The order stipulated that at the command level “in armed forces units where the great cultural revolution has been launched, there should be big contending, big blooming, big character posters, big debates. . . . Earnestly promote civil struggle, [but] resolutely oppose struggle by brute force.” The situation below the command level was quite different. Those units were to engage only in “positive education,” not the “big contending” and so forth. The order declared:

It is not known which “special units” were “designated” by the Military Commission, presumably those in the North and Northeast areas, but the effect of the two orders was to place severe restrictions on the use of the army in the Southwest and Northwest regional bureau areas, shaking up their command organizations. Mao had postponed the cultural revolution at both command and troop levels in the military units of certain areas, essentially the Central South and East China regional bureaus. This permitted the regional and district commanders in those areas to act in defense of the cultural revolution. Most important, Mao kept the army corps from direct involvement. At this stage only the regional forces would be employed; the army corps would constitute Mao’s trump card, to be used when all else failed.

Mao Alters the Theoretical Basis of the Cultural Revolution

The introduction of the PLA in late January indicated that Mao’s “revolutionary rebels” had failed in the task of seizing power. Greater military involvement, however, required a redefinition of the form and content of political power. Initially, Mao had hoped to gain control of the provincial power structure without extensive and overt military assistance. The provincial party was to have been elected by the masses employing the method of “extensive democracy,” thus eliminating party bosses. Accordingly, Mao had elaborated a theoretical basis for the new order which contained no rationale for inclusion of the military. This was the concept of the “Paris Commune,” which had been introduced as early as March 1966 in the party’s theoretical journal. Red Flag, and discussed in the press through the summer. The Eleventh Plenum gave formal sanction to the concept in point number IX of the sixteen-point resolution, which noted that members of the various cultural revolutionary groups were to be “fully elected as in the Paris Commune.” As late as New Year’s Day 1967, Red Flag contained the call for the establishment of people’s communes after the Paris example, indicating that it was indeed the political model which Mao hoped to use to justify his “democratic” takeover of the provincial party apparatus.

Mao’s principal reason for employing the concept of the Paris Commune was that it provided an historical precedent, for a successful revolution by armed masses without a party and without an army. The failure of the “masses” and the introduction of the army on a vast scale rendered the Paris Commune concept inappropriate. It had to be changed, because of the danger that Mao’s opponents would attempt to use the concept against him by justifying the exclusion of the army! In searching for a new conceptual model, Mao reverted to the CCP’s own revolutionary history dating back to Kiangsi days and resurrected the old concept of the revolutionary military committee, whose preparatory organ would be the military control commission.

As in early January, Shanghai and Peking were again used as “model cities.” Shanghai was employed to indicate that the Commune concept would be phased out and from Peking came the signals for three new concepts, the three-in-one alliance, the revolutionary committee, and the military control committee. On February 4 the Shanghai Commune had been established, but in less than two weeks, as the full implications of military participation became clear, it had been discredited by Mao Tse-tung himself. On the 13th, a wall poster carried Mao’s comment that he thought it undesirable for China to become “an association of People’s Communes.”⁴⁴ Also, in a widely publicized speech delivered to Shanghai rebel leaders at this time, Chang Ch’un-ch’iao bluntly declared the necessity for a party organization and the end of the People’s Commune concept.

On the 24th of February, the Shanghai Commune was transformed into the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, setting a prominent example for the rest of the country that the Commune concept was out. In Peking, meanwhile, events were occurring which indicated the way the revolutionary committee was to be achieved.

In Peking on February 10 and 11 two events took place which clearly signaled the new policy. On the loth in People’s Daily an article appeared proclaiming a successful power seizure in Heilungchiang and the establishment of the first provincial revolutionary committee. The event reportedly occurred on January 31. The method employed was the combination of “three sides into one” and was described in the following manner:

The “three way alliance,” as it soon came to be called, was the basis of the new policy of revolutionary committees. Where the Commune offered no place for party and military representation, the three-way alliance specifically included both of them. But how was the new policy to be enacted? Who would determine which representatives of the many rebel groups and party cadres would participate in the alliance?

