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Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Political Equilibrium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Stuart R. Schram
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Extract

BOTH HALVES OF MY TITLE MAY REQUIRE EXPLANATION. WHY, IN AN issue devoted to political forces, an article on one man, and why the use of the vague term ‘equilibrium’? Because China today confronts us with the singular oddity of a country in which the existing political system has been attacked and partially dismantled on orders from the supreme leader, but nevertheless subsists to some extent; and in which the new system which he is striving to create has still not been firmly established or taken definite shape. It is, therefore, impossible to trace with precision the contours of the political forces, and indicate how they are related to one another, but while there may or may not exist in China a political system in the sense of an integrated whole, functioning according to definite rules, there clearly does exist a certain equilibrium – dynamic and unstable, but a kind of equilibrium none the less – between the various illdefined contenders for a share in political power, and the ‘force’ which stands at the centre of this political jungle is unquestionably Mao.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1969 , pp. 141 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

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References

1 For a stimulating attempt at a preliminary reappraisal, see John Gittings paper ‘Army-Party Relations in the Light of the Cultural Revolution - a Reversal of Verdicts?’ presented at the conference on the Chinese Communist Party held in July 1968 at Ditchley Manor.

2 I have endeavoured to present a preliminary sketch of the ideological aspects of the question in an article to be published in No. 37 of The China Quarterly.

3 See the Collection of Documents concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Volume I, published in May 1967 by the ‘Propagandists of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought’, Peking College of Engineering. The whole of this collection has been translated in No. 852 Current Background (Hong Kong), and for convenience I shall cite here the pagination of this translation. The Chinese text of these materials is also available in the West, and there is no question as to their authenticity. The above quotation is from page 73 of Current Background.

4 Current Background No. 852, p. 72.

5 Ibid., pp. 43, 51, 48, 67, 53, 46.

6 Wen-yüan, Yao, ‘The Working Class Must Exercise Leadership in Everything,’Peking Review no. 35, 1968, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

7 See his speech of April 1956: ‘On the Ten Great Relations’, of which the text has very kindly been communicated to me by Jerome Ch’en.

8 Chester Cheng, J. (ed.), The Politics of the Chinese Red Army, Stanford, Hoover-Institution, 1966.Google Scholar

9 Current Background No. 852, p. 135.

10 See Cbieb-fang Jib-pao‘Liberation Daily’, 21 November 1943 and 11 February 1944.

11 The terms employed by Liu are somewhat edulcorated in the official Peking translation of this speech. For extracts in a version closer to the original Chinese see H. Carrère d’Encausse and S. Schram, Marxism and Asia (to be published in February 1969 by Allen Lane The Penguin Press), Text IX 1.

12 For a brief summary of Weber’s theory of charisma, see Bendix’s, Richard introductory essay to a special issue of Asian Survey (Vol. VII, no. 6, 06 1967)Google Scholar on charismatic leadership in Asia.

13 Smedley, Agnes., Battle Hymn of China, London, 1944, pp. 121–2.Google Scholar

14 Lifton, Robert J., ‘Mao Tse-tung and the “Death of the Revolution”,’Trans-action, Vol. 5, no. 9, 09 1968.Google Scholar