THE CHINESE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, 1958-1961 (REFERENCE TITLE: (Sanitized))

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CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1
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November 28, 1961
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA [ P ;9SO0427A00060011Q06'1!1 28 November 1961 OCI No. 5539/61 Copy No. THE CHINESE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, 1958-1961 (Reference Title: 25X1A Office of Current Intelligence AMCHIVAL RECORD SECRET RETURN TO AGENCY ARCHIVES Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A00060_014ao1 'X Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET 25X1A THE CHINESE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, 1958-1961 25X1A This is a working paper, our first assessment of the Chinese Communist leadership since We have thought it useful to make this assessment in the context (a) of the development of the Sino-Soviet dispute and (b) of the erratic course of Chinese domestic policy in the period 1958-1961-- particularly because, in our view, a further deterioration in the Sino-Soviet relationship and in the regime's economic position may well force a crisis in the Chinese leadership, In preparing this paper we have had profitable talks with, and useful comments from, several other analysts, in 25X1A particular of the China Division of the Sino-Soviet Bloc Area of OCI, of the Far Eastern Branch of Analysis Division of ORR, and of the Cur- 25X1A rent Support Staff of ORR. We alone, however, are responsible for the conclusions, which are controversial. The Sino-Soviet Studies Group would welcome further com- ment on this paper, addressed in this instance to the coordina- tor of the group, at Ext. 7447. Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A oved For Release"GI k-RDP79W0427A000600110001-1 THE CHINESE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, 1958-1961 SUMMARY and CONCLUSIONS ................................... i Introductory Note ............... ".......................... 1 Offensives, 1957-1958 ..................................... 1 Retreats, 1958-1959 ....................................... 6 The Purge, Autumn 1959 .................................... 14 New Offensives, Early 1960 ................................ 23 The Hard Summer, 1960 .....................................31 Intransigence and Retreat, Autumn 1960 .................... 41 The Moscow Conference and After, Winter 1960-61........... 48 The Sag Backward, Early 1961 .............................. 55 The Quiet Spring, 1961 .................................... 61 The 40th Anniversary, July 1961 ........................... 71 Continued Caution, July-October 1961 ...................... 77 Recapitulation, 1958-1961 ................................. 89 Sanitized - Approved For Release: T-CIA -RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET VW I"# THE CHINESE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP, 1958-1961 Summary and Conclusions In the agitated developments in Communist China in the years 1958-1961, there have been certain abiding features in the relationship between Mao Tse-tung and various groups of his lieutenants and in the relationships of those groups with one another. The most important of these groups--not yet cabals, possibly not even cliques--have been, and remain: the party-machine figures around Liu Shao-chi, which include at the politburo level Teng Hsiao-ping, Peng Chen, Ko Ching-shih, Li Ching-chuan, and Tan Chen-lin; the administrator-economist figures around Chou En-lai, which include at the politburo level Chen Yun, Chen Yi, Li Fu-chun, Li Hsien-nien, and Po I-po; and (potentially) the military group once clustered around Peng Te-huai, which at this time has less stature as a group, but individual leaders of which would be important in any struggle for power. Throughout the period, "Mao's thought" has been the world- view from which all Chinese policies have been allegedly de- rived, the dogma from which there has been no appeal. Mao has been given credit for formulating the main propositions in the dispute with the Soviet party and for designing the most important of the Chinese domestic programs, and these have been presented as surpassingly brilliant in conception. When circumstances have forced a retreat in either area (the retreats in the domestic programs have been far greater), it has been said that Mao's thought had not been fully understood, or that Mao's policies had not been properly executed, or that "objective circumstances" (e.g., weather) had been overwhelm- ingly unfavorable. In such periods of retreat, Mao has always been given the credit for initiating the desirable changes, for having inspected the work of his subordinates and corrected their errors. In periods and areas of militant advance (the course to which Mao is predisposed) Mao has been emphatically A 'fi d 'th 4. 11 4 d 1 id t 1' t h t t i J an propos S i i W W a m ions an VV es, w en ereas c in periods and areas of retreat Mao has usually chosen not to emphasize his personal association with the retreat. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Release: CIA-RDP74600427A000600110001-1 Throughout the period, Mao has continued to give his favor primarily to the party-machine leaders around Liu Shao-chi, those whose predispositions are closest to his own. Although in periods of retreat Mao has sometimes given slighter public evidence of his favor for this group than in periods of ad- vance, in all confrontations which could become a test of strength, such as party meetings, Mao has made clear that they remained his favorites, even when the policies associated with them have been modified. Partly in the belief that this group constitutes his most reliable base of support in the party, and partly in preparation for this group (especially Liu) to become his principal heirs, Mao has permitted this group to strengthen its position in the structure of power, while he has restricted the administrator-economist group and has broken the military group. It seems virtually certain that Mao in the years 1958-1961 has lost favor with some of his lieutenants. His prestige has declined particularly in the eyes of some of the administrator- economist figures and the military figures--not simply in the obvious cases of those who have been discriminated against or even purged, but with respect too to those who remain active leaders in apparently good standing. He may have lost prestige also with a few of the party-machine figures. Although the pressure on Mao