14.3 The Shanghai People’s Commune

Much of the factual material on the Shanghai Commune comes from a Doctoral thesis entitled The Paris Commune in Shanghai, written by Hongsheng Jiang, in 2010. Readers can access a copy on http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu.

Shanghai was (and is) China’s biggest city, its commercial and industrial centre. A study of how the GPCR came to Shanghai and took hold there showcases the artificiality of the Cultural Revolution, how it was directed from Beijing and controlled by Mao and his faction. But the lessons of Shanghai are important in demonstrating that the Maoist faction and the ‘capitalist roaders’ each saw proletarian democracy as the greatest threat. As soon as the workers and students in Shanghai began to demand some basic democratic rights, the forces driving the cultural revolution and their targets the ‘capitalist roaders’ joined forces to block a development that would have meant the end for both of them. Soon after, the GPCR was brought to a finish.

Wang Hongwen was security chief at Shanghai’s No. 17 Textile Mill, an enterprise employing about 8,400 workers. After meeting with Zhang Chunqiao (a top person in the Shanghai Provincial Committee, a commissar in the Central Group in Beijing assigned overall control of the Cultural Revolution (CCRG), and who would later be one of the Gang of Four), Wang set up a Red Guard cell of about 30 workers and posted a big-character poster criticising the factory authorities on or about 12 June 1966. On 20 June local party leaders sent in a work team led by Shi Huizhen, a female veteran revolutionary and at that time the vice-chairperson of the Shanghai General Workers’ Union, to take control of the situation. The work team formed an official Red Guard group, invited Wang to stand for election to the committee, and then ensured he was not elected. For a time, Wang and the rebels were successfully isolated.

14.3.1 The Red Guards Arrive

With Mao’s public endorsement, large numbers of Red Guard students from Beijing travelled to Shanghai (travel and subsistence paid by the state) intending to launch an all-Shanghai Red Guard organisation. The students toured the Shanghai schools, colleges, universities, and factories encouraging the formation of Red Guard groups, but on 2 September a number were beaten up by factory workers. The next day, groups of students converged on the mayor’s office at city hall to protest and, so it is said, physically threatened top Party officials who responded by calling on Shanghai workers for protection – a fight broke out with the Beijing Red Guards getting the worst of it.

Wang Hongwen now made a trip to Beijing where Zhang ensured he met Mao – which was publicised as an endorsement of Wang’s Red Guard activities – and on his return he was able to attract the support of over 1,000 employees at his own mill. On 6 November with strong student support, Wang convened a meeting of workers from seventeen Shanghai factories which agreed to establish an all-city alliance known as the Workers’ Revolutionary Rebel General Headquarters (WGH).[17] The hostile reaction of the local Party leaders enabled Wang and the WGH to provoke a number of public disturbances including selected strikes. This gave Beijing the excuse to send in Zhang Chunqiao to investigate events for which he had a significant responsibility, and empower him to make suitable recommendations.

In what had all the signs of a pre-arranged deal, Wang got the strikers back to work and Zhang agreed to recognise the Shanghai WGH as a revolutionary and legitimate organisation which would be allowed to criticise the Party tops in Shanghai. In response to this stitch-up, the local Party launched its own ‘Scarlet Guards’, organised through the Shanghai General Workers’ Union. The majority of the Scarlet Guards (notionally over 100,000 strong) were CCP and Communist Youth League members, model workers who occupied most of the management and administrative posts in enterprises and had the support, overtly or covertly, from the local authorities at most levels.

However, the strikes initiated by Wang had an unintended consequence. Workers dissatisfied with pay and conditions began to voice their own demands. The local Party tops may have been concerned at signs of independent activity by the proletariat but at that moment considered they could contain it and, more importantly, could use it as a weapon against the Red Guards. To win the support of these workers they began a programme of improving pay and conditions, enhancing welfare, pensions and health insurance in the factories. To embarrass Zhang they allowed workers time off to travel to Red Guard rallies and justified this as “not standing in the way of the masses”, claiming to follow the guidance laid out in the editorial of the People’s Daily; Welcome the Upsurge of the Great CR in the Factories and Mines.[18] Naturally, there was a snowball effect with more and more workers making demands.

