^* I am grateful to a number of people, including my students, for criticism of various drafts of this article. Most particularly I am grateful to Mark Selden and John Israel.Google Scholar

^1. Even Franz Schurmann's impressive Ideology and Organization in Communist China, a partial exception to the rule, sees the requirements in China for organization and ideology somewhat mechanically in terms of a kind of social science “substitutism.” Rather than conceiving of this need in terms of the unavoidable implications of persistently implementing revolutionary social change, Schurmann sees ideology and organization as necessary to replace the disintegrating social ethos and institutions of the old society respectively.Google Scholar

^2. “Democracy” today certainly does not mean what it meant in classical theory. While western social scientists in the 1950s and 60s were criticizing Chinese politics as authoritarian–totalitarian and undemocratic, they were simultaneously fashioning theories to take account of and justify elite domination of western “democracies.” One might characterize such a coincidence as ironic, were it not that extreme disillusionment with the masses (voters) the fear of revolution abroad, and the desire to maintain and legitimize the status quo at home played so important a role in the development of prevailing theories of “democratic” elitism.Google ScholarPeter Bachrach, , The Theory of Democratic Elitism, a Critique (Boston, 1967).Google Scholar

^3. Mark, Selden's papers “The Yenan legacy: the mass line,” in Barnett, A. Doak (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle, 1969), pp. 99–151Google Scholar; “Revolution and third world development: people's war and the transformation of peasant society,” in Miller, Norman and Aya, Roderick (eds.), National Liberation (New York, 1971), pp. 214–48;Google Scholar and “People's war and transformation of peasant society; China and Vietnam,” in Edward, Friedman and Mark, Selden (eds.), America's Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1971), pp. 357–92.Google Scholar

^4. Hinton, William, Fanshen (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966);Google ScholarBelden, , China Shakes the World, (New York, 1949, pb. New York, 1970). The Belden book, a classic on the civil war period in 1946–9, was hardly referred to for nearly 20 years in western scholarship after 1949.Google Scholar

^5. Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California, 1967). But Townsend's highly intelligent and balanced book fails to consider mass participation within the context of China's need for a vanguard. At one point he seems about to squarely confront the problems of accountability and responsiveness, so central to any discussion of mass participation, within the context of China's urgent demand for directed social change: “the idea of the necessity of elite leadership, armed with special knowledge of society and problems was not accepted simply because of Lenin's dogmatic strictures or an all-consuming faith in the Communist future. The need for leadership was inherent in the depth of China's economic and social problems and in the extent of ignorance and apathy among the population” (p. 82). But having said this, Townsend seems content to point out that the Party after 1945, when its “programme no longer rested on a virtually unopposed policy of national salvation … altered the natural harmony of CCP relations with the masses and subsequently produced great tension in the attempt to retain both Party leadership and voluntary mass action in support of it” (pp. 84–5). If I understand Townsend's point, he seems to imply that while the solution to China's socio-economic problems inherently requires leadership, presumably sustained leadership, nevertheless it is nationalism which best justifies such leadership by the near unanimity of support it attracts. As a consequence of Townsend's failure to incorporate vanguard theory into this framework of analysis, much of the book, notwithstanding its author's efforts to be evenhanded, emphasizes manipulation from above as if vanguard direction were avoidable. Similarly, despite Townsend's sensitivity to inapposite comparisons, the implied message of his theoretical introduction is that Chinese politics is less “democratic” than, say, American politics. But is not such a comparison between status-quo oriented western democracies and a country that continues to mobilize itself for effecting revolutionary change fundamentally evasive of the demands imposed by the Chinese setting?Google Scholar

^6. Skinner, G. William and Winckler, Edwin A., “Compliance succession in rural Communist China: a cyclical theory,” in Amitai, Etzioni (ed.), Complex Organizations, A Sociological Reader, 2nd ed., (New York, 1969), pp. 410–38.Google Scholar

