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The Exit Pattern from Chinese Politics and its Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michel Oksenberg
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Extract

A comprehensive analysis of the recent past must start with an understanding of the major, interrelated issues currently confronting China's leaders. These include- a wide range of economic, national security, and cultural concerns. Another key area involves personnel management. Were the officials removed during the Cultural Revolution justly treated or ought their verdicts be reversed? If so, should all officials be returned or just some? And which ones? More generally, should a regular promotion ladder be established, or should young, exuberant but inexperienced cadres continue to be rapidly, promoted, as during 1966–69? Should service in the bureaucracy and exit from it be made more predictable? This essay focuses on vthe origins and implications of these personnel issues. For, while other issues have also been important, crucial points of debate and struggle since 1969 have been over the rehabilitation of cadres who were removed during the Cultural Revolution and over the role to be assigtfcd to those who rose to power at their expense.

Type
Chinese Politics 1973-76
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 67 , September 1976 , pp. 501 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1976

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References

* I thank Shih-chang Yang and Maria Camp for their research assistance. Allen Whiting made helpful comments on a first draft.

1. See “Provisional regulations of the PRC relating to rewards and punishments for personnel of state administrative cadres,” promulgated 26 October 1957, in Compendium of PRC Laws and Regulations (in Chinese), Vol. 6, pp. 198–202, Sections 11 and 12.Google Scholar

2. Snow, Edgar, The Other Side of the River: Red China Today (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 331.Google Scholar

3. It is described in Ezra Vogel, “The ‘regularisation’ of cadres,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 29 (January-March, 1967), pp. 36–60 and my, “The institutionalisation of the Chinese Communist Revolution: The ladder of success on the eve of the Cultural Revolution.” CQ, No. 36 (October-December, 1968), pp. 61–92.

4. Quoted in “To reverse previous verdicts is to restore capitalism,” Peking, NCNA Domestic, 11 March 1967, in FBIS–CHI–76–50 (12 March 1976), pp. E–2; King Yeh-ping, “The essence of the ‘step-by-step’ theory,” Radio Peking, 20 March 1976, in FBIS–CHI–76–57 (23 March 1976), pp. E-5 and 6.

5. Wen-yuan, Yao, “On the social basis of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique,” Peking Review, Vol. 10 (7 March 1975), p. 7.Google Scholar

6. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Permanent Purge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brzezinski, Zbigniew and Huntington, Samuel, Political Power: USA I USSR (New York: Viking Press, 1963), pp. 173–190Google Scholar; Hirschman, Albert, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970).Google ScholarPubMed

7. Politburo members are simultaneously CC members.

8. See Wilbur, C. Martin, “The influences of the past,” in Lewis, John, ed., Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 35–68.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in Liang Hsiao, “There are indeed bourgeoisie in the Party,” Jen-min Jih-pao, 18 May 1976, transl. in FBIS–CHI–76–97, 18 May 1976, p. E-3.

10. Supra, footnote 4.

11. This is an excellent example of Tang Tsou's insight concerning the relationship between formal and informal politics in China. See his “Prolegomenon to the study of informal groups in CCP politics,” CQ, No. 65 (January 1976), pp. 98–113.

12. See Barnett, A. Doak, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 22 and 48–63. Whatever degree to which the pre-Cultural Revolution personnel system has emerged into the 1970's as Barnett describes, the pivotal role of the Organization Department does seem to have persisted.Google Scholar

13. See “Central Committee notice concerning grasping revolution and boosting production,” 1 July 1974, in Issues and Studies, Vol. XI, No. 1 (January 1975), pp. 101–104, esp. point 5.Google Scholar

14. See Cohen, Jerome, The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China 1949–1963 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), esp. Chap. III–V and Chap. X–XI; Frederick Teiwes, “ Rectification campaigns and purges in Communist China, 1950–1961,” Columbia University Ph.D., 1971; and Richard Kraus, “The evolving concept of class in post-Liberation China,” Columbia University Ph.D., 1974, Chap. I, pp. 43–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. An acceptable confession can also lead to a restoration of position, but it does not secure a reversal of verdict. Rather, the dossier will note that an error was made and appropriately acknowledged.

16. See Parrish, William, “Factions in Chinese military politics,” CQ, No. 56 (October-December 1973), esp. pp. 696–99Google Scholar; Ting, William, “A longitudinal study of Chinese military factionalism, 1949–1973,” Asian Survey, Vol. XV, No. 10 (October 1975), pp. 896–910CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Baum, Richard, “Elite behavior under conditions of stress: the lesson of the’ Tang-ch'uan P'ai’ in the Cultural Revolution,” in Scalapino, Robert, ed., Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 540–74.Google Scholar

17. For a vivid description of this in one bureau, see Chen, Jack, Inside the Cultural Revolution (New York: MacMillan, 1975), esp. Chap. 12–13.Google Scholar

18. If and when the data become available, it would be interesting to test these propositions against the likely variation in exit pattern among posts, levels and organizations. For example, the retirement rate in the military is probably higher than in the government. Holding other factions constant, it may be that generational tension is somewhat lower in the PLA and the capacity for innovation somewhat higher. At present, unfortunately, the available data do not permit verifying such hypotheses.

19. My thinking here has been decisively influenced by Lee, Hong-yung. See his “The political mobilization of the Red Guards and Revolutionary Rebels in the Cultural Revolution,” University of Chicago Ph.D. Thesis, 1975.Google Scholar