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Policy and Power: The Career of T'ao Chu 1956–66

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

“Kremlinological” approaches to the study of contemporary Chinese politics are sometimes criticized for seeming to embody the “rather crude view of politics being concerned with factional strife and power politics.” Certainly, for most politicians most of the time, it would be wrong as well as cynical to regard “power” as being the ultimate goal. On the other hand, few would deny that politics does, in part, involve factional strife and power politics, and some political scientists believe that political behaviour may be best explained through a focus on the play of power. Thus, Joseph Schlesinger explains certain aspects of American politics by what he calls “ambition theory”: “A politician's behavior is a response to his office goals.” Anthony Downs works out a good deductive explanation of the behaviour of political parties in a democracy by starting with the hypothesis that politicians act in a rational manner, espousing ideologies and policies which enable them to maintain or expand their power. The point of these hypotheses is not that politicians are an unusually venal race of men; the hypotheses do not purport to be accurate descriptions of political motivations. Rather, the assertion is that whatever the ultimate motives of political actors, an approach which hypothesizes that they will behave as though power were their goal does yield helpful and concise explanations of their behaviour. This article about the political career of one Chinese politician, T'ao Chu, from 1956 through 1966, will attempt to see how far hypotheses concentrating on “pure power” provide a useful explanation of events in comparison with those which give more weight to stated political opinions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

1. Yahuda, Michael, “Kremlinology and the Chinese strategic debate, 1965–1966,” The China Quarterly, 49 (0103 1972), p. 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7. This notion was stressed by Ch'en Po-ta, who seems to have been T'ao's major antagonist. See the remarks by Ch'en, quoted in a Peking wall poster (ta tzu pad), and reported in the Tokyo, Shimbun, 6 01 1967Google Scholar, in Daily Summary of the Japanese Press (DSJP), 7–9 January, p. 32; and Yomiuri, 14 January 1967, in DSJP, 18 January, p. 30.

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10. For an entertaining summary of the case against T'ao Chu, see his “biography” in Thirty-three Counter-Revolutionary Revisionists (TTCRR), an undated Guard, Red pamphlet, translated in Current Background (CB), 17 03 1969, pp. 89Google Scholar.

11. This term is borrowed from Schlesinger, , Ambition and Politics, p. 6Google Scholar.

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18. From a wall poster, transcribed in Asahi, 16 January 1967, in DSJP, 14–16 January, p. 11.

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24. A resolution of the provincial control commission, dated 29 August called for an “education in discipline” movement to be carried out in conjunction with Party rectification. Nan-fang jih-pao (Southern Daily), (Nan-fang), 8 September 1957, p. 1.

25. One of the major localists, Feng Pai-chü, was still in good enough grace in early August to have a speech of his published in the local Party paper, Nan-fang, 10 August 1957, pp. 2–3.

26. Ibid. 11 August 1957, p. 1.

27. Meng-chueh, Ou, in Hsin-hua pan-yueh k'an (New China Half-Monthly), No. 19 (10 10 1958), p. 43Google Scholar.

28. Jen-min, 21 January 1961, p. 1.

29. T'ien-chien, Huang, Fei-wei cheng-ch'uan shih-pa nien (Eighteen Years of Bandit-Fake Power) (Taipei, 1967), p. 419Google Scholar.

30. For a discussion of the identification of various groups on the Central Committee, see Moody, Peter, “The politics of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1971), ch. IIIGoogle Scholar.

31. Chang P'ing-hua has had an interesting career. He was removed from the Wuhan municipal committee in 1952 on charges of corruption, but later became second secretary of Hupei Province. Ying-mao, Kao, “Urban bureaucratic elites in Communist China,” in Baraett, A. Doak (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 244–5Google Scholar. In 1959 Chang replaced the rightist Chou Hsiao-chou as first secretary of Hunan, and in 1966 followed Tao Chu to Peking. He was duly dismissed, but reappeared in 1971 as a secretary of the Shansi Party Committee.