^7. John King, Fairbank, The United States and China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962). It is difficult to determine which two or three factors Professor Fairbank believes were ultimately decisive. In this book he subscribes to all three of the explanations I present, as well as to others.Google Scholar

^8. Johnson, Chalmers A., (Stanford, 1963).Google Scholar

^9. White, Theodore H. & Jacoby, Annalee, Thunder out of China (New York, 1946). Perhaps the attempt to determine which particular factors explain the Chinese Communists' success is in the final analysis futile. Surely Roy Hofheinz's brilliant, tour de force “The ecology of Chinese Communist success: rural influence patterns, 1923–45,” in Barnett (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics, pp. 3–77, which effectively demolishes every theory to explain their success and produces no theory of its own, suggests the potential bankruptcy of the enterprise. Is it conceivable that the Chinese Communists won because they really did “serve the people,” in different ways, during different periods, and at different places? And that this is the reason why explanations focusing on particular factors have proved so unrewarding?Google Scholar

^10. Ezra Vogel, , Canton Under Communism (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1969);Google Scholar and see my review article, “Revolution and rule: where do we go from here?,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (04–08 1970), pp. 88–95.Google Scholar

^11. Necessity certainly pressed hard on the Chinese Communists before 1942 as well. But the movement did not achieve its maturity until the later part of the Yenan period, nor its full-blown revolutionary development until the Third Revolutionary Civil War period. As a result, it was not able to respond sophisticatedly and successfully to the demands of necessity in order to make a virtue of them in the 1930s and early 1940s. Too many analyses have overemphasized the early Yenan period at the expense of the later Yenan period, while the critical post-war period has been largely ignored.Google Scholar

^12. The following discussion of the Yenan period and the post-war, preliberation period is based largely on the following sources: Hinton, Fanshen; Belden, China Shakes the World; Selden's writings, cited above, note 3; Lucien Bianco's excellent Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford, 1971);Google ScholarPubMedMao, Tse-tung, Selected Works (SW) (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1960), the 4-volume English edition;Google Scholar and Townsend, , Political Participation.Google Scholar

^13. Mao, , “Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan,” SW, Vol. I, pp. 23–59.Google Scholar

^14. For a preliminary discussion of the concept of revolutionary rule, see my review article cited above, note 10; and see Stephen Andors's, superb “Revolution and modernization: man and machine in industrializing societies, the Chinese case,” in Friedman, and Selden, , America's Asia, pp. 393–444.Google Scholar

^15. This brief discussion of the Great Leap and its legacy relies heavily on Andors, “Revolution and modernization.”Google ScholarRegarding the complex relationship between modernization and “revolutionization,” as applied to the PLA, see John, Gittings's useful The Role of the Chinese Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. xiii–xvii and 160–2.Google Scholar

^16. Andors, p. 401. This vision of the organizational thrust of Maoism recalls Schurmann's tantalizing reference to China's “non-Weberian model of organization,” in his all-too-brief discussion of the Chinese attempt to keep contradictions in organizations alive in order to offset with innovation the tendency towards total routinization; Schurmann, , Ideology and Organization, pp. xlv–xlvi.Google Scholar

^17. Starting from a very different concern and perspective, Oksenberg's, Michel C. “Policy making under Mao Tse-tung, 1949–68,” Comparative Politics (04 1971), pp. 323–60, particularly at pp. 357–60, appears to make a very similar point concerning Mao's actual role in the Cultural Revolution.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^18. John Israel has privately expressed to me his dissatisfaction with the seeming circularity inherent in the way I have formulated this problem: “On the one hand, the revolution must actually serve the people. On the other hand, the people must be persuaded that the revolution is on their behalf. … Who, in fact, is to determine when the people are really being served? … Is it possible under Maoist decentralization for the masses to reject Maoist goals? In other words, does Maoism, as a technique, permit rejection of Maoist policies? What if the masses, instead of discovering that the revolution is in their interests, come to the perverse conclusion that their interests are better served by ‘revisionism’ – especially on questions of private land holding, etc.?” Israel's points, central to all of us who have reservations about Maoist society, are not easy to answer without seeming evasive or falling back on the concept of the vanguard.Google Scholar