has been reduced by the ten- dency of Chinese leaders to stand together as Chinese against the Soviet party (a course which common prudence would also dictate, since they and their families are at Mao's mercy), at least some of Mao's lieutenants--especially among the ad- ministrator-economist and military groups--have given indica- tion of an understanding of the political, economic and mili- tary consequences, both immediate and long-term, of the stand against the Soviet party. These leaders could reasonably con- clude, and some of them almost certainly have so concluded, that Mao's basic position has been in error, or, even if his position has been more right than wrong, that his aggressive conduct of the dispute has been defective, in that it has en- couraged the Soviet leaders to stand together against the Chinese. Mao has also lost stature, in the eyes of some of his lieutenants--especially among the administrator-economist and military leaders--for his radical domestic policies Sanitized - Approved For RelggggijrIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap roved For F619HES : CIA-RDP7UO0427A000600110001-1 themselves, even considered apart from the role of these policies in exacerbating the Sino-Soviet dispute. Some of these leaders could hardly fail to conclude that Chinese eco- nomic and military development, particularly the development of agriculture, could have proceeded just as rapidly, with a much more solid base for China's long-term development into a modern industrial and military power, if Mao had not over- turned the policies pursued prior to 1958. Beyond this, even those leaders of the administrator-eco- nomist and military groups who have remained in favor have had good reason to resent Mao's preferment of the party-machine leaders and Mao's discrimination against, and even purges of, some of their own long-time comrades, including some whose only offense has been that of being right when Mao and the party-machine figures were wrong. Mao has almost certainly remained, however, in the high favor of most of the leaders of the most important group of his lieutenants, the party-machine figures--the most important, because Mao probably cannot do without their support. The party-machine figures, who have shared the responsibility for Mao's policies considerably more than have the leaders of other groups, have naturally been disposed to exaggerate the successes of such policies and to minimize the failures. They have of course been gratified too that their mistakes have not cost them Mao's favor--not only have they not suffered for these mistakes, they have actually improved their positions in the structure of power. As of late 1961, then, the time seems to have come for Mao when a significant, if indeterminable, number of his long- time lieutenants would prefer to have another leader, as would a substantial segment of the party as a whole. Moreover, the Soviet party has made it clear that it would like to bring Mao down, in favor of a more conservative and more responsive leader like Chou En-lai. Mao does not seem disposed to step aside at this time. If he has even given any thought to the question of whether to resign as party chairman at the forth- coming Ninth Congress, he seems to have concluded that, in this time of sore troubles, he is indispensable. Although Mao announced his intention to resign from his post as chairman of the government at a time (December 1958) of retreats in his domestic programs and in the assertions Sanitized - Approved For F Ie#ff : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ajaproved For R I s T: CIA-RDP7 00427A000600110001-1 made for them, it seems very doubtful that he would be willing to resign his really important posts--chairman of the party politburo and central committee--in a comparable period. The December 1958 announcement was widely interpreted--we believe incorrectly--as a forced decision, a blow to Mao. Mao is exceedingly vain, and he would not care to provide grounds for derogatory speculation again. Mao's resignation from his party chairmanship in a time of troubles would constitute good presumptive evidence that he had indeed been pushed, and it would probably soon be followed by his death, as Mao is not a man who can be safely left to brood. If Mao steps aside voluntarily, it is likely to be in the early stages of a militant advance which he has initiated and for which he can claim the credit--an advance which would have to include a rapid advance in Chinese economic develop- ment, particularly an improvement in agriculture, in order to be meaningful. The earliest such period in prospect, accord- ing to the Chinese party's own forecasts, is in 1963, and Mao may now intend to step aside at that time. However, it is doubtful that there can be another rapid advance unless and until the USSR restores something like the program of aid to China (including large credits) that existed before mid-1960, and it is equally doubtful that Moscow intends to do this until Mao has either backed down or is no longer the leader, so conditions may not be any more favorable for his voluntary resignation in 1963 than they are now. If the Chinese leader- ship could content itself with becoming a first-class Asian power in this decade, Mao might not be under significant pres- sure to abdicate. However, all groups of Chinese leaders appear dedicated to the goal of making China a modern military and industrial power, capable of contesting the U.S. position in the Pacific. With Mao's intransigence seen as standing in the way of this goal, there seems to be, for the first time since 1935, a possibility worth mentioning of Mao's involuntary removal from leadership. This possibility will be discussed presently. Throughout the years 1958-1961, the party-machine leaders around Liu have taken care to associate themselves as closely as possible with Mao's positions, and Liu himself has been given credit for helping to formulate some of them. These leaders have been most prominent during the party's offensives, with respect both to the Sino-Soviet dispute (they have been the principal Chinese representatives since mid-1960 in Sanitized - Approved For Re ~ CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For F e1ease : CIA-RDP74900427A000600110001-1 confrontations with the Soviet party*) and to Chinese domestic programs. In periods of retreat, the party-machine figures have been less conspicuous, although they have recently been putting themselves forward as favoring for the time being con- servative policies in economic development. Just as Mao can never be wrong, so