32. Reported in Nihon Keizei, 7 January 1967, in DSJP, 10 January, p. 32

33. It should be noted that not every person formally subordinate to T'ao Chu was a member of his “clique.” In the South Central Bureau he does not seem to have had effective high level support in Honan and Kwangsi; within Kwangtung, neither Ch'en Yu nor Wang Shou-tao seem to have run with T'ao. Both had been transferred to Kwangtung from jobs in the State Council at relatively late dates. Perhaps their transfers are examples of “mixing in sand.”

34. It is not necessarily to be assumed, however, that these three men formed any kind of cohesive block. But given the common nature of their positions, they would have had certain interests in common vis-á-vis outsiders.

35. Lewis, John Wilson, Leadership in Communist China (Tthaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 124Google Scholar.

36. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 21 09 1956, p. 7Google Scholar.

37. For a purported text of the “Ten great relationships,” see Chung-kung Yenchiu (Studies on Chinese Communism), Vol. 4, No. 2 (02 1970), pp. 116–24Google Scholar, and, for a translation, Ch'en, Jerome (ed.), Mao (New York: Prentice Hall, 1969), pp. 6585.)Google ScholarPubMed For an explication of Mao's “dialectical approach,” see Schur-mann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (University of California Press, 1966), p. 83Google Scholar.

38. For T'ao's support of the Hundred Flowers, see Vogel, , Canton under Communism, pp. 187–8Google Scholar. Wen-yuan, Yao, Jen-min, 8 09 1967, p. 1Google Scholar, also indicates that T'ao took a liberal line in early 1957. For a discussion of opposition within the Party to Mao's policy, see Solomon, Richard, “One Party and ‘one hundred schools’: leadership, lethargy, or luan?”, Current Scene, VII: 1920 (10 1969), passim.Google Scholar

39. Chu, Tao, Nan-fang, 9 09 1957, p. 2Google Scholar.

40. The documents were issued a few days before the Third Plenum convened. Ch'en Yun delivered the major speech on agriculture to that plenum, but his speech was not published. See Jen-min shou-ts'e, 1958, p. 182. The policies enunciated in the documents are policies Ch'en Yun, by his record, would have been inclined to favour.

41. Jen-min shou-ts'e, 1958, pp. 517–20.

42. Tse-tung, Mao, in Hung ch'i (Red Flag), No. 1 (1 06 1958), p. 3Google Scholar. It is perhaps significant that Mao made these comments à propos of a co-operative farm in Kwangtung.

43. This technique did not always work. In a 1961 speech to intellectuals, later carried in a Red Guard paper to show how evil T'ao was, T'ao admitted he had been wrong to try to tell the peasants how to farm. Kuang-yu pa-i-san, Nos. 2–3 (04–05 1968) in SCMP 4200 (18 June 1968), p. 14Google Scholar.

44. Chu, T'ao, Red Flag, No. 5 (1 08 1958), pp. 12Google Scholar.

45. Schram, Stuart, The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (revised edition, New York, 1969), pp. 135Google Scholaret seq. Meisner, Maurice, “Ii Ta-chao and Maoist strategy,” in Chun-tu, Hsieh (ed.), Revolutionary Leaders of Modern China (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 394Google Scholar. It is perhaps possible, however, that this interpretation of Mao's thought is an artifact of the vulgarization of the thought of those “ political swindlers,” Lin Piao and Ch'en Po-ta.

46. Jen-min, 3 September 1958, p. 1.

47. From a list in Tung-chi kung-tso (Peking), No. 20 (1958)Google Scholar, reproduced in Chu-yuan, Cheng, Communist China's Economy, 1942–1962: Structural Changes and Crises (Seton Hall: University Press, 1963) p. 40Google Scholar.

48. The earliest indication of this change that I have found is a speech by Yao-pang, Hu, published in Jen-min, 3 12 1958, p. 3Google Scholar, entitled “Develop the Communist spirit, earnestly build socialism.” The speech was delivered on 29 November. An explanation for the delay might have been the need to rework the speech to fit the changed line: Hu had probably originally talked about “building communism.”