The simple answer to the first question is that it is the leaders and the masses in their interaction in practice who, by means of the mass line process, are to decide “when the people are really being served.” The Chinese condemn both “tailism” and “commandism.” But, given the vanguard element, the masses at times at least must be persuaded to accept and support policies, which in the absence of vanguard “tutoring” they would not accept. On the other hand, generally the policies must be within the realm of reason. The policies' connection with serving the people must be at least sufficient to enable persuasion to take place. And the pace of implementation of policies generally must at least be within the tolerance of the masses. (See Mao, “The united front in cultural work,” SW, Vol. III, pp. 185–7, especially the final paragraph).Google Scholar

No doubt, even these minimum standards have been violated at times in practice. But the ideal of the mass line has been maintained, and tremendous efforts have been made by Maoists to practise what they preach. Moreover, the shortcomings of practice must be considered in light of the enormity of the problem, which is nothing less than how to achieve the good society and to industrialize in as humane a fashion as possible. In this perspective, the achievements of the Chinese Communists, compared in terms of human cost to industrialization in England, the Soviet Union, or America, are to my mind substantial.Google Scholar

As to Israel's second set of questions, relating to whether the masses can reject Maoist policies under a Maoist system, the answer, I think, is yes in practice, but no in theory. In theory, if the mass line is operating correctly, the policies adopted will be predicated upon an accurate view of what serves the people, and leaders will be able to so persuade the masses. Unhappily, in practice the mass line is imperfect. Mistakes are made; sometimes bad mistakes, as were visible during the Great Leap, for example, when the masses and the leaders rejected numerous Maoist policies as implemented. The response of the Maoists to this rejection has been further experimentation, further attempts to refine and adapt their theory in practice, and more specifically, the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.Google Scholar

The Maoists do not take rejections lying down. They believe they will be vindicated by posterity, a belief that certainly is capable of abuse to justify rigidly held positions. They have been saved from such rigidity for the most part, I believe, by Mao's own genius for politics, by the movement's real commitment to human values, and by institutions for meaningful mass participation built into the revolutionary movement.Google Scholar

^19. Whether China can “efficiently” industrialize on such a basis is considered in Gurley, John G., “Capitalist and Maoist economic development,” Friedman, and Selden, , America's Asia, 324–56;Google Scholar and see Carl Riskin's stimulating and disarming, unpublished, interdisciplinary paper, “Homo economicus vs. homo sinicus: a discussion of work motivation in China.”Google Scholar

^20. This perspective is suggested regarding the Chinese educational system in Bastid, Marianne, “Economic necessity and political ideals in educational reform during the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly (04–06 1970), pp. 16–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^21. Various issues of China News Analysis (CNA), of course, incorporate in their grossest form all three of these stereotypes.Google Scholar See, for example, CNA, No. 795, 20 March 1970 and No. 764, 11 July 1969. Most articles, however, are more subtle. Ralph, Powell in “The Party, The Government and the gun,” Asian Survey (06 1970), pp. 441–71, concludes his analysis with references to Chinese civilian bureaucrats in the past having served “warrior founders of new dynasties or even warlords until … civil rule finally returned to China” and with the clear implication that regional and provincial military leaders, though not quite independent and not warlords, dominate the Chinese political system. The only thing preventing China from turning into “a communist military regime,” according to Powell is the life still in “the aged Mao” (pp. 470–1).Google Scholar Powell's next article in Asian Survey a year later in the August 1971 issue, “Soldiers in the Chinese economy,” pp. 742–60, likewise compares the position of “the regional leaders of the PLA” with “the semi-autonomous militia leaders of late Ch'ing China” (p. 760). See also, Jurgen Domes, , “The role of the military in the formation of Revolutionary Committees, 1967–8,” The China Quarterly (10–12 1970), pp. 112–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Newspaper reporters, naturally, outdid their academic counterparts in communicating the stereotypes. For a late, sophisticated example of this genre, see Lee, Lescaze, “Military dominates Chinese regions,” The Washington Post, 20 02 1971. The article refers to “China's slow progress in rebuilding the Communist Party,” to “military dominance of government and CP affairs,” to Shanghai as “an island of civilian control in the Nanking military region commanded by Hsu Shih-yu … a powerful man in the military structure,” and to “military control” by “already powerful … regional commanders.”Google Scholar

Subsequent purges of Standing Committee members in the last two years have led to the creation of new stereotypes, which like most of our stereotypes of China detract attention from non-elite, institutional developments there. With the elimination of Lin Piao, Huang Yung-sheng, et al. from the scene, the civilian party men are now seen as “doing in” the military, or alternatively the regional military commanders are “doing in” the central military commanders, or they are both doing them in together.Google Scholar

^22. Gittings, , Role of the Chinese Army, pp. 184–5, 263, 265–8 and 281–2.Google Scholar

^23. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968). This recognition is implicit in Huntington's brilliant discussions of praetorianism and Leninism, pp. 192–263 and 334–43.Google Scholar

^24. Mao, , SW, Vol. II, p. 224.Google Scholar

^25. Klein, Donald W. and Lois, Hager in “The Ninth Central Committee,” The China Quarterly (01–03 1971), pp. 37–56, have pointed out, moreover, that “the 110-odd men [on the Central Committee of the 9th Party Congress] whose primary responsibilities are in the military establishment” show “substantially higher … percentages for long-term association with the Party” than their non-military counterparts in the Committee. This point is particularly striking given the general conclusion that the new Central Committee as a whole remains dominated by “members who have been associated with the Party for two decades or more” (pp. 41–2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^26. Prior to the Cultural Revolution the Standing Committee was composed of 11 members, 6 of whom were deposed during the Cultural Revolution; Chang Ching-wen, “An analysis of the newly elected Ninth CCP Central Committee,” Issues and Studies (07 1969), pp. 31–7.Google Scholar

^27. Ellis, Joffe, “The Chinese Army in the Cultural Revolution,” Current Scene, 7 12 1970, pp. 1–25, at p. 23. Other analysts, apparently employing slightly different criteria, give somewhat different statistics;Google Scholar see, for example, CNA, No. 801, 15 05 1970.Google ScholarPubMed

^28. Klein and Hager, “The Ninth Central Committee.” Klein has a well-deserved reputation for careful scholarship, so I rely primarily on his figures. Joffe's figures agree with Klein's and Hager's. Other analysts estimate the percentage somewhat higher, between 43–50 per cent.; Chang Ching-wen, “Analysis of the newly elected Ninth CCP Central Committee,” pp. 33–4;Google Scholar and Jurgen, Domes, “Military and moderation,” Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 3 10 1970, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

^29. Klein, Donald W., “The ‘next generation’ of Chinese Communist leaders,” The China Quarterly (10–12 1962), pp. 57–74, at p. 66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^30. Gittings, , Role of the Chinese Army, p. 293.Google Scholar

^31.The figures are from Klein and Hager, “The Ninth Central Committee,” p. 46. Klein and Hager, however, discount the importance of this worker and peasant contingent in the Central Committee. They write, “in the current, tense political atmosphere in China, it is unlikely that a seasoned Party veteran would brusquely disregard the opinions of a worker or peasant. But in the longer run, we assume that the political skills of more experienced leaders will have the effect of neutralizing the voice of the workers and peasants” (p. 48, italics added). While seemingly reasonable, this assumption is too important and too naked to be accepted as it is. First, it appears that quite a number of the workers and peasants on the Central Committee are experienced and charismatic leaders, with tremendous local and even national reputations. A peasant leader like Ch'en Yung-kuei, leader of the famous Tachai Brigade, may not prove so easy to neutralize. Second, at the core of the Klein-Hager assumption lies the notion that non-peasant and non-worker members of the Central Committee will want to neutralize peasant and worker voices. Surely this must at least be argued and not assumed. And third, if peasant-worker members of the Central Committee function as the top of an institutional structure that emphasizes mass participation, as I argue below, then such members will have constituencies supporting them, which also will make it harder to “neutralize” them. The assumption that the voices of workers and peasants will be neutralized, in short, incorporates other assumptions about the CR and its aftermath, which are neither made explicit nor argued in the article.Google Scholar