these leaders most firmly identified with his policies have been able to contend that they too have been right all along. Although they have sometimes been criticized indirectly, no fundamental criticism of their policies has been permitted, and they themselves have been able to shift their positions with Mao to pre-empt any attack. Throughout the period, Liu Shao-chi has been given addi- tional tokens of Mao's preference for him as his successor: e.g., Liu gave the principal address at the party congress in 1959, led the Chinese delegation to the Moscow conference of the parties in autumn 1930, and gave the party's 40th anni- versary address in July 1961. Moreover, in each of the three main developments affecting the structure of power in this period--the changes in the composition of the politburo and secretariat in spring 1958, the purge of the regime in autumn 1959, and the re-establishment of the great regional bureaus in or about autumn 1960--the party-machine leaders strengthened their positions, getting into an increasingly solid position for a showdown in the event that Mao's arrangements for the succession are not respected. Just as it seems clear that Mao has lost prestige with other groups of leaders if not with the party-machine leaders in recent years, so it seems clear that at least some of the party-machine figures--including the most important ones, Liu, Tong, and Peng Chen--have fallen into disfavor with at least some of the leaders of other groups, for much the same reasons. The situation is not black-and-white. Some of the party- machine figures have shown some concern with Mao's intransigence in the Sino-Soviet dispute and have shown some sensitivity to problems of economic development, while some of the admin- istrator-economists, particularly those given jobs in the *The administrator-economist leader Chou En-lai headed the Chinese delegation to the Soviet 22nd party congress, the most recent confrontation. However, Liu, Teng, and Peng Chen have played much larger roles in the past 18 months; and Chou's delegation, apart from himself, was composed entirely of party- machine figures. The Russians were invited to conclude, from Chou's assignment, that they could expect nothing even from their favorites. Sanitized - Approved For RgP g : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rem WTCIA-RDP700427A000600110001-1 party machine and assigned important roles in the conduct of the Sino-Soviet dispute, have been closely associated with radical policies during periods of "leap" and have stood firm with Mao against Moscow, so that in some periods it has been hard to find a significant difference, on the record, between right-wing party-machine figures like Ko Ching-shih and Tao Chu and left-wing administrator-economists like Li Fu-chun or Po I-po. Nevertheless, in addition to the obvious differences between left-wing party-machine figures like Teng Hsiao-ping and Tan Chen-lin and right-wing administrator-economists like Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui, there have been and remain signi- ficant differences between the party-machine figures, averaged out, and the administrator-economists, averaged out. In addition to losing favor with at least some of the other leaders for their conduct of the Sino-Soviet dispute and their obstructive intervention in economic development, Liu, Teng, Peng Chen and other party-machine figures, as the beneficiaries of Mao's favor in the various ways noted above, have unquestionably provoked the resentment of some of the leaders of other groups. They have also given the Soviet party almost as much cause as has Mao to wish to see them brought down. The fortunes of Mao and the party-machine lead- ers thus seem intertwined. They appear to need each other, because they have the same opponents, both domestic and foreign, and each has assets important to the other. More- over, without the continuing support of Mao, the party-machine leaders may not become his heirs; and if other leaders become his heirs, Mao can have no confidence (he can never have as- surance) that his policies will prevail after he has relinquish- ed the instruments of power. Throughout the years 1958-1961, most of the administrator- economist figures around Chou En-lai have been associated with the policies of the dominant leaders (Mao and the party-machine figures) closely enough to remain in active roles, but indivi- dual members of the administrator-economist group have shown various degrees of reservations about them. These leaders have been most prominent in periods of retreat (much more mark- ed in domestic policies), but even in these periods they have not been permitted to contend that they were right or to make direct criticism of the dominant figures, they have been obliged to explain conservative policies in a context of defending the radical policies for which others were primarily responsible, and they have had to acquiesce in distortions of the record Sanitized - Approved For Relea RA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App'Ved For ReleaEgTCIA-RDP79SQP427A000600110001-1 which could later be used (if necessary) against them. Calculat- ingTthe balance of power and reading correctly the signs of Mao's favor for the party-machine figure, they have apparently been equally circumspect in party meetings and have avoided a test of strength. In the various changes in the structure of power in the past three years, they have not gained in strength nearly as much as has the party-machine group, and a number of second-level administrator-economists have been purged. In the light of the course of Chinese economic development, most of the administrator-economist figures should have gained in favor with Mao and the party-machine leaders in this period. However, even if the dominant figures were fair-minded, most of the administrator-economists, through their increased as- sociation with "leap forward" policies from autumn 1959 to late 1960, have reduced the amount of credit they would otherwise be entitled to. In any case, the dominant leaders do not ap- pear to be fair-minded, do not seem disposed to concede even privately, let alone publicly, that others have been more nearly right than they have. As suggested above, the adminis- trator-economist figures have seemed to be conscious of this, have seemed to be careful not to give offense to the dominant leaders by pointing out that they (the administrator-economists) had been more nearly right. As of late 1961, most of the administrator-economist lead- ers seem to be in the limited favor of Mao and the party- machine