49. Jen-min, 7 December 1958, p. 2.

50. Union Research Institute, The Case of P' eng Te-huai (Kowloon, 1968), pp. 1618Google Scholar.

51. Other provincial moderates in early 1959 include Pi, K'uei of Inner Mongolia (Jen-min, 19 05 1959, p. 6)Google Scholar, who in those days was probably in a position even more secure than T'ao, Inner Mongolia then being a virtual satrapy of K'uei's friend, Ulanfu; Ch'ing-shih, K'o, Red Flag, No. 4 (16 02 1959), pp. 912Google Scholar and Tao Lu-cbia, ibid., No. 5 (1 March 1959), pp. 25–9. These last two merely argued for more rational central planning: “the whole country is a chessboard.”

52. En-lai, Chou, Jen-min, 19 08 1959, p. 2Google Scholar.

53. Ibid. 18 June 1957, p. 1.

54. Man-yuan, Ch'en, in Hsueh-hsi (Study), No. 7 (4 04 1957), pp. 20–1Google Scholar.

55. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 25 02 1959, p. 7Google Scholar. For other examples of this kind of criticism, see Li Hsien-nien, ibid., 17 January 1959, p. 2, and Ch'en Yun, ibid., 1 March 1959, pp. 1–2. Li and Ch'en (at that time) were primarily State Council bureaucrats.

56. Wang Jen-chung, ibid., 15 February 1958, p. 4; Red Flag, No. 1 (1 06 1958), pp. 3946Google ScholarPubMed.

57. The Case of P'eng Te-huai, p. 18.

58. Jen-chung, Wang, Jen-min, 29 04 1959, p. 7Google Scholar.

59. Cf. the attitude of the then first secretary of Anhwei, the radical Tseng Hsisheng. Tseng thought that all problems would disappear once the cadres had over-come their “rightist conservative thought.” Jen-min, 3 March 1958, p. 7. T'ao Chu had also spoken of the need to “implement further socialist and communist education” among the cadres and peasants (25 February), but for Tseng this was the whole problem.

60. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 3 06 1959, p. 7Google Scholar. This was later held to be a personal attack on Chairman Mao, the “most red red sun in our hearts.” While possible, this is unlikely, since high-ranking cadres did not speak in this way at that time.

61. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 18 06 1959, p. 7Google Scholar.

62. For a good collection of the Lushan documents, see The Case of P'eng Te-huai, passim.

63. Shurmann, , Ideology and Organization in Communist China, pp. 55–7Google Scholar. It might also be said, however, that T'ao had considerably more political sagacity than the blunt, honest P'eng Te-huai.

64. Jen-min, 27 August 1959, p. 7.

65. The Case of Feng P'eng-huai, p. 20.

66. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 2 09 1959, p. 7Google Scholar.

67. Is this a subtle equivocation? The 1958 fall harvest in Kwangtung, apparently, was carried out without the benefit of people's communes.

68. Chu, Tao, Red Flag, No. 19 (1 10 1959), pp. 61–8Google Scholar.

69. From a 1961 speech by T'ao, , published in the Canton Hung wei pao (Red Guard News (prior to the fall of 1966, the Yang-ch'eng Evening News), a non-Party paper in Canton, not, despite its name, a Red Guard publication), 22 01 1967Google Scholar, in SCMP 3937 (11 05 1967), p. 2Google Scholar.

70. Ting-i, Lu, Jen-min, 21 10 1959, p. 2Google Scholar; ibid. 10 April 1960, p. 2; ibid. 2 June 1960, p. 1 and Lin Feng, ibid. 2 June 1960, p. 3.

71. T'ao Chu, ibid. 11 January 1960, p. 7.

72. A few months later, Tseng Hsi-sheng published what might be a rebuttal to T'ao. Tseng accused journalists of being a bourgeois group, direly in need of Party control. Furthermore he recommended that this control should not be en-trusted too closely to the Party propaganda departments, whose members often come to see things too much from the professional journalists' point of view. Jenmin, 16 June 1960, p. 7. This was Tseng's penultimate public utterance. He was gradually eased out of office in the early 1960s. His successor was Li Pao-hua, apparently a Tao Chu supporter.

