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The Institutionalisation of the Chinese Communist Revolution: The Ladder of Success on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michel Oksenberg
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Extract

By the mid 1960s, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had structured the opportunities and career choices available to the Chinese people. In their individual decisions, the Chinese people had to confront the questions Mao wanted them to face, such as whether to join the Party, to serve the people, and to become heavily involved in political life. Mao and his associates had helped to shape the determinants of social mobility and delineate the skills needed to get ahead and along in China. By 1965, the violence, uncertainty, and turmoil which affected lives during the revolutionary era had given way to a period of more stable, predictable, and structured career patterns.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 36 , December 1968 , pp. 61 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1968

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References

1 The seven included two former employees of ministries in Peking, three former college students (from Peking, Fukien and Shansi) who were also briefly employed on the mainland before joining relatives outside China, a youthful ex-accountant of a production brigade in Fukien, and a university professor at a leading normal school.

2 See, in particular, Ching-wen, Chow, Ten Years of Storm, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960Google Scholar; Chou, Eric, A Man Must Choose, New York: Knopf, 1962Google Scholar; Loh, Robert, Escape from Red China, New York: Coward McCann, 1962Google Scholar; Fu-sheng, Mu, The Wilting of the 100 Flowers, New York: Praeger, 1962Google Scholar; Chi-ping, Tung, The Thought Revolution, New York: Coward McCann, 1966Google Scholar; and Wills, Morris R. as told to Moskin, Robert, Turncoat, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968Google Scholar.

3 For secondary sources, see in particular: Barnett, A. Doak with Vogel, Ezra, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China, New York: Columbia Press, 1967Google Scholar; Townsend, James, Political Participation in Communist China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967Google Scholar; Cohen, Jerome Alan, The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1963, Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lubman, Stanley, “Mao and Mediation: Politics and Dispute Resolution in Communist China,” California Law Review, Vol.55, No. 5 (11 1967), pp. 1284–1359CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the series of extremely perceptive articles by Vogel, Ezra, “From Friendship to Comradeship: The Change in Personal Relations in Communist China,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 21 (01–03 1965), pp. 46–60Google Scholar; “From Revolutionary to Semi-Bueaucrat: The ‘Regularisation’ of Cadres,” CQ No. 29 (01–03 1967), pp. 36–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Voluntarism and Social Control,” in Treadgold, Donald, ed., Soviet and Chinese Communism: Similarities and Differences, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967, p. 168–184Google Scholar; and “A Preliminary View of Family and Mental Health in Urban Communist China,” an unpublished paper prepared for the September 1966 conference at Greyston House on “Kinship in Chinese Society,” sponsored by the Sub-committee on Research on Chinese Society of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China. Also, I have drawn freely upon conclusions reached in my “Local Leaders in Rural China, 1962–65: Individual Attributes, Bureaucratic Position, and Political Recruitment,” in Barnett, A. Doak ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action, Seattle: University of Washington Press, forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

4 For a sophisticated analysis of the oscillation in policy, see G. William Skinner, “Compliance and Leadership in Rural Communist China,” paper read to the 1965 meeting of the American Political Science Association.

5 The one major exception to this generalisation seems to be related to sex differences. Females, who had greater opportunity to attain security and quietude than males, did not display a greater propensity to pursue other goals. This no doubt was related to different socialisation experiences of males and females.

6 An example of such an interrelationship was that the career implications of sex differences were greater in the countryside than in urban areas. But on the other hand, it is not clear whether class backgrounds were more salient in rural or urban areas.

7 See Loh, Robert, Escape from Red China, New York: Coward-McCaun, 1962, Chapter 12Google Scholar.

8 See Chi-ping, Tung, The Thought Revolution, New York: Coward-McCann, 1966, Chapter IXGoogle Scholar.

9 The steps of a campaign are described in Barnett, A. Doak with Vogel, Ezra, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China, New York: Columbia Press, 1967Google Scholar, and Bernstein, Thomas P., “Leadership and Mass Mobilization in the Soviet and Chinese Collectivization Campaigns,” The China Quarterly, No. 31 (07–09, 1967), pp. 1–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Deutsch, Karl W., “Cracks in the Monolith: Possibilities and Patterns of Dis-integration in Totalitarian Systems,” in Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Totalitarianism, New York: Grosset & Dunlap University Library edition, 1964, pp. 308–333Google Scholar.