The answer to this question came the very next day when Peking issued a proclamation announcing that the Peking garrison of the PLA had taken over the city’s Public Security Bureau and “set up the Military Control Committee . . . to enforce military control.” The tasks of the committee were:

to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, firmly suppress all counterrevolutionaries, preserve revolutionary order, firmly support and protect the proletarian revolutionaries, and defend the great proletarian cultural revolution.⁴⁷

In other words, the military through military control committees would determine the composition of political power in the provinces. The fact that it was the Peking garrison forces which took over Peking further indicated that local military forces would form the military control committees, not the PLA’s army corps.

The postulation of the three-in-one combination meant a reduced role for the revolutionary rebels, who were now required to settle their differences and form “great alliances.” Once united, an almost insuperable task in itself, representatives would be drawn from the alliances for inclusion in the new political structure, the revolutionary committees, which were composed of three elements: military, old cadres, and revolutionary rebels. In succeeding months, the military attempted to knock together the various contending rebel groups while Peking negotiated with representatives from the provinces to form the revolutionary committees. The shift from the Paris Commune concept to the revolutionary committee provoked another crisis in the party leadership which became known as the “February Adverse Current.”

The issue was: what respective political weights were to be assigned to the revolutionary rebels and to the old line cadres in the revolutionary committees? The failure of the rebels to oust the party bureaucrats and increased reliance upon the military caused great concern among a segment of the Mao group which sought a counterweight to the military in the old line cadres. Led by T’an Chen-lin, but including eight other high ranking leaders,⁴⁸ this group argued for greater weight to cadre representation in the revolutionary committees to balance that of the military. T’an may even have sought the exclusion of the rebels altogether from the new political structure on the ground that they had failed and could not form an adequate counterweight to the military. Mao refused to increase the political weight of the cadres for that would be nothing less than a restoration of the “bourgeois-reactionary line” of Liu and Teng.⁴⁹ It would amount to the restoration of power to the party bureaucracy, against which Mao had been fighting all along. Determined to prevent this at all costs, Mao proposed instead a ratio of one military, one cadre, and one rebel to govern the composition of the revolutionary committees. This solution apparently satisfied all but T’an, who continued to object and was purged.

While succeeding in preventing a restoration of the status of the old cadres, Mao used the February incident in an attempt to place a check upon local military commanders, perhaps as a way of assuaging those in the leadership who were concerned about military dominance. After the incident occurred (February 17, 1967),⁵⁰ wall posters in Peking noted that T’an Chen-lin had suppressed rebel groups in the agricultural and forestry departments under his jurisdiction. Rebel groups in the provinces immediately began to whip up propaganda campaigns against “local T’an Chen-lin’s,” who were suppressing them, that is, the local military commanders. In Canton, for example the rebels termed their campaign the “March black wind,” to refer to the February Adverse Current’s expression in their province.⁵¹ The net effect of the campaigns was initially to inhibit some military commanders in their harsh treatment of rebel groups, but soon to provoke others into over-reacting with force.

The Mounting Crisis, February-March 1967

The seize power order of January 9, which triggered conflicts between “radical” and “conservative” rebel organizations for control over the provincial party apparatus, soon spilled over to include assaults on broadcasting stations, newspaper offices, public security departments, warehouses, and local military units. In early January, recall, the PLA was ordered to maintain the security of these installations. Later when the PLA was called upon to enter the fray, “support for the left” came into conflict with the maintenance of security. The more radical rebel groups tended to be the ones which occupied the installations that the army had been instructed to guard. The ensuing struggles gave the impression that the army had sided with the “conservative” rebels against the “radicals.” But this was misleading.

Actually, most local military commanders attempted to carry out orders to pull together the “grand alliances” of diverse rebel groupings, even while coming into conflict with the more radical of them in the course of maintaining control over key installations. The military commanders naturally tended to favor those rebel groups they could most easily manipulate, in some cases creating rebel groups of their own to facilitate the establishment of grand alliances. It would be erroneous to assume that a given commander’s support for a “conservative” rebel group automatically placed him in opposition to Mao Tse-tung in Peking. The overwhelming majority of military commanders attempted to carry out their orders without becoming unduly involved in the political struggle. That commanders suppressed many “Maoist” rebel groups is obvious enough, but to conclude from this that the military as a group was therefore opposed to Mao is not only faulty reasoning but misses the main point of the policy decision of January 21, 1967.

The function of the revolutionary rebels changed dramatically the instant it was decided to call in the PLA to play an active part in the cultural revolution, but the altered role for the rebels was not immediately obvious from the initial order. It was not until February 10 and 11, when the “three-in-one” and “military control committee” concepts were announced, that the new rebel role became clearer. Nor did the new role for the rebels signify that conflict between radical and conservative rebel groups would become less severe. On the contrary, the struggle became even more intense as rebel groups competed with each other to dominate the grand alliances and fought even more tenaciously against the commanders who sought to forge alliances from antagonistic rebel elements.

This mounting conflict accounts for the fact that until the beginning of the final week in February, apart from the “showpiece” revolutionary committee estabhshed in Heilungchiang on January 31, only Kweichow could boast the establishment of a provincial revolutionary committee (February 14). Fourteen other provinces had announced “power seizures,”⁵² which Peking claimed were “false” and refused to recognize, and in half a dozen others the situation was critical and struggle rife.⁵³ Even as Shantung and Shanghai announced the establishment of revolutionary committees on February 23 and 24 respectively, the situation elsewhere had acutely deteriorated. In every province rebel groups were in conflict with one another and with local military forces. For the most part there was no widespread armed conflict at this time, but in a few places armed struggle did erupt as a result of the local military commander’s zeal in forcing grand alliances onto opposed rebel groups, setting the stage for another policy crisis in Peking.

As it happened the worst cases occurred in provinces of the three regional bureaus over which Mao had had little direct control: East, Southwest, and Northwest China, and in Honan and Hupeh, the provinces of the strategically crucial Wuhan military region of the Central South Bureau.⁵⁴ In the area of the East China Bureau, with the exception of Shantung province, all of the remaining five provinces were in ferment during February and March, with Fukien, Kiangsi and Anhwei the worst. In Fukien, a group of “rebels” had stormed the local military headquarters twice during late January and had “deliberately seized army cadres . . . [and] inflicted corporal punishment on them.”⁵⁵ Considerable tension developed as “incidents” increased through February and March. In Anhwei a “false” power seizure had occurred on January 26 and in struggle between rebels the military became involved, suppressing one group and arresting its leaders.⁵⁶ Tension mounted here, as well. In Kiangsi widespread violence had broken out in early January and continued unabated through the next two months. The local military commander ousted the first secretary of the party provincial committee and on February 26 announced a power seizure and the formation of a revolutionary committee. Peking, however, refused to recognize the act as legitimate.⁵⁷ East China was in chaos.

In the area of the Southwest Bureau, Mao had managed to achieve a measure of stability in Kweichow in February, but in both Szech’uan, long-time power base of the first secretary of the bureau, Li Ching-ch’uan, and Yunnan factional fights increased in number and intensity through the early spring. In the provinces of Honan and Hupeh, which composed the Wuhan Military Region, severe factional strife occurred throughout the spring of the year. The Wuhan military commander, Ch’en Tsai-tao, stated publicly in early March that there had been “bitter struggles” in the region, requiring early and continuous military participation.⁵⁸

It was in the Northwest Bureau region, however, that armed conflicts between rebel groups and the local military forces reached such proportions that a new crisis developed in Peking regarding the military’s role in the cultural revolution. Even though Mao had terminated the cultural revolution in Sinkiang in early February,⁵⁹ thus reducing the magnitude of the problem in the Northwest, the situation in Tsinghai escalated out of control in late February. The deputy commander of the Tsinghai provincial military district, Chao Yung-fu, had squeezed out the party secretary, Liu Hsien-ch’uan, and proceeded to suppress rebel organizations. On February 23 Chao’s troops fired on the rebels en masse, killing some two hundred persons and wounding over two thousand.⁶⁰

The Chao Yung-fu “incident,” as Peking referred to it, prompted what might be called an agonizing reappraisal of the role of the regional forces in the cultural revolution. It seemed apparent that the regional forces were proving incapable of dealing with the many tasks which they had been assigned. In addition to maintaining order and providing minimum security the additional tasks of pulling together grand alliances and constructing new organs of political power were simply proving to be beyond the capabilities of these forces. In late March, Mao Tse-tung and his supporters faced the question of what to do next. Should the cultural revolution be brought to an end at this point, short of Mao’s goals? Should it be pushed forward, applying whatever force was necessary to achieve a successful conclusion? In either case, what role would the army corps standing in reserve play? In early April, after thrashing out the issues with top commanders, a decision was reached. The cultural revolution would not be halted half-way; it would be “pushed forward to the very end.”