73. P'ing-hua, Chang, Jen-min, 12 01 1960, p. 7Google Scholar. This essay presents certain difficulties in interpretation. There is a reference, for example, to the “true, left-wing Hai Jui.” Hai Jui, of course, was the hero of Wu Han, an appendage of P'eng Chen, and perhaps also a symbolic representative of P'eng Te-huai. Wu Han began to publish material on Hai Jui just at the time of the Lushan Conference. Ibid. 16 June 19S9, p. 8 and 21 September 1959, p. 11. Does Chang's praise of Hai Jui mean there was some kind of alliance in 1959 between P'eng Chen and Tao Chu? Both may well have been sympathetic towards P'eng Te-huai. Also, as noted above, Tao Chu helped out Hu Ch'iao-mu at Lushan, and Hu seems to have been part of P'eng Chen's following. On the other hand, Chang's essay advocates the publishing of ghost stories—they teach us not to fear ghosts, literal and figurative. This idea was ridiculed by P'eng Chen's brain-trust, the “Three Family Village,” who made the point that whatever the attitude the stories take towards ghosts, they do say that ghosts exist. Teng T'o wen-shih hsüan (Prose and Poetry of Teng T'o) (Hong Kong, 1966), pp. 115–16Google Scholar. Chang P'ing-hua, however, had nothing to do with the compilation of the ghost stories being mocked; this was done by the Literary Institute of the China Academy of Sciences, the concern of Kuo Mo-jo. I am not sure of the significance of all this, and to make too much of it would probably be over-interpretation. It does seem possible, however, that there was an alliance of some kind between T'ao Chu and P'eng Chen at around this time. In the early 1960s P'eng became perhaps the most important figure in the central Party machine—becoming de facto more influential than Teng Hsiao-p'ing; and P'eng's alliance with T'ao would not seem to have outlived P'eng's rise in status. T'ao's promotion in 1966 came at the expense of P'eng Chen's faction.

74. P'ing-hua, Chang, Jen-min, 30 06 1960, p. 7Google Scholar. This slogan almost always has conservative implications—current policies do not fit reality, and if we took the trouble to examine them, we could see this. The slogan regained popularity in the spring of 1971.

75. E.g., T'ung, Shu, Jen-min, 6 02 1960, p. 7Google Scholar. Shu was then first secretary of Shantung. A few months later, he was removed for rightism. This essay may have been a recantation of views he voiced at Lushan.

76. T'ao Chu, ibid. 8 August 1960, p. 7.

77. For a brief summary of the evolution of the commune system, see Ch'en, C. S. and Ridley, Charles Price, Rural People's Communes in Lien Chiang: Documents Concerning Communes in Lien Chiang County, Fukien Province, 1962–1963 (Hoover Institution, 1969)Google Scholar, introduction.

78. See Hsiao-p'ing's, Tengconfession“ of October 1966, in Studies on Chinese Communism, Vol. 3, No. 11 (11 1969), p. 93Google Scholar.

79. P'eng Chen is said to have tried to bring about a complete disavowal of the Three Red Flags of the 1958–60 period. See Peking Daily (Pei-ching jih-pao), 7 August 1967, reprinted in Wang Hsueh-wen, Chung-kung wen-hua ta ko-ming yu hung-wei-ping (The Chinese Communists' Great Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards) (Taipei, 1969), pp. 14 et seq.

80. Nan-fang, 16 July 1967, in SCMP 4011 (29 08 1967), p. 17Google Scholar.

81. For an initial survey of the socialist education movement, see Baum, Richard and Teiwes, Frederick, Ssu-Ch'ing, The Socialist Education Movement of 1963–1966 (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar; also Hsiung, James Chieh, Ideology and Practice: The Evolution of Chinese Communism (New York, 1970), ch. 11Google Scholar.

82. For a vivid, if no doubt distorted, description of the activities of Liu Shaoch'i and his wife in 1964, see Jen-min, 6 September 1967, pp. 1–2.

83. T'ao Chu, ibid. 28 February 1964, pp. 5–6.

84. Ibid. p. 6. Thus, when the Maoists regained control of the socialist education movement in 1965, their first move was to tone the movement down, to soften the attacks on cadres. Baum, and Teiwes, , Socialist Education Movement, p. 36Google Scholar.

85. Jen-chung, Wang, Jen-min, 25 07 1965, p. 6Google Scholar.

86. Ch'ing-shih, K'o, Jen-min, 29 12 1963, p. 2 and 16 August 1964, pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Chiang Ch'ing, ibid. 10 May 1967, p. 1 (text of a speech delivered in 1964).

87. T'ao Chu, ibid. 29 July 1965, p. 5.

88. T'ao Chu, ibid. 28 August 1965, p. 2.

89. Chen, P'eng, Red Flag, No. 14 (31 07 1964), pp. 1824Google Scholar.

90. Chu, T'ao, Jen-min, 2 08 1965, p. 3Google Scholar.

91. Ibid. 25 July 1966, p. 1.

92. From a wall-poster report of comments by Mao after the fall of Chu, T'ao, in TokyoShimbun, 12 01 1967Google Scholar, in DSJP, 13 January 1967, p. 9.

93. This was the impression of Japanese reporters in Peking at that time. E.g., Mainichi, 15 December 1966, DSJP, 16 December 1966, p. 13.

94. From a compilation of statements by Chu, T'ao and other leaders made early in the Cultural Revolution, in CB 830 (26 06 1967), p. 2Google Scholar.

95. Red Guard reports of statements by Chu, T'ao and others, CB, 10 03 1967, pp. 1213Google Scholar.

96. The membership and positions are listed in Asahi, 23 November 1966, in DSJP, 26–8 November. I assume the “Chang Hua-ping” in this list is really Chang P'ing-hua. Such errors of transcription are fairly common in this source.

97. Wall poster reports, in Tokyo, Shimbun, 6 January 1967, in DSJP, 7–9 January, p. 32.

98. Ch'en is the famous “common, ordinary little man” (hsiao hsiao lao-paihsing) who is really nothing but a big ambitionist”: Red Flag, Nos. 7–8 (1 07 1967), p. 23Google Scholar.

99. The children were being told to imitate the Long March, to get out of town. E.g., En-lai, Chou, Jen-min, 16 11 1966, pp. 12Google Scholar.

100. Ibid.. 4 December 1966, pp. 1–3.

101. Wall poster reports, Mainichi, 11 December 1966, in DSJP, 10–11 December, pp. 21–2; Asahi, 13 December 1966, in DSJP, 13 December, p. 11.

102. This is speculation and imputation. Perhaps if Lin had tried to move against the inner court, he would have alienated Mao, and he was not strong enough to do so then. However, if this is a correct interpretation of what went on, Lin certainly acted contrary to his long-term interests.

103. Jen-min, 2 November 1966, p. 1 and 13 December 1966, p. 1.

104. Issues and Studies, passim. As argued above (note 9), these documents, al-though probably “genuine,” in that they were actually circulated in mainland China, are less than convincing in their details.

105. When Liu was criticized in October, Mao is supposed to have said that un-like P'eng Chen's group, Liu and Teng did not “band together.” Wall poster transcription of Mao's, speech at one of the October meetings, Yomiuri, 8 01 1967Google Scholar in DSJP, 7–9 January, p. 31.

106. Wall poster report, Yomiuri, 15 December 1966, in DSJP, 15 December, pp. 13–14.

107. Wall poster report, Mainichi, 19 December 1966, in DSJP, 17–19 December, p. 14.

108. Yomiuri, 29 December 1966, in DSJP, 30 December, p. 13.

109. From a wall poster list of members of Liu's, clique, Asahi, 7 01 1967 in DSJP, 10 January, p. 19Google Scholar.

110. Wall poster report, Asahi, 12 April 1967, in DSJP, 13 April, p. 22.