The Maoists shouted loudly that if these moves by established Party cadres continued for any length of time they would bankrupt China’s biggest city and seriously disrupt international trade. Using this as a cover, Beijing encouraged the Shanghai Red Guards to seize power. On 23 December 1966 the WGH called a meeting of worker activists and it was agreed to attempt to replace the local Party tops in Shanghai. In protest, the local Party instigated and promoted a one-day general strike. The Scarlet Guards went on strike and effectively closed down the railway, and the post office, and severely hampered production, bringing many important factories to a standstill. The Shanghai Port, was one example when, at the wharves alone, nearly 6,000 workers went on strike.[19]

The Maoists now threw their forces into ending the strikes.[20] The WGH and a number of student Red Guard organisations operating in Shanghai united to “take firm hold of the revolution and promote production”. For example, the Shanghai Glass Machinery Factory was a joint public-private enterprise that employed over 1,200 workers. Here production was halted when about half the workforce joined the general strike. Pushed by Red Guard students from Shanghai Kongjiang Middle School, about 100 workers who had turned up for work agreed to form a “Workers’ Committee of Production Management” and to take responsibility for running the factory. Ten workers were elected by secret ballot to the Committee; it was agreed these were subject to recall if their work mates were dissatisfied with their performance. Jiang explains that this was considered a revolutionary development because it abolished the practice of having a vertical hierarchy of Party bureaucrats who stood above, and divorced from, the workforce and the production processes.[21] This system was proposed by the Red Guards to win the support of the workers for strikebreaking, but such democracy carried great danger for the CCP. News of events at the Shanghai Glass Factory spread and other factories attempted to follow suit.

On 4 January, Zhang Chunqiao returned to Shanghai to meet with the leaders of the WGH and plan a response to the strike actions. On 6 January 1967, the Red Guards within the offices of the Shanghai Liberation Daily seized the paper and had it distribute the WGH statement; Message to All Shanghai People,[22] which was a call to maintain production and which fiercely attacked the strikes. Because this take-over was backed by the authority of Beijing, it was a crucial step in the Red Guards taking charge in Shanghai.

On 7 January, a number of other Red Guard groups including the WGH visited the Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China. Together with Red Guards working within the bank, they persuaded the manager not to provide further funding to anyone without WGH approval, effectively freezing the accounts of local government, factories and other workplaces. This meant that despite deals made with the local Party tops, from now on strikers would receive no pay. On 8 January, the WGH and Red Guard student organisations held a joint emergency meeting and formed the “Frontline Headquarters” composed of seven workers, two cadres, and 35 Red Guards. The initial task of this organisation was to mobilise Red Guards to enter the factories as model workers who would work for no pay and ensure the factories of Shanghai maintained production. Because of their lack of skills the students tended to replace manual labourers who had walked off the job.

On 9 January, the “Message to All Shanghai People” was reprinted in the People’s Daily and broadcast to the whole country, providing a clear demonstration that Beijing approved of the actions of the WGH and its allies. Beijing also approved an Urgent Notice published in Shanghai which, in effort to win support, made it clear to the workers that the new arrangements regarding wage increases, back payment of wages and other material benefits would stand but could, in principle, be re-considered at a later date. As further indication of its support, Beijing sent a Message of Greetings to Revolutionary Rebel Organizations in Shanghai, From the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the State Council, the Military Commission of the Party’s Central Committee and the Cultural Revolution Group under the Party’s Central Committee.[23]

On 9 January, the WGH and students from Shanghai Tongji University seized the general control rooms of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, and between 11-14 January, groups of Red Guards took over district and county level units of the Shanghai government, factories, docks, and other units. In most cases the take-overs were led by the WGH and student Red Guards with the assistance of employees though, naturally, the most publicised incidents were the few cases where the seizure was by employees alone.

Now the Red Guards (invariably students under the guidance of strike-breaking workers), by Stakhanovite efforts got the trains, factories, etc., functioning again, claiming that in many cases the original production figures were exceeded. By this time the Scarlet Guards had more or less totally disintegrated and many joined one or other of the Red Guard groups. This acceptance of Beijing’s authority was greeted with a congratulatory telegram Message of Greetings to Revolutionary Rebel Organizations in Shanghai. On 12 January, in celebration of the telegram, the Shanghai rebels held a mammoth rally at which workers volunteered to take on extra work and overtime without extra pay, as organised by the Committee for Grasping Revolution and Promoting Production. A resolution was agreed to replace the Shanghai Party Committee with a new organisational form, as specified in the 16-Points. As a sign of official approval, the New China’s News Agency released the complete text of this proposal the next day.[24]