leaders. They seem to be in much better favor with the Soviet party than are Sao and the party-machine group, but they presumably recognize that Soviet favor for them, at ? least at this time, is positively dangerous to them. It seems in their interest to try to continue to be regarded by the dominant figures as useful technicians, to try indeed to conciliate and please the dominant figures, until circumstances are more favorable (if they ever are) for a showdown. In the years 1958-1961, the military leaders have not had a stable relationship with Mao and with the other groups of leaders. Some of the military leaders, feeling strong enough in 1958-1959 to contest the propositions and policies of the dominant non-military leaders, and then desperate enough to carry their case (through Peng Te-huai) to the Soviet party, were the main objects of the purge of autumn 1959. Since then, the military establishment has been subordinated to generals responsive far more to Mao than to their military comrades. Sanitized - Approved For FWJ 8 w. : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReleaseRFEIA-RDP79SA427A000600110001-1 Since 1959, only Lin Piao of the professional military leaders (as distinct from political officers, who are part of the party-machine) has played an important public role. In this role, he has defended the subordination of the military to the party, applauded Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy and proclaimed the loyalty of the military to the party and to Mao personally. The pronouncements of Liu and other military figures have shown an awareness that the non- military leaders regard control of the military as the most important part of the internal security effort. As noted above, Mao's presumed loss of favor with some of his important lieutenants has derived from his stand against the Soviet party, his radical domestic programs, and his pre- ferment of the party-machine leaders. Of these issues, the Sino-Soviet dispute, in the context of Chinese economic mis- fortunes, seems to have the greatest potential for causing a crisis in the Chinese party in the near future. There is evidence that the Kremlin has already selected a 'Soviet team' in China--centering on Chou En-lai, with Chen Yun as the principal economic planner and the purged Peng Te- huai (or a more prudent associate with similar views, possibly Su Yu) as the principal military figure. But Moscow cannot field its team so long as Mao and the party-machine leaders dominate the party. In addition to continuing to withhold substantial economic aid to China, it is open to Moscow to expel or to threaten to expel the Peiping regime from the bloc. This could be done by declaring publicly that the USSR will no longer honor the wino-Soviet treaty, or by warning privately that this action is contemplated; the latter would seem preferable, in order not to encourage the Chinese Nationalists. If the Soviet party chooses not to push the dispute to this point, and on the assumption that the anticipated food crisis in China does not become the kind of disaster which would result in anarchy, Mao can probably continue as the Chinese party leader without serious challenge--i.e., without finding it necessary to purge more than an isolated leader or two, as he did Peng Te-huai. However, if the Soviet party wishes to put maximum pressure on Mao at a time of maximum Chinese weakness, an at- tractive course would seem to be to threaten to withdraw from the treaty, timing this action to immediately precede or to coincide with the anticipated food crisis in spring 1962. The Sanitized - Approved For R CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App1rerved For Releasg9 IA-RDP79S,QA-427A000600110001-1 Soviet calculation would presumably be--still assuming a crisis short of a disaster--that Mao would not give in but that others would wish to, thus forcing a test of strength between the Mao- led intransigents and those who vto uld see no hope either for China's development or China's defense without the alliance. It is not inconceivable that, in such an event, the party- machine leaders would turn against Mao, but tiis possibility seems small, in view of their identification in everyone's eyes (Chinese or Russian) with Mao's positions. The probability is that Mao and most of the party-machine leaders would stand together in a showdown, and that they would win. It does not seem likely that the issue of whether to have a new leadership with a new policy would be genuinely debated among the 18 voting members of the politburo, because the challengers could not afford to lose, and, even if they could win a vote, they could not expect Mao and the party-machine leaders to accept peaceably their dislodgement. If this issue did indeed come to a vote, it is probable that the challengers would lose right there. On the assump- tion--an unrealistic one--that everyone would vote according to his conscience and with confidence that the results would be accepted, Mao and the party-machine leaders even in those circumstances could probably count on at least ten votes: Mao, the party-machine leaders Liu, Teng, and Peng Chen, Mao's old military comrade Chu Te, the military leader Lin Piao, Lin's oldtime political officer Lo Jung-huan, and the lesser party-machine figures Tan Chen-lin, Ko Ching-shih and Li Ching- chuan. If one of the less loyal or less radical figures, say Ko, were to join the opposition, Mao would still have a stand- off, but rather than a shift in that direction, it seems more likely instead that Mao and the others named above would be joined by some of the administrator-economist figures--perhaps by the party elder Tung Pi-wu and by those who have worked most closely with the party machine, Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien- nien. The opposition might consist, for example, only of Chou En-lai, Chen Yun, Chen Yi, and the disappointed onetime field army commanders Liu Po-cheng and Ho Lung. Still on the unrealistic assumption that the Chinese party would adhere to parliamentary procedure, if a stand-off in the politburo were submitted to a plenary session of the central committee (as Khrushchev has maintained was the case in his Sanitized - Approved For R ~ R~ : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - proved For ReJease : CIA-RDP7'6500427A000600110001-1 " in June 1957) it is again clash with the "antiparty group machine group would win. Of probable that Mao and the party- members the 93 (at most; perhaps no more than 85) full (voting) the party's dominant leaders could of the central committee, so that probably