Since her traditional empire collapsed China has experimented with many political institutions. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a revolutionary one-party regime, the pattern of political order has shifted from one form to another. Intra-Party conflicts preceded these shifts, of which the Cultural Revolution represented the culmination. But in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution another shift is taking place, so it too has raised a series of important questions about Chinese politics.

Studies of communism in China reveal a strong element of nationalism in the acceptance and interpretation of communism from Li Ta-chao to Mao Tse-tung. The concern of Chinese Communists with the plight of the Chinese nation has led to two significant revisions of communism in its Marxist-Leninist form: the elevation of national over class struggle and the consequent eclipsing of the proletariat by the “people.” Maurice Meisner says of Li Ta-chao, whom he regards as the forerunner of Mao, “Li no doubt attached considerable importance to the organization of the proletariat, but he was predisposed from the beginning to look to the potential revolutionary forces of the whole ‘proletarian’ nation rather than of a single social class forming only a tiny portion of the nation.”

There were several peculiar features of the Chinese Communist Party's 10th Congress, held from 24 to 28 August 1973, which in themselves introduce the question of the purpose of the Congress. One of the oddities, as measured by the CCP's previous practice as well as that of other ruling parties, was that there was no prior announcement or Central Committee plenum setting the stage for the Congress. The first official announcement was a press communique issued on 29 August, the day after the Congress closed. Another surprising feature was the unusual brevity of the Congress, which lasted only five days. And even that short time was not totally devoted to Congress proceedings; a ceremony marking the opening of a tricontinental table tennis tournament drew a full turnout of currently active leaders on the evening of the Congress's second day. More strikingly, the Sinkiang regional party chief, Saifudin, who was to be elected an alternate member of the Politburo at the plenum held two days after the Congress, was present at his distant home base to attend the Sinkiang trade union and women's Congresses while the national Party Congress was in session. He may not have missed very much: unlike previous congresses, no speeches were reportedly made other than the official Central Committee documents submitted on the first day.

Recent studies on the origins of various Chinese Communist administrative techniques have revealed a striking continuity between present methods and the Communists' pre-1949 experiments in the Kiangsi Soviet (1927–34) and in the Border Regions of the north-west (1935–45).1 The Kiangsi and Yenan experiences are particularly vital to an under-standing of the Party's penal theories, since it was during the 1927–49 period that the Communists formulated their policies concerning release, leniency, production, democratic management, education and thought reform. Of particular interest is the gradual elaboration, during a war-time situation, of their controversial procedures of thought control or “ brainwashing.” While a description of the development of these policies from 1927–49 is interesting in itself, this article aims in addition to analyse how changes in technique were a response to environmental and political factors. It can be shown that prison policies varied in a direct relationship to the changing economic, political and military environment; consequently, the present penal policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot be understood without reference to their origin in the physical and psychological environment of Kiangsi and Yenan.