14.3.2 The Red Guards Organise to Take Over Shanghai

On 14 January, the People’s Daily published an article applauding the formation of the Committee for Grasping Revolution and Promoting Production in Shanghai. This article was followed by two more that further glorified the Committee, demonstrating that Mao was firmly behind this initiative. Claiming to have Mao’s personal support, the WGH attempted to co-ordinate and organise the numerous Red Guard groups in Shanghai. On or about 16 January 1967, it launched the Shanghai Revolutionary Rebel Workers’ Liaison Department in conjunction with 15 other Red Guard organisations. Attempts were made to include all the Red Guard factions in Shanghai but these had not been successful because some Red Guards were beginning to question whether strike-breaking really was a revolutionary activity.

On 16 January, Red Flag published an assessment of events in Shanghai under the title Proletarian Revolutionaries, Unite!, which many took as the Maoist leadership encouraging the Red Guards, under the guidance of Zhang, to take over local government wholesale. However, this was not entirely correct. Beijing was beginning to have serious reservations about events in Shanghai. Mao’s general strategy was for the Red Guards to remove the “capitalist roaders” but their activities would be kept within safe limits by the presence of PLA units which would be controlled by Lin Piao and the Maoist faction. In Shanghai, PLA units had not so far been included in the process. The dangers were brought into sharp focus when, on 18 January, a group of Fudan University students put up the wall poster: “Carry forward the proletarian spirit of doubting everything.”

Beijing hurried to specify the limits on Red Guard activities: “In the Great Cultural Revolution, it is correct to doubt everyone. But you cannot doubt Chairman Mao…”[25]

In Beijing on 19/20 January, Premier Zhou Enlai chaired a meeting of the Military Commission of the Central Committee. Naturally, Marshall Ye Jianying the principal leader of this Commission was present. Later, he would be a key figure in organising the overthrow of the Gang of Four. Ye had the support of the majority of the meeting in successfully rejecting a proposal by Jiang Qing that Red Guard groups be formed within the PLA: instead the meeting determined that “the great CR movement in the military regions … should be postponed.”[26] The meeting did pass a resolution directing the PLA to be more aggressive in its support of Red Guard activities, but its refusal to endorse Jiang Qing’s proposal and the subsequent resignation of the officer in charge of the All-Army Cultural Revolution Group showed that the PLA, despite Lin Piao’s efforts, was not solidly behind the Mao faction.

On 22/23 January, a joint meeting of the WGH and leaders from the major Red Guard organisations in Shanghai was held to discuss the formation of a city-wide liaison centre based on the broadest unity of all so-called proletarian factions. It was unanimously agreed that the time was right for this alliance to take over the administration of Shanghai. The name Shanghai People’s Commune was finally agreed, possibly on the advice of Zhang Chunqiao to suggest continuity with the agricultural communes.

It must be remembered that the Red Guard groups were inexperienced, their political and organisational training had been gained through watching a Stalinised Party at work, in the main they were students not workers, and at the same time they were largely motivated by Maoist politics. But in the circumstances all kinds of ideas were bubbling to the surface and being discussed. Some of the groups were raising criticisms that objectively challenged the Maoist leadership. Fudan University’s Red Guards began to openly criticise Zhang as part of their campaign to dismiss and bring down ‘all cadres’.

Simultaneously, the largest Red Guard group (Red Revolutionaries with about 40,000 members, mostly students) also began voicing criticisms of Zhang, though the basis of these has not been determined. A group of Red Revolutionaries took Zhang hostage and placed him before a tribunal, making him stand for six hours while bombarding him with questions. They decided to parade him through the streets the following day and hold a mass rally for his public humiliation. A major and violent clash with the WGH and its allies was avoided only when Beijing telegrammed on 29 January to demand the Red Revolutionaries release Zhang and apologise to him. Such activities posed a problem for both the Maoists and their opponents in the CCP bureaucracy. Daring to criticise Zhang suggested the Red Revolutionaries were seeking a level of democracy which threatened the existence of all the bureaucracy. The Red Revolutionaries, as an organisation, was excluded from membership of the Shanghai Commune.

On 31 January, the People’s Daily contained an editorial; On the Proletarian Revolutionaries’ Struggle to Seize Power. This had been drafted by the CCRG and revised by Mao himself:

Proletarian revolutionaries are uniting to seize power from the handful of persons within the Party who are in authority and taking the capitalist road. This is … the decisive battle between the proletariat and the masses of working people on the one hand and the bourgeoisie and its agents in the Party on the other. This mighty revolutionary storm started in Shanghai. The revolutionary masses in Shanghai have called it the great ‘January Revolution’. Our great leader Chairman Mao immediately expressed resolute support for it. He called on the workers, peasants, revolutionary students, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary cadres to study the experience of the revolutionary rebels of Shanghai and he called on the People’s Liberation Army to actively support and assist the proletarian revolutionaries in their struggle to seize power.

The editorial was taken as a signal by the Red Guards nationally to attack the local Party tops everywhere. Only military units and elements of central government in Beijing were exempt. The editorial had been careful to call for the establishment of provisional organs of power of the triple alliance, combining representatives of the Red Guards as the local revolutionary mass organisations, of local People’s Liberation Army units, and of revolutionary leading cadres from the Party and government organisations. The former was to purge Mao’s opponents, the latter two to stop them going too far, either organisationally or politically.

14.3.3 The Shanghai Commune is Proposed

At the end of January a sub-committee of the “Frontline Headquarters” submitted a draft Manifesto of the Shanghai People’s Commune to Zhang. Attempting to emulate the Paris Commune it called for “smashing the old state machinery” stating that “all committee members would be elected as the servants of the people.” Zhang advised delaying the launch of the Commune to allow him to take advice from Beijing. The Red Guards insisted on moving ahead immediately and the inauguration was set for 5 February 1967.

Zhang changed the title of the Manifesto to: Long Live the Victory of the January Revolution! and edited the document so that the final form made every effort to promote the supremacy of Chairman Mao and give precedence to Mao Zedong Thought. The edited document faithfully reflected Mao’s policy of the triple alliance and called for the leadership of the Commune to be composed of revolutionary mass organisations, the responsible officers from the PLA units stationed in Shanghai, and CCP cadres in Shanghai who had faithfully followed Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line. It retained the promises of extensive democracy.

A representative Provisional Committee was agreed: Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan (both representing the CCRG), three responsible persons from the armed forces stationed in Shanghai, three from the WGH, one peasant, one student, one from the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison Centre of Organisations of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. The committee also contained those Red Guards appointed to lead the seven departments that would be administering Shanghai, e.g. the Grasping Revolution and Promoting Production Team, in charge of industry. Zhang – whose authority came primarily from his association with Mao – was to be head of the Commune. The Red Guard representatives were mostly chosen by their own mass organisations (and subject to recall) so the Commune as a whole adopted a system that combined delegates and appointees. Accepting assurances that Shanghai was under Zhang’s control, Mao endorsed the arrangement.[27]

However, it proved difficult to form a triple alliance because the Red Guards and rebel workers groups excluded very nearly all the old Party tops from the Commune and were refusing to appoint experienced Party cadres to any responsible post. This not only made it difficult for the CCP to exercise effective leadership but posed a potentially serious problem for the Maoist faction; how could it hope to win Party support if, in practice, its line meant that the very cadres it was appealing to would be thrown out of office?

A further difficulty in imposing the triple alliance on Shanghai was that many local Party tops had close links and friendships with the local army officers that sometimes dated back to the revolutionary war. Chairman Mao was insisting that any new power structure must include the military to act as a stabilising factor and a power base for his faction if needed, but the rank and file founders of the Commune feared that the Shanghai garrison would be loyal to its old friends on the Party committee. As a result, the three persons from the military were able to participate only marginally.[28]

Many Shanghai Red Guard and rebel leaders were not CCP members and it soon became clear that if the presence of Party tops and army officers was restricted it would be quite possible for the Commune to have an administration in which Party members were in the minority. Terrified Maoists raised the objection that in such a situation the masses might not follow the CCP, which could lose its legitimacy and authority in consequence.

The Maoist faction breathed a sigh of relief when, on 31 January 1967 (six days prior to the inauguration of the Shanghai Commune), in the far north east of China, in Heilongjiang Province, the Red Guard successfully formed a triple alliance with leading members of the PLA and the Provincial Party Committee, and set up the Red Rebel Revolutionary Committee of Heilongjiang. The editorial in the People’s Daily of 10 February hailed the Heilongjiang RRRC:

The revolutionary rebels, … carrying out the Party’s policy in a clear-cut manner, have united with the principal leading members in the Provincial Party Committee who have carried out Chairman Mao’s correct line and with the principal leading members of the People’s Liberation Army units in the area to weld all three into one in the seizure of power.[29]

Mao had intended the targets of the GPCR should be the Party tops taking the capitalist road, not middle cadres and Party rank and file, but the Shanghai events demonstrated that slogans such as “down with the diehard elements who uphold the bourgeois reactionary line” were interpreted by Red Guards and rebel workers as license to attack bureaucrats, whatever their factional loyalty.

Mao saw the writing on the wall, mass democracy even in the distorted form of the Shanghai People’s Commune threatened bureaucratic control. He pleaded: “If everything were changed into communes, then what about the party? Where would we place the party? Among commune committee members are both party members and non-party members. Where would we place the party committee? There must be a party somehow! There must be a nucleus, no matter what we call it. … can the commune replace the party?.”[30] The Red Flag, the official paper of the Red Guards, waded into the debate backing the triple alliance and proposing that in Shanghai, the Commune be replaced by a Revolutionary Committee.

14.3.4 …and Deposed

It was true that as part of the GPCR, Mao had publicly advocated that “the working class must exercise leadership in everything.” But as can be seen from his reaction to the Shanghai People’s Commune, this was a smokescreen. The congratulations sent to the Heilongjiang RRRC, and the lack of official acknowledgement of what was happening in Shanghai were taken by both the Commune leaders and opponents as a rebuke. The degree of control by the CCP over the Commune was considerable through, e.g. Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen, but the principle of popular elections and the right to recall had been raised and were in limited operation. It was only a matter of time before these would be taken up by other Red Guard groups.

Mao proposed changing the name of the Commune. How unnerved he was at developments can be seen from the farcical reasons he gave: it would mean his title as Chairman would no longer stand, he would have to adopt an alternative title such as ‘director’; the country could no longer be the PRC – it would have to become the Chinese People’s Commune! At a serious level he was terrified that the democratic elements in the Shanghai Commune would be a signal to other cities to follow suit and that would mean the end of his Bonapartist rule. On 19 February, the CC of the CCP, united from Mao to Marshall Ye, agreed to issue a circular to all Party committees: “the name of people’s commune shall, as a rule, not be adopted.”[31]

The emphasis was now placed on the triple alliance of CCP cadres, PLA and domesticated Red Guards, as the model to be followed. These triple alliances would have to be approved by the higher levels of the Party (i.e. CCRG), and army representatives would be appointed by the army subject to the approval of higher commanders. On 24 February, in a televised speech to the people of Shanghai, Zhang announced the end of the Shanghai People’s Commune and in the following weeks the Revolutionary Committee of the Municipality of Shanghai (Shanghai Municipality RC) was established. The Shanghai People’s Commune had lasted a mere twenty days.

The Commune had had an elected element with some mass participation but the triple alliance in Shanghai was restricted to unelected representatives of the Red Guards, army, and party cadres. If Mao had genuinely wanted to eliminate the “capitalist roaders” then the Commune would have been much more effective than the triple alliance, which opened the door to “rightist, revisionist, bureaucratic, and elitist elements” on condition they pretended that they were in favour of Mao Zedong’s line. Mao’s triple alliance put the elitist managerial and governmental apparatus back in positions of authority.[32]

The Party leadership claimed that the major difference between the Commune and the Shanghai Municipality RC was the inclusion of many old Party cadres who had rectified their errors and returned to Mao’s line.[33] All seven departments of the Commune directly linked to the masses were abolished in a move that was supposed to strengthen the administrative functions of the Shanghai Municipality RC. The mass organisations were dismantled. On 28 August 1969, the armed conflicts between Chinese and Soviet troops in the border areas were used by the CC of the CCP to order all mass organisations to disband and to make it illegal to form any new ones. This left the remaining Red Guard representatives on local RCs isolated and they were gradually replaced by military or Party personnel.

During February 1967, the army took the initiative across China, and Red Guards who challenged Maoist directives were beaten up, arrested, imprisoned and even shot. Jiang[34] reports how Marshall Ye Jianying approved a request from General Gan Weihan in Sichuan province (Chengdu Military District) for permission to arrest and detain over 30,000 rebels. Allegedly, all the prisons in Sichuan province were filled with rebel Red Guards and the authorities had to convert at least one Buddhist temple into a temporary prison. The most shocking slaughter was in Qinghai Province on the Tibetan border on 23 February. Troops dispatched by the vice-commander of the Qinghai Military District, seized several thousand rebel Red Guards staying in the Qinghai Daily building, more than 300 were killed, many more were wounded by gun fire and the rest imprisoned.

The situation was greatly complicated because not only were rebel Red Guards being hounded by the PLA, but there was open warfare between different Red Guard factions; between Maoist Red Guards and Red Guards loyal to established Party tops. The People’s Daily reported that in Yunnan province alone between 80,000 and 160,000 people were killed. In Wuhan the established leadership successfully resisted the (Maoist) Red Guards’ attempt to take power, and with the support of local army units, arrested over 500 and attempted to disband their organisation. During June and July 1967 there was virtual civil war between the two factions and in one encounter 250 were killed and at least 1,500 wounded.[35]

Two envoys from Beijing arrived in Wuhan to adjudicate and, of course, decided in favour of the Red Guards. The local CCP stormed the hotel where the envoys were staying and took one of them hostage. Lin Piao moved an airborne division and a naval squadron to surround Wuhan and the envoy was released. The Wuhan incident was the beginning of the end for the GPCR: the constant changes in instructions from Beijing undermined its authority with the radical elements amongst the Red Guards; the different balance of forces within the triple alliance in different areas meant national, effective leadership was impossible; Mao Zedong Thought was interpreted according to which group or coalition dominated the local triple alliance.

In a last desperate attempt to gain national dominance, the CCRG called for a more radical policy towards the conservative elements in the Party and PLA. Some Red Guard publications were demanding The Proletariat Must Take Hold of the Gun and advocated internal revolt within the PLA. By the spring of 1968, the most extreme of the Red Guard groups (in Kwangsi) had seized weapons from trains bound for Vietnam and were skirmishing with PLA forces and conservatives to take control of the local Revolutionary Committee.[36] Other Red Guard groups having analysed the situation for themselves, began to present an analysis that was not in support of Mao. Students in Hunan issued a proclamation labelling Zhou Enlai and other supporters of Mao the “new bourgeoisie” and calling for “genuine” Communes. By early 1968 radical student elements in Shanghai and Beijing were proposing a national conference in defiance of orders from the CCRG.[37] It was developments such as these which threatened the bureaucracy root and branch, that were important in bringing the GPCR to an end.

The activist phase of the GPCR was formally terminated at the CCP’s 9th National Party Congress in April 1969. As would be expected with the Party still reeling from the GPCR, this Congress was dominated by the Maoist faction: Mao was confirmed as the supreme leader and others who had been active in the GPCR were allocated positions on the Political Bureau. Lin Piao became CPC Vice Chairman and was designated constitutionally as Mao’s successor, and Mao Zedong thought was reinserted into the Party Constitution. Jiang Qing and Yeh Chun, the wives of Mao and Lin Piao respectively, became the first ever female members of the Politburo (they were formally elected to the 170-member CC which lasted until 1973, but which held only two plenary meetings). Due to Lin’s poor health Yeh Chun was already in the habit of attending Party meetings on his behalf![38]

However, these victories were all sound and fury, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping may have been labelled “traitorous scabs and renegades”, but the “capitalist roaders” in the Party had, by and large, retained their positions. In this respect Mao’s weakness was obvious; over 40% of the CC were serving military officers, but in China the PLA was the creature of the Party, not the other way round. Mao’s victory was superficial and temporary. The Red Guards were soon instructed to return to their localities; otherwise they would be expelled from the schools and would not be assigned to work after graduation.[39]

After 1969 the CCP placed its emphasis on reconstruction: rebuilding the party, re-vitalising, and stabilising the economy. The Maoists, led now by Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) attempted to retain their decisive role but they were now swimming against the stream. Factional tensions persisted, so that it was not until the start of 1971 that Party committees were re-established at the provincial level, but practical solutions to current problems was the central theme of the Party, and inexorably the Maoists were increasingly side-lined.

The only institution with a relatively undamaged structure and real power was the PLA, but this was divided in its politics. On one side was the Lin Piao faction, which continued to exhort the need for “politics in command” and for an ongoing struggle against Soviet revisionism. On the other side was a majority of the regional military commanders who looked to Marshall Ye Jianying, and whose views generally were in tune with the “capitalist roaders”. The matter was decided in a most decisive and surprising manner. Lin Piao died in a plane crash on 13 September 1971, the circumstances surrounding his death are still shrouded in mystery but soon after, Lin Piao’s closest supporters were rapidly purged and there was an immediate and precipitate drop in the influence of the Maoist faction. The Party and state now attempted to depoliticise and promote professionalism within the PLA, accompanied by the rehabilitation of many persons who had been persecuted or fallen into disgrace in 1966-68.

The political tide in China swung decisively towards the “capitalist roaders” who spoke for more material incentives for the peasantry, and efficient economic planning. They also advocated improved relations with the West in general and the US in particular. That they held the reins of power was clearly demonstrated in February 1972 when President Richard M. Nixon made a formal state visit. (It should be noted that at these talks the Chinese leadership gave the nod to the US extending its bombing of Vietnam to include important economic targets in the North.)

The most prominent of those rehabilitated was Deng Xiaoping, who was reinstated as a Vice Premier in April 1973 and came to exert a strong influence favouring an approach based on the New Economic Policy used in Russia in the early 1920s. At the 10th National Party Congress in August 1973 Deng Xiaoping was again made a member of the CC (but not the Politburo) with sufficient seniority to be in charge of the negotiations with the UK government on the return of Hong Kong to China.[40]

In January 1975, at the 4th National People’s Congress, Deng Xiaoping was elected a Vice Chairman of the CCP, a member of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, and installed as China’s first civilian chief of the PLA. At the same Congress the policy of the “Four Modernisations” was agreed for the four sectors of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology. This would be affirmed as an action programme at the 11th National Party Congress, held in August 1977, after Mao’s death. Deng did suffer one further indignity, however, after Zhou Enlai’s death in January 1976 Madame Mao was able to rally sufficient support to remove Deng from his most important posts. Mao died in September that year and the Gang of Four were arrested in the October. The role played by Deng in their downfall is not known but within weeks he had openly returned to the leadership team.

The CCP was a party deeply rooted in Stalinism. Neither before coming to power, nor in the process of taking power, nor in its turn to the “general line of socialist construction” after it was in power, was there ever any purge of Stalinist ideology. However, significant currents in the Marxist movement took Mao’s verbal statements on the GPCR and the Shanghai Commune as good coin, as representing a genuine attempt to curb the Chinese Party bureaucracy rather than as a factional move by Mao to regain undisputed leadership of the CCP. Ernest Mandel and Pierre Frank, one of Trotsky’s secretaries on the island of Prinkipo, took to calling Mao’s policies bureaucratic centrist rather than Stalinist. The use of the term bureaucratic centrist was highly significant since it was a term used by Trotsky to describe the Stalin faction in the USSR before 1933, before it was judged as wholly counter-revolutionary.[41] The lessons of thirty years were thrown out of the window, a movement unleashed by one wing of the Chinese bureaucracy against another was confused with a genuine attempt at workers’ democracy.

1. Guo Jian, Resisting Modernity in Contemporary China, Modern China, 1999 25(3) 343-376.

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2. Hongsheng Jiang, The Paris Commune in Shanghai, PhD Thesis Duke University, 2010, p275. http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu.

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3. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p290.

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4. Peking Review, 13 Jan. 1967, www.massline.org.

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5. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p292)

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6. Peking Review, 13 Jan. 1967, www.massline.org.

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7. Peking Review, 20 Jan. 1967, www.massline.org.

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8. New China’s News Agency, 12 Jan. 1967 A Proposal of Setting up Shanghai Revolutionary Rebel Organizations’ Liaison Post.

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9. Tao Zhu’s Speech at the China Medical University, in Jiang, Op. cit. p361.

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10. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p428.

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11. Ibid. p408.

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12. Guo Jian, Op. cit.

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13. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p417.

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14. Mao Zedong, Talks at Three Meetings With Comrades Chang Ch’un-ch’iao And Yao Wen-yuan, February 1967, w.m.org.

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15. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p478.

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16. Marcy, S. China 1977: End of the Revolutionary Mao Era, www.workers.org.

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17. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p490.

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18. Mobo, Gao. The Battle for China’s Past, 2008. Pluto Press, p62.

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19. Hongsheng Jiang, Op. cit., p442.

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20. Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1980, Univ of California Press, p244 et seq.

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21. Hai Feng, An Account of the Cultural Revolution in the Canton Area, 1971, Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, p384.

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22. Qui Jin, The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution, Stanford, U.P., 1999.

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23. Hong Yung Lee, Op. cit.

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24. Waldergrave, W. Memoirs, Constable, 2015.

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25. Trotsky, L. The Class Nature of the Soviet State, 1933, www.marxist.org.

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