count on about 45 votes from the start, virtually all the other members would have to combine from the start to make a stand. As that the caswe of ould tbe aorapidr it lad transfer t mrik o' orters, with only a few too proud to eo th the ra e ankss of fMaprush. or too obtuse to join the In any case, it is not credible that Mao and the party- machine leaders could be dislodged by means simply of a vote in the politburo or cenrl to co rushchevwbytther"athe case nti-partyay have been in the challenge arty the challengers group" in June 1957, in the Chinese party confidence that almost certainly would not act until they they could bring greater military force to bear than could the f develop- challenged. In this connection, certain Stalin'sedeath in 1953 are ments in Moscow immediately after relevant: namely, that Beriya surrounded the Kremlin with secret police troops, and these in turn were surrounded and regular army forces. neutralized by It would be hard for any group of challengers--to Mao and the party-machine leaders--to have confidence that they could command greater resources in armed force. pTheoforces es would following which could be brought binationon o of the Jui-thing (Lin's figures: Lin Piao (minister of de) Lo security forces) , Li Ya- chief-of-staff, and commander of public lou (believed still chief of the secret police), Liu ur lou (commander of the air force), Hsu Kuang-ta (c of armored forces), and Yang Yung (the last-identified com- mander of the Peiping regional headquarters and of thasPeiping garrison command). The first two named are re9 to Mao Teng own men and the third isbsn~e~Liu)eofothevremainingand three is Hsiao-ping jointly, while associated for assignment) was to and continuation in many with Lin Piao Yag'sanother many years with Teng; reflects Teng"s assess- ment sensitive Peiping posts presumably ment of him as reliable. In sum, not only would the challengers u sufficient armed support from these have a hard time lining p even once, their overtures sources, but, if they guessed wrong would be reported and their group would be wiped out. Sanitized - Approved For Releases F-TRDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For F AR : CIA-RDP7&S00427A000600110001-1 It was noted earlier, however, that there was a possi- bility worth mentioning of Mao's involuntary removal. For one thing, the width and depth of resentment of Mao is believed to be such that there is a continuing possibility of his assassination. In Mao's ramblings about China, he must some- times be an easy target, and an assassination might be managed by a person acting either on his own or in collusion with some of Mao's lieutenants. Mao might also be killed by a small group at a meeting in Peiping, with the death explained as due to cerebral hemorrhage or whatever. Moreover, the above calculations on the structure of power--on the responsiveness of individuals and components to Mao and the party-machine leaders--represent simply proba- bilities, and a mistake or a change in any part of these calculations might lead to a very different conclusion. For example, if the party-machine leaders as a group were to turn against Mao, in combination with some of the administrator- economist and military leaders they could probably bring him down. If Teng Hsiao-ping alone, of this group, were to turn against Mao and other party-machine leaders, in combination with other groups he might be able to bring down both Mao and the other party-machine leaders, as he has apparently built himself a position in the structure of power inferior only to Mao's (he does not appear to have Mao's resources in armed force). Also, Peng Te-huai had the same public record of whole- hearted allegiance to Mao that Lin Piao has had, but Peng nevertheless turned against Mao, and it is not impossible that Lin will do so; should Lin do so, he might, despite the ill- ness that reduces his ability to lead a military group, be able to put decisive force at the disposal of the challengers. The Peiping headquarters and garrison commander, Yang Yung, who is not known to be close to Mao, and secret police chief Li Ko- nung, who has been reported by some sources as close to Chou En-lai, are both well-placed for swift action in support of a coup. Moreover, there have been renewed indications in re- cent months that the party leaders are not yet satisfied with their degree of control of the military. The possibility of dislodgement that exists for Mao exists also for the party-machine leaders, if Mao were to try to pre- serve his own position by sacrificing them to a strong coali- tion of administrator-economist and military challengers. But Mao himself would probably not long survive the fall of the Sanitized - Approved For R&': CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Re? CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 party-machine leaders. Moreover, if not caught unprepared and confronted by massive armed force, the party-machine leaders could make a fight for it, and might win. They have important sources of both intelligence and fast-moving (if small-scale) armed force: Teng Hsiao-ping is the probable supervisor of the secret police, which among other things guards party leaders and directs counter-intelligence in the armed forces, and Teng has some of his own men in that body; as secretary-general Teng oversees the political department, and has some of his own men there too; the minister of public security and the political officer of the Peiping headquarters are both Teng's proteges; and Peng Chen is the party secretary in Peiping. The party's Ninth Congress, supposed to convene in 1961, will probably not be held on schedule, and might even be post- poned until the party has a lot more to celebrate than it does now. On the assumption, however, that the congress is to be held sometime in the next six months, Mao and the party-machine leaders may be devising right now the changes in the central party organs, to be 'voted' at and immediately after the con- gress, which will preserve them in their dominant positions. The role of party leaders in making the principal reports to the congress should again illustrate (deliberately so) the relative standing of individual leaders and the various groups. Some conclusions might be drawn too from the degree to which the congress is an open affair; the September 1956 session was open, the May 1958 session largely closed. As at both sessions of the Eighth Congress, Mao will prob- ably make some rather brief but important opening remarks and Liu Shao-chi will then give the principal report, which will cover the full range of the party's affairs, outlining the situation, describing the party's general line, and defining the party's tasks. Teng Hsiao-ping seems likely to make the report second in importance, a more detailed discussion (than in Liu's report) of the Chinese party's position in the world Communist movement (in particular, Sino-Soviet relations) and perhaps also of the Chinese party's state of health. It seems likely that the third of the principal reports, a more detailed discussion (than in Liu's or Teng's reports) of economic ac- complishments and plans, will be given by one of the administra- tor-economist figures, probably Chou En-lai or Li Fu-chun. Sanitized - Approved For Rei~~TCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A oved For R ARV CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 At the May 1958 session all three of the main reports were given by party-machine figures, but this time, in a period of depression, it is doubtful that any of them would care to make the economic report. After many more lesser speeches by lesser figures (perhaps more than 100), the format calls for the congress on its last day to publish the namelist of the new central committee, which in the following day or two holds its first plenum to elect the officers of the central committee and (concurrently) politburo and the members of the politburo, secretariat, and control commission. As noted earlier, Mao apparently intends to remain chair- man of the central committee, in which post he is automatically chairman of the politburo and senior member of the politburo's now small standing committee (the inner circle of the inner circle). If instead he becomes honorary chairman (an action we would regard as involuntary at this time), Liu Shao-chi would probably become the chairman; the dark horse is Teng Hsiao-ping. The five vice-chairmen of the central committee, con- currently members of the standing committee, Liu Shao-chi, Chou En-lai, Chu Te, Chen Yun, and Lin Piao, will probably retain these posts; there is a chance, however, that Chen Yun will be dropped from these posts for rightist sentiment while keeping his membership in the politburo. The party-machine leaders might add Peng Chen to the officers of the central com- mittee and hence to the standing committee, while the adminis- trator-economists would probably like to add Chen Yi or Li Fu- chun, the latter being more acceptable to the party-machine group; the addition of either Peng or Li would put a second person in the position now occupied by Teng Hsiao-ping alone, i.e. being a member concurrently of the politburo, standing committee, and secretariat. Teng will probably remain the secretary-general, hence a member of the standing committee and senior member of the secretariat. The other eight full (voting) members of the politburo --in addition to the seven officers named above, plus Peng Chen, Chen Yi, and Li Fu-chun--will probably be retained. These are the party-machine figures Ko Ching-shih, Li Ching- chuan, and Tan Chen-lin (although there is an outside chance that the extremist Tan will be dropped as a sop to other lead- ers); party elder Tung Pi-wu and the administrator-economist Li Hsien-nien; the inactive military figures Ho Lung and Liu Po-cheng Sanitized - Approved For R 9 : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appre'ed For RetVf NTCIA-RDP795Q,427A000600110001-1 (although there is an outside chance that Liu will be dropped); and the inactive political officer Lo Jung-huan. Any or all of the alternate (non-voting) members of the politburo--the party-machine figures Kang Sheng and Ulanfu, the administrator- economist figures Po I-po and Chang Wen-tien, and the propagand- ists Lu Ting-i and Chen Po-ta--might be elevated to full member- ship, except for Chang Wen-tien, who may be dropped for right- ist activity. A few party leaders will probably be added to the polit- buro, as either full or alternate members. At least two party- machine figures, including one or more of the following four, will probably be selected: Tao Chu (Southwest Bureau), Sung Jen-chiung (Northeast Bureau), Liu Lan-tao (secretariat, and possibly North China Bureau) and Hsieh Fu-chih (minister of public security). (It should be noted that Liu Lan-tao has been out of the news for a year; although we think it likely that he has been occupied with an unpublicized task, another observer may be right in surmising that Liu, who announced and played a part in the purge of autumn 1959, has himself been purged.) Other party-machine figures who may be con- sidered, each of whom seems to have an outside chance of mak- ing the politburo, are Liu Ning-i and Liu Chang-sheng (labor leaders), Li Wei-han (united front), Wang Chia-hsiang, Li Hsueh-feng and Yang Shang-kun (members of the secretariat), Tan Cheng and Hsiao Hua (political department), and Lin Feng (education coordinator). One or more of the administrator-economist figures will probably be added to the politburo. Those who seem to have the best chance to be named appear to be Nieh Jung-chen (chair- man of the scientific-technological commission) and, of all people, Teng Tzu-hui (rural work department), whose appearance (smiling broadly) with the leaders on National Day may mean that he is again in good favor. Those with an outside chance, if the leaders wish to bring a woman into the politburo for the first time, include Tsai Chang and Teng Ying-chao, both active in work among women, the wives respectively of Li Fu-chun and Chou En-lai. There are a few non-military leaders not regarded as aligned with either the party-machine group or the administrator-econo- mist group who seem to have an outside chance of selection for the politburo. These include the party's oldest el.ders , Mao's old teacher Hsu Te-li and old follower Wu Yu-chang, Liao Cheng-chih (specialist in "peace" fronts), and Chao Frh-lu (machine building). Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For F~ ffiff l : CIA-RDPM800427A000600110001-1 It seems probable that another active military figure, Lo Jui-ching, chief-of-staff, will be added to the single military leader, Lin Piao, now on the politburo. However, as noted earlier, Li, like Lin, is responsive to Mao, not to his military comrades. None of those eligible who would be more nearly representative of most military leaders seems to have more than an outside chance of being named: Hsu Hsiang- chien (inactive), Hsiao Ching-kuang (navy), Liu Ya-lou (air force), Hsu Kuang-ta (armored forces), Yeh Chien-ying (military academy), and Wang Shu-sheng (a deputy minister of defense). Party-machine figures already occupy eight of the 11 posts in the secretariat: Teng Hsiao-ping, secretary-general, who directs the work of the secretariat and is believed to supervise directly secret police work; Peng Chen, his senior deputy, and the probable supervisor of the organization de- partment; Tan Chen-lin, the link with party and government organs concerned with rural work; Wang Chia-hsiang, concerned with liaison with foreign Communist parties; Tan Cheng, the link with political control of the military; Li Hsueh-feng, organs concerned with industry and communications; Liu Lan- tao, disciplinary and security bodies; and Yang Shang-kun, central committee administration. The others are the adminis- trator-economists Li Fu-chun, the link with organs concerned with economic planning, and Li Hsien-nien, finance and trade; and Mao's writer Hu Chiao-mu, indoctrination. Huang Ko-cheng, the secretariat's link with the party's military committee and the military (as opposed to political) affairs of the military establishment, was dropped some time ago for his as- sociation with Peng Te-huai in opposition to Mao's policies. All of the above 11 (not including Huang) appear to be in good favor, and almost all of them, except those given key posts outside Peiping which would not permit them to take part in the daily work of the secretariat, will probably keep their posts, with some of the alternate members becoming full mem- bers. It is possible, however, that the extremist Tan will be replaced (conceivably by his rival, Teng Tzu-hui, more likely by a party-machine figure like Liao Lu-yen or Chen Cheng-jen), that the relatively inactive Tan Cheng will be replaced by a similar but more energetic type like Hsiao Hua, that Wang Chia- hsiang will be replaced by Wu Hsiu-chuan, his deputy in the liaison department, and that Liu Lan-tao will be replaced by Chang Ting-cheng or Wang Tsung-wu if Liu has been assigned to one of the regional bureaus. Sanitized - Approved For Re T CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Relea?fdRCItA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 NNW Some secretaries,may be added to the secretariat, to act as links with party and government organs in some other areas of concern regarded as now meriting a full-time secretary. It would seem necessary, for example, to replace Huang Ko- cheng (this may already have been done) as the link with the military, and each group of leaders would like to see one of its own men in this important post. The party-machine lead- ers will probably succeed in installing a primarily political or security type like Lo Jung-huan or Lo Jui-thing, whereas the administrator-economists would like to have a onetime military leader close to themselves like Nieh Jung-then or Yeh Chien-ying, and the active military leaders would prefer someone like Su Yu or Hsu Kuang-ta or Yang Cheng-wu. Some other areas of concern which may be given greater representation on the secretariat than they now have, and some party leaders qualified to deal with them (party-machine figures unless otherwise specified), are: minority nation- alities, which have been a problem, and which would probably require a man with a public security or intelligence back- ground as well, such as Li Wei-han; the secret police, Hsieh Fu-chih, or Li Ko-Hung; scientific development, Lin Feng or Chang Chi--chun; foreign affairs, Wu Hsiu-chuan, the unaligned Liao Cheng-chih, or the administrator-economist figure Chang Han-fu; foreign trade, the administrator-economists Yeh Chi- chuang or Fang I; youth and women's work, Hu Yao-pang, or one of the wives of the administrator-economist leaders; and the regional bureaus, one of the current regional first secretaries, such as Ko Ching-shih, or an administrator-economist figure with similar experience such as Hsi Chung-hsun. The relatively unimportant control commission, concerned with disciplinary questions below the central committee level, can safely remain in the hands of the unimportant party elder Tung Pi-wu, who in any case is supervised by his senior deputy, Liu Lan-tao, from Liu's post on the secretariat. Some inef- fectual members of this body will probably be dropped. The directors and deputy directors of the party's central departments, which are subordinate to the secretariat, are not to be named by the party congress. These departments are established, altered, and staffed as the need arises, by the politburo standing committee and the secretariat. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For 6W& : CIA-RDP74800427A000600110001-1 The party's central committee now probably has between 85 and 93 full members (depending on how many of those in disfavor have already been removed), and between 87 and 92 alternate members. Both groups will probably be expanded, as the party membership has increased. Among the full (vot- ing) members there are about 10 persons aligned wholly with Mao, about 35 party-machine figures (by far the largest group), about 15 administrator-economist figures, about 15 military men, and about 15 miscellaneous types not regarded as being in any group. Roughly these proportions are expected to pre- vail in the new central committee. Many of the members and alternate members of the central committee elected in 1956 are not expected to appear on the new namelist--both those positively in disfavor and those who have done nothing much to retain favor. Peng Te-huai and Huang Ko-cheng should be among the missing, as should Li Tao and Chao Chien-min, the provincial secretaries who fell in 1958. Others who may be dropped include: Ku Ta-tsun, Feng Pai-chu, and Pan Fu-sheng, provincial secretaries criticized as rightists in 1958; Chang Wen-tien, who may have ventured too far to the right in 1959; Yang Te-chih, Hung Hsueh-chih, Chang Ta-chih, Teng Hua, Wan I, Hsu Hai-tung, Chou Pao-chung, Wang Shih-tai, and Liu Chen, military leaders who dropped out of the news during or soon after the purge of autumn 1959; Chia To-fu and Yang Hsien-cheng, who also disappeared in 1959; Shu Tung, Liu Ko-ping, and Chou Hsiao-chou, the provincial secretaries removed in 1960, and Chien Ying, the minister of internal affairs replaced in 1960; Lin Tieh and Chang Chung Jiang, among the provincial first secretaries recently re- placed or missing from the news in recent months; Yang Te- chih, a military leader missing for the past year; Chen Shao- yu, Mao's old antagonist who has been ill in Moscow for many years; and several others who have been inactive owing to ill- ness or some unapparent failing, including (but not restricted to) Teng Tai-yuan, Chang Yun-i, Wang Wei-thou, Cheng Wei-san, Li Li-san, and Chen Chi-han. There are only two important party-machine figures in this speculative list, and two or three important administrator-economist figures, whereas there are ten important military figures. Whatever the precise composition of the final casualty list, the military are expected to be hit the hardest, and the party-machine group the least hard. Sanitized - Approved For Rem: CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReleaseETCIA-RDP744S00427A000600110001-1 As the foregoing discussion suggests, it is probable that Liu Shao-chi will succeed Mao--if, as thought probable, Mao survives any crisis in the party in the next few months and if, as is possible, he dies of natural causes or steps aside voluntarily in the period 1962-63. Again, however, the posi- tion of Teng Hsiao-ping and the military leaders will be important. Teng seems to have enough strength to challenge Liu, if he chooses. Lin Piao's allegiance has been to Mao, not the party-machine leaders, and many of the professional military figures have even less reason to cherish Liu than they do Mao; the alignment of Lin and/or other military lead- ers with the administrator-economist group, after Mao's de- parture, might even the odds for a struggle with Liu and Teng, together or separately. On the other hand, the present ad- ministrator-economist leaders, without the standing threat of significant support for them from the military, might be picked off and squeezed out. In sum, it seems likely that Mao and most of the party- machine leaders will stand together successfully against their opponents until Mao retires or dies, even if the Soviet party exerts maximum pressure on Peiping at a time of maximum Chinese weakness. There is a fair possibility, however, that Mao will be dislodged in a coup, which would probably be concealed from the party masses and the public. Similarly, it seems likely that Liu will succeed Mao, but there is a fair possibility that he will fall with Mao or be brought down soon after succeeding him. However it goes, there are likely to be additional casu- alties among Mao's present lieutenants. The vaunted cohesion of the Chinese Communist party leadership, once unique among Communist parties, seems clearly to be a thing of the past. Sanitized - Approved For ReIeEIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReA2ftgp CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Introductory Note 25X1A In the early M papers, we discussed Mao's lieutenants in terms of three principal groups: a group of "party-machine" figures, led by Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping and including Peng Chen and Tan Chen-lin, whose power derived mainly from their key positions in the party apparatus; a group of admin- istrators and economists around premier Chou En-lai and his senior deputy Chen Yun, including Chen Yi, who became foreign minister in 1958, and including the economic specialists Li Fu- chun, Li Hsien-nien, Po I-po, and Teng Tzu-hui, most of whom also had posts in the party apparatus but whose importance de- rived mainly from their key positions in the government apparatus; and the military leaders around Peng Te-huai or (if his health improved) Lin Piao.* The men whom we aligned in these groups usually had records of long and close association with one another, seemed to have common interests as a result of their functions, and appeared to have a common general attitude and approach. The party-machine leaders were those who seemed to have a radical and "leftist" attitude or approach to both domestic and foreign policy--the attitude most congenial to Mao himself, although "objective circumstances" sometimes forced Mao (and the party-machine leaders) to retreat toward more conservative positions normally occupied by other leaders. Offensives, 1957-1958 25X1A To recapitulate some of the early _ papers, in mid- 1957 Mao and his comrades were faced with the failure of the "hundred flowers" experiment, a continuing "ebb" in China's economic development, and confusion in the bloc as to just where Peiping stood on matters of intrabloc relations. A new those cited in this paragraph are full members of the politburo except Po I-po, an alternate member, and Teng Tzu- hui, whose earlier "conservatism" kept him from being named to this body in the elections of 1956 and-1958. Sanitized - Approved For Re1968F CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A{Wroved For R64OF CIA-RDP7a800427A000600110001-1 hard line became apparent in the period June - November 1957: in the June official version of Mao's earlier speech on "con- tradictions"; in the conduct of the anti-rightist campaign and the party's "rectification" campaign and the merger of those into a nation-wide rectification campaign in September; in attacks on "rightist conservatism" and in predictions of a forthcoming 'upsurge'' in economic development in the same period; and in Mao's conduct at the Moscow conference of the Communist parties in November. The party machine leaders, who had seemed unhappy with the experiment with "liberalization" and with the "ebb'' in economic development, came into their own in the latter half of 1957. As the principal supervisors of the "anti-rightist" rectification campaign--the progress report on which was given by Teng Hsiao-ping in September--they were well situated to direct the energies made available through rectification into the new "upsurge" in economic development, which was to derive primarily from an unprecedented exploitation of labor. In this process, the party machine was to assume most of the responsibility and authority for economic development at all levels. After Mao had given the signal at a party plenum, the party machine leaders Liu Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping and Tan Chen-lin took the lead in autumn 1957 in publicly exhort- ing the "upsurge" and in criticizing the moderate positions taken earlier by other party leaders such as Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui, There seemed a happy coincidence of their party positions, their roles in the major campaigns of 1957-58, and the courses of action which they personally favored. Further, Teng Hsiao-ping was Mao's principal aide in his visit to Moscow in November 1957 for the meeting of the parties, and Liu Shao- chi and Peng Chen made the principal speeches in Peiping on the eve of the same occasion. Chou En-lai and others of the administrator-economist group clearly played lesser roles in the latter half of 1957, their pronouncements being minor or unpublished, although Li Fu-chