¹ The notion of “political culture,” which has influenced much of the research and data that have gone into this paper, is a refinement of earlier formulations of “national character” or “political ethos.” This concept was first articulated by Gabriel Almond in an article, “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, XVIII, 1956Google Scholar. Among subsequent analytical studies based on this concept are: Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Pye, Lucian and Verba, Sidney, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² This analysis is drawn from a more extensive study of the Chinese political culture now in the final stages of preparation under the tentative title of The Chinese Revolution and the Politics of Dependency. One hastens to add that there is no intention to imply that the behavioural patterns discussed here are necessarily unique to Chinese society. Some may be distinctive; others may not be. Or perhaps what is unique is the total configuration of particular attitudes and institutions.

^2a The TAT technique is one of several “projective” forms of psychological analysis. An interviewee is shown an ambiguous yet suggestive picture which he is asked to interpret by creating a story based on the general social relationships he sees in the picture.

The basic assumption of this technique is that the respondent, in creating the story, will “expose his own personality, [his] wishes, fears and traces of past experiences.” (Murray, Henry A. et al. Explorations in Personality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 531Google Scholar.) A set of nine TAT picture cards were created for this research study, showing Chinese in a variety of social and political situations.

³ 46 per cent. of a total sample of 81 respondents gave this reply. Only 10 per cent, responded “father”; and 11 per cent, indicated “both father and mother.” 14 per cent, replied “no one” or said they considered problems by themselves. The remaining responses identified siblings, friends, or other relatives, with a frequency in each case of less than 8 per cent.

⁴ Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 150Google Scholar.

⁵ The set of obligations linking father and son, elder and younger brother, husband and wife, a ruler and his ministers, and friend and friend.

⁶ The next most frequently recalled causes of parental punishment were for doing poorly in school (33·4 per cent.), and for disobeying parents (30·6 per cent.). The frequencies of the other responses given were all lower than 18 per cent. In some cases respondents mentioned more than one cause of punishment which explains why the percentages do not add up to 100 per cent.

^6a A more formal translation of this ch'eng-yü ends, “… great plans will go awry.” I have made the above translation on the basis of the respondent's apparent understanding of this phrase.

⁷ This aspect of the traditional social structure has been explored in a suggestive analysis by Weakland, John H., “The Organization of Action in Chinese Society,” Psychiatry, XII (1950), pp. 361–370CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ This respondent was a 68-year-old former Nationalist governmental official from Fukien province.

⁹ Myrdal, Jan, Report From a Chinese Village (London: Heinemann, 1965), pp. 286–287Google Scholar.

¹⁰ It seems reasonable to assume that this finding would be sensitive to a variety of situational or status factors reflecting China's current political turmoil; yet our results remain substantially the same no matter what the respondents’ age, whether they had been interviewed in Formosa or Hong Kong, whether they had had high school or college education, whether they had held positions of administrative responsibility on Formosa and were relatively well-integrated into the mainland community there, or were recent refugees living in either Formosa or Hong Kong. It is true that this response pattern may reflect fears of getting into trouble because of the immediate political environment, but this is not sufficient explanation. The behaviour of Chinese in non-political situations, or of those who have emigrated to the West, reveals that the attitudes and emotions which block communication with authority and discussion of politics are highly internalised, i.e., not just a function of the immediate social environment.

¹¹ For a discussion of this period see: Chen, Theodore H. E., Thought Reform of The Chinese Intellectuals (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), pp. 118–125Google Scholar.

¹² A recent analysis of this problem will be found in Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), especially Chapter IVGoogle Scholar.

¹³ The official's response to this problem could range from the indignant public cry of having been “blinded “ or deceived (meng-k'un le) by the subordinate to elaborate organisational efforts to ensure reliable intelligence on local problems and personnel. The use of a trusted servant or relative as an independent and reliable courier or gatherer of information seems to have been a frequent technique for Chinese emperors anxious to avoid the machinations of the official bureaucracy. See for example Spence, Jonathan, Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor, Bondservant and Master (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), esp. Ch. 6Google Scholar. Dr. Mark Selden is due credit for having called my attention to this material.

^13a Waley, Arthur, The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958), p. 117Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Li, Choh-ming, The Statistical System of Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), pp. 84–85Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See Moore, Barrington Jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship And Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 202–203, 209–211, 224–225Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Schumann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), p. 230Google Scholar.

¹⁷ One analyst of Asian political development has observed: “Even when the media of mass communication do reach the village, through readers of newspapers or owners of radios, there is almost no ‘feedback’from the village level. The radio talks to villagers but does not talk with them.” Pye, Lucian W., “The Non-Western Political Process,” The Journal of Politics, XX (1958), p. 474Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Tse-tung, Mao, “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961–1965), Vol. I, p. 65Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Myrdal, Jan, Report From A Chinese Village, op. cit., p. 67Google Scholar. Emphasis added.

²⁰ See Hofheinz, Roy Mark Jr, The Peasant Movement and Rural Revolution: Chinese Communists in the Countryside (1923–1927) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1966), pp. 218–220, and passimGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 49Google Scholar

²² Ibid., Chapters III and IV.

²³ A recent study of the Viet Cong has stressed the importance of building or re-building communication channels through organisational work as essential to the Communists' strategy of political insurgency: “In the hands of the Communists [revolutionary guerilla warfare is] a form of aggression useful in nations characterised by people without communication, isolated by terrain, psychology, or politics, people inward turning…. The chief [communist] effort was communication; the chief medium was the especially created organisation; the chief daily activity of the cadres was agitation and propaganda work. Communication facilitated organisation, which facilitated mobilisation.” Pike, Douglas, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), p. 32Google Scholar.

²⁴ Mao, , “The Struggle in The Chingkang Mountains,” Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 97–98Google Scholar.

²⁵ Mao, , “Report on An Investigation of The Peasant Movement in Hunan,” Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 25Google Scholar. The study by Hofheinz, , op. cit., has some very interesting material on the development of propaganda techniques during the early days of the peasant movement, especially pp. 94–116Google Scholar.

²⁶ See Hofheinz, , op. cit., p. 54Google Scholar.

²⁷ Mao, , “Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys,” Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 11Google Scholar.

²⁸ Franz Schumann has suggested that much of the Communist success during this period was related to their effective use of existing social organisation: “The linkage between war and production based on the natural village was one of the great organisational achievements of the Chinese Communists.” Ideology and Organization in Communist China, p. 425.

²⁹ See Shao-ch'i, Liu, Lun Ch'ü-chung Lu-hsien (Hong Kong: Hsin-min Ch'u-pan She, 1949), especially pp. 1–18Google Scholar.

³⁰ The two best English language studies of the “mass line” concept will be found in: Lewis, John Wilson, Leadership in Communist China (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1963), especially Chapter IIIGoogle Scholar; and Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), especially Chapter IVGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Mao, , “Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership,” Selected Works, Vol. III in, p. 119Google Scholar.

³² Mao, , “On Strengthening The Party Committee System,” Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 267Google Scholar.

³³ Mao, , “Methods of Work of Party Committees,” Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 377.Google Scholar

³⁴ “Transform The Old Market Fairs: Propagate New Thinking,” Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), August 25, 1964, p. 2.

³⁵ See, “Management By The Entire Party Is The Basic Directive of Newspaper Work,” People's Daily, June 12, 1960, p. 11. I am indebted to Dr. Alan Liu for having called to my attention Party concern with eliminating “empty points.”

³⁶ The best overall review of Party efforts in this direction will be found in Townsend, Political Participation in Communist China, op. cit.

³⁷ Ibid., pp. 116–117, 142–144.

³⁸ These challenges to Mao's leadership are discussed in Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, op. cit.

³⁹ “Resolution Made by the Enlarged Meeting of the Military Affairs Commission of the Central Authorities of the Chinese Communist Party on Strengthening Political and Ideological Work in the Army” (Peking, October 20, 1960), in Bulletin of Activities, No. 3, 01 7, 1961Google Scholar. Translated in Cheng, Chester, ed.. The Politics of The Chinese Red Army: A Translation of The Bulletin of Activities of The People's Liberation Army (Stanford, California: The Hoover Institution, 1966), p. 68Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 70–71.

⁴¹ The role of stimulated hatreds in mass mobilisation in Communist China has been explored in my article “America's Revolutionary Alliance with Communist China,” Asian Survey, December, 1967.