^32. Klein and Hager, “The Ninth Central Committee,” pp. 48–50; and Klein, “The ‘Next Generation’ of Chinese Communist Leaders,” p. 67.Google Scholar

^33. With regard to mass health, for example, see Horn's, Joshua S. extremely illuminating success story Away With All Pests (New York, 1969);Google Scholar and more recently, Jonathan, Unger's perceptive “On snails and pills,” FEER, 2 10 1971, pp. 24–6Google Scholar; and Tillman, Durdin, “The new face of Maoist China,” Problems of Communism (09–10 1971), pp. 1–13, at pp. 10–12. These sources suggest a nearly identical pattern of development in the health field as I describe below in other sectors, thereby providing some independent confirmation for the perspectives I develop below.Google Scholar

^34. If my metaphorical description of revolutionary change seems hopelessly vague, it should be remembered that more rigorous attempts by social scientists to define revolutionary change, while producing more verbiage and jargon, have not been noticeably more precise; e.g., Chalmers Johnson's otherwise provocative Revolutionary Change (Boston, 1966), especially chs. 2–6.Google ScholarPubMed

^35. Western analysts generally face several related problems which impede their understanding of such changes. First, they begin with a preconceived scepticism of the capacity of mass movements to effect radical social change. Second, they tend to take subsequent re-institutionalization and rehabilitation of personnel previously “rectified” as confirmation of their belief that nothing much has changed. And third, reports of changes in the Chinese press are so frequently exaggerated, in no small part because during power struggles the Chinese Communists tend to caricature the past and the losers through the use of negative models and to glorify advances and winners through the use of positive models, that analysts tend to treat the real changes that have occurred as suspect or negligible.Google Scholar Regarding negative models, see Chi, Ping, “Pay attention to the role of teachers by negative example,” Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), No. 3, 1972, pp. 19–24.Google Scholar Regarding the tendency of liberal intellectuals to denigrate mass movements, see Noam, Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York, 1969), pp. 72–112.Google Scholar

^36. Much of the evidence offered to support this conclusion, garnered from primary documents, from reports by foreign visitors to China, and from my own trip to China (12 January-12 February 1972) is fragmentary, circumstantial, and/or indirect. Each bit of evidence is open to conflicting interpretations, and the accumulated evidence is not conclusive. My conclusions, then, are frankly speculative and argumentative. Nevertheless, this article, I believe, presents a prima facie case for the proposition that meaningful mass participation has been revived and institutionalized in the Chinese political system. Such a proposition is outside the bounds of accepted wisdom in the China field, and is therefore likely to be characterized as “unprofessional,” or even as “propaganda.” So be it.Google Scholar

^37. “Masses take part in Party's organizational life,” Shanghai PBS, 3 07 1969, Union Research Service (URS), vol. 56, No. 3, 8 07 1969Google Scholar; “Shanghai high-voltage condenser factory mobilizes its masses to participate in the rectification of the Party,” Shanghai PBS, 25 10 1969, URS, vol. 57, No. 9, 31 10 1969Google Scholar; “Vigorously grasp the revolutionization construction of Party Committee leading group,” Hunan PBS, 2 12 1969, URS, vol. 57, No. 20, 9 December 1969Google Scholar; and “CCP Committee at Shukuang machine works of Nanking leads Party members to study penetratingly Chairman Mao's Party building thoughts and the new Party constitution,” Kuang-Ming Daily, 30 06 1970Google Scholar, Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP), No. 4699, 20 07 1970.Google Scholar

^38. Charles Neuhauser, , “The Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s: prelude to the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly (10–12 1967), pp. 3–36, especially at pp. 33–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^39. See, e.g., An Hsueh-kiang's excellent “Rely on the masses to carry out open-door rectification,” People's Daily, 12 10 1969, p. 2Google Scholar, URS, Vol. 57, No. 9, 31 10 1969.Google Scholar

^40. Ibid.

^41. Ibid.

^42. Ibid.

^43. Ibid.

^44. The Constitution of the Communist Party of China, The Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Documents), (Peking: FLP, 1969), p. 120.Google Scholar

^45. Lin Piao, , “Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China,” Important Documents on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (Peking: FLP, 1970), pp. 1–106, at p. 73.Google Scholar

^46. See, e.g., the editor's note preceding “Current developments in Party rectification,” URS, Vol. 57, No. 9, 31 10 1969.Google Scholar

^47. An Hsueh-kiang, “Rely on the masses”; Hsiang Nai-kuang, “An analysis of Peiping's [(sic)] Party rectification and Party building as related to the Ninth Party Congress,” Chinese Communist Affairs (02 1969), pp. 21–32Google Scholar; “CCP Committee at Shukuang machine works of Nanking,” pp. 1–6; and “PLA Kunming command sets up study classes for members of Party Committees of regimental level and above,” Kuang-ming Daily, 2 07 1970, SCMP, No. 4696, 14 July 1970, pp. 45–9.Google Scholar

^48. “How to bring proletarian politics to the fore in the revolution in education,” People's Daily, 11 09 1969Google Scholar, Current Background (CB), no. 903, 17 03 1970.Google Scholar

^49. Bastid, “ Economic necessity and political ideals” and see Kimiyo Tamaki, , “Revolution in China,” Hong Kong Standard, 13 05 1972, p. 9.Google Scholar

^50. “A suggestion that all state-run primary schools in the countryside should be put under and run by production brigades,” People's Daily, 14 11 1968, CB, No. 869, 15 January 1969; and see related articles in CB, No. 870, 27 January 1969; CB, No. 881, 26 May 1969; and CB, No. 903, 17 March 1970. Mao, at least as far back as 1927, was very partial to schools run by the masses for the masses. Discussing, for example, why foreign-style schools, presumably run either by westernized Chinese elites or by westerners themselves, were inappropriate, Mao wrote: “The texts used in the rural primary schools were entirely about urban things and unsuited to rural needs. Besides, the attitude of the primary school teachers towards the peasants was very bad and, far from being helpful to the peasants, they became objects of dislike.” For Mao, real education began in the 1920s when peasant associations took over the schools: “The moment the power of the landlords was overthrown in the rural areas, the peasant's movement for education began. See how the peasants who hitherto detested the schools are today zealously setting up evening classes!” The hope for mass education lies with the masses, not with the burgeois intellectuals: “The development of the peasant movement has resulted in a rapid rise in their cultural level. Before long tens of thousands of schools will have sprung up in the villages throughout the province; this is quite different from the empty talk about ‘universal education,’ which the intelligentsia and the so-called ‘educationalists’ have been bandying back and forth and which after all this time remains an empty phrase.” Mao, “Report on … Peasant Movement in Hunan,” pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

^51. The control of urban primary and middle schools seems still more complex and varied. Sometimes they appear to be run by factories, sometimes by neighbourhood organizations, sometimes by workers' propaganda teams stationed in the schools, and sometimes by the state. CB, No. 870, 27 01 1969.Google Scholar

^52. Regarding higher education, see “In the universities,” CNA, No. 772, 5 09 1969Google ScholarPubMed; “Higher education,” CNA, No. 816, 2 10 1970Google Scholar; the collected articles in “The transformation of colleges of arts,” URS, Vol. 58, No. 26, 31 03 1970Google Scholar; and CB, Nos. 881 and 903.Google Scholar

^53. Translated in Jerome, Ch'en, Mao Papers (New York, 1970), at p. 154.Google Scholar

^54. Hung-ch'i, 1970, No. 8Google Scholar, as translated in FE/3437/B and FE/3438/B; for a more recent article on education, see Hung-ch'i, No. 10, 1 09 1971Google ScholarPubMed, Survey of China Mainland Magazines (SCMM), No. 713, 27 09 1971.Google Scholar

^55. Jerrold, Schecter, “At college in Red China,” Time, 27 03 1972, pp. 32–3Google Scholar; the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), China! Inside the People's Republic (New York, 1972), ch. 7, pp. 197–227Google Scholar; Ross, Terrill, “The 800,000,000: Report from China,” The Atlantic (11 1971), at pp. 111–118Google Scholar; Rhea Menzel, Whitehead, “How the young are taught in Mao's China,” Saturday Review, 4 03 1972, pp. 40–5Google Scholar; Durdin, “The new face of Maoist China,” at pp. 9–10. My own investigations of universities in China included one-half day at Kwangtung Normal University, one day at Peking University, and one day at Kiangsi Communist Labour University; see also, Frolic, B. Michael, “What the Cultural Revolution was all about,” The New York Times Magazine, 24 10 1971.Google Scholar

^56. “Penetratingly carry out mass criticism in the revolution in education,” by the Workers Propaganda Team and the PLA Propaganda Team stationed at Shenyang Medical College and the Revolutionary Committee of Shenyang Medical College, People's Daily, 11 09 1969Google Scholar, CB, No. 903, 17 03 1970Google Scholar. For a more broad based discussion of related technological matters, which supports my argument, see Wheelwright, E. L. and Bruce, McFarlane, The Chinese Road to Socialism (New York, 1970), especially pp. 162–80. This stimulating book was brought to my attention after I had completed this article.Google Scholar

^57. Note the archetypal contrast between the movement to have the masses write their own history and the Chinese tradition of history being written exclusively by the scholar-official class.Google Scholar

^58. This discussion of KCLU is based upon a one-day visit there.Google Scholar

^59. If the Maoist line indeed is increasingly being spread throughout the educational system, it seems indisputable that there will be pay-offs in terms of certain educational and societal goals and disadvantages in terms of others. How, on balance, one evaluates the quality and utility of such an education depends largely on the set of standards one adopts – i.e., it depends upon one's outlook, on the “road” one takes. Those who adopt the bourgeois vision, stressing specialization, abstract intellectualism and the publication of books, for example, will criticize and mock the educational quality of Chinese schools and will ridicule the strategy of industrialization to which that quality is related. Those, on the other hand, who subscribe to “serving the people” as a reasonable standard for judging education and who are less than persuaded that a highly inegalitarian, non-participatory, individualistic form of industrialization is likely to lead either to the good society or even to relatively low cost, rapid development, will at least be much more open-minded, if not converted, to China's post-Cultural Revolution transformation in education. For members of the latter group, the evaluation of this experiment ultimately will depend upon at least two factors. First, the answer to the frequently elusive question of what truly serves the people. And second, the balance between the benefits and costs of the related Maoist strategy for societal development in the present and future.Google Scholar

^60. Ch'en, , Mao Papers, pp. 103–5.Google Scholar

^61. “Questions concerning the tasks and guidelines for May 7 cadre schools,” People's Daily, 22 08 1969Google Scholar, CB, No. 899, 19 01 1970Google Scholar. Much of the discussion in this section is based upon the excellent articles collected in this issue of CB and supported by my own and others' trips to May 7 schools; e.g., CCAS, China!, pp. 99–103Google Scholar. See also “The cadres: the May 7 cadre schools,” CNA, No. 779, 24 10 1969.Google Scholar

^62. “Questions Concerning,” Ibid.

^63. “May 7 cadre schools must maintain close contacts with the masses,” People's Daily, 27 10 1969Google Scholar, CB, No. 899Google ScholarPubMed. Generally regarding the significance Mao attaches to the masses, see Mao, , Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Peking, 1966), pp. 118–32.Google Scholar

^64. Mao treats the “three great revolutionary struggles,” which are the class struggle, the struggle for production, and the struggle for scientific experimentation, as the essence of social practice; Mao, , “On Practice,” SW, Vol. I, at p. 296. The third of these, the struggle for scientific experimentation, involves the working out and testing of truth through the cognitive and action process of integrating theory and practice. It may be conceived, therefore, as the methodological link between class struggle and the struggle for production, on the one hand, and revolutionary theory and practice, on the other.Google Scholar

^65. Scattered statistics suggest the scale of the endeavour, which tends to focus on China's bureaucratic centres, where administrative cadres are concentrated. For this reason, as well as for the sake of convenience, it is not surprising that foreign visitors to China have most frequently visited May 7 schools that service Peking. To my knowledge, visitors have seen at least three schools outside Peking, one outside Canton and one outside Tientsin. Tientsin is said to have quickly established in late 1968, 20 May 7 schools, which accommodated more than 11,000 cadres (“Questions Concerning”). Kwangtung province is said to have sent down more than 100,000 cadres to 300 May 7 cadre schools; Honan to have sent 20,000 cadres from former provincial party offices alone; etc.; “The opposition,” Part II, CNA, No. 749, 21 03 1969.Google Scholar

^66. “PLA Kunming command sets up study classes,” pp. 45–9.Google Scholar

^67. Ibid.

^68. I spent a day at this school, as well as a day at the Canton Municipality 4th May 7 Cadre School. The discussion below is based upon that visit.Google Scholar

^69. Mr Hsing was referring to Mao's “Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the CCP,” Mao, SW, Vol. IV, at p. 374.Google Scholar

^70. Yun, Wang, “Maoist ‘Revolutionary Committees’: organization and prospects,” Issues and Studies (12 1968), pp. 1–11; for a similar sort of analysis, see Domes. “The role of the military,” and Domes, “Military and moderation.”Google Scholar

^71. Wang Yun, ibid. p. 3.

^72. Domes, “The role of the military.”Google Scholar

^73. Evidence gathered by the first CCAS group to visit China in mid-1971 generally supports the patterns I suggest. Based largely on visits to low-level units, the group found that: “Ordinary workers formed an average of 45 per cent. of the committees … revolutionary cadres … an average of 36 per cent. and the PLA … averaged 14 per cent.”; China! p. 91.Google Scholar See, also, “Selected letters from the revolutionary masses,” People's Daily, 15 11 1968Google Scholar, CB, No. 869, 15 January 1969; “A new type school jointly managed by factories, communes and neighbourhood organizations,” by a Shanghai, Wen Hui Pao correspondent, People's Daily, 17 December 1968, CB, No. 870, 27 01 1969.Google Scholar The thinness of the military presence at the basic level is indicated in “The Revolutionary Committee and the Party in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution,” Current Scene, 15 04 1970; and see articles in “Mass delegates in Revolutionary Committees,” URS, Vol. 56, No. 5, 15 July 1969.Google Scholar

The hypothesis itself also coincides with tendencies evident during the revolutionary movement period and after 1949. “The fact is,” one analyst has written, “that the rural village is the only level at which the overwhelming majority of Chinese have any significant voice in community affairs.…” Townsend, Political Participation, p. 171, and see p. 48.Google Scholar

^74. Even if one accepts my hypothesis, one may still demur in terms of the significance of such numerical mass representation, much as Klein and Hager do regarding the Central Committee (see above, n. 31). The argument from numbers by itself cannot prove that mass participation is significant, rather than nominal. Nor, of course, can it show that “mass representatives” do in fact represent the masses. The exact same point, however, can also be made with regard to representatives of the PLA. But scholars and journalists seem less hung-up on this point with regard to the PLA. Although it still remains to be shown what operational significance, if any, the alleged domination of China by the military has had, analysts continue to write about it as if it had some self-evident significance. The military is treated like an interest group, and as Joel Glassman has suggested to me, it is presumed that the military tends to reject civil values.Google Scholar