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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Kang Sheng—a veteran counter-intelligence official and close political ally of Mao Zedong's—is said to have remarked in the winter of 1959 that among the critics of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) there was ‘One soldier’ and ‘One civilian’ whose criticisms were ‘in close harmony’. The soldier was Peng Dehuai, China's Minister of Defence, who had clashed with Mao at the Lushan Conference that summer, and whose criticism of the GLF had subsequently been denounced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee as an ‘attempt at splitting the Party´ and ‘a ferocious assault on the Party Center and Comrade Mao Zedong's leadership’. The civilian was Yang Xianzhen, the President of the Central Party School, who had aroused Kang's wrath by condemning the GLF as hopelessly Utopian, and by claiming that it already had brought on starvation and might yet bring about the collapse of the CCP.
The research and writing of this paper were supported by a research grant from the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSFR). I am indebted to Carol Lee Hamrin and Thomas Kampen for their valuable comments on an earlier draft.Google Scholar
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15 Ruoyu, Fan, Vice-President of the Central Party School, quoted in Ai Hengwu, 44–5.Google Scholar
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21 Ibid., 84.
22 Ibid., 86–7.
23 Ibid., 91.
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37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 322–3. Incomplete text amended on the basis of Shoudu Pipan, 38.
40 Ibid., 323. Incomplete text amended on the basis of Shoudu Pipan, 6.
41 Ibid., 324. Incomplete text amended on the basis of Shoudu Pipan, 27.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 321.
44 Ibid., 323.
45 Ibid., 322
46 Xianzhen, Yang, Wode Zhexue ‘Zuian’, 112.Google Scholar
47 Shan, Guan, 322–7. Incomplete text amended on the basis of Shoudu Pipan, 12.Google Scholar
48 Ibid., 327.
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55 Quotes from this talk are in Pipan, Shoudu, 38–9, and ‘Chedi Qingsuann’, 2. It is not referred to or quoted anywhere in recent official publications by or about Yang. Entries for September and October 1959 are conspicuously absent from the chronology of Yang's life included in Guan Shan, 110–25.Google Scholar
56 Kan, Zhong (pseud.), Kang Sheng Pingzhuan [Critical Biography of Kang Sheng] (Beijing: Hongqi Chubanshe, 1982), 360. Kang's appointment to this post had taken place on 15 March 1957.Google Scholar
57 Xianzhen, Yang, Wode Zhexue ‘Zuian’, 81.Google Scholar
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60 Xianzhen, Yang, Wode Zhexue ‘Zuian’, 148–9.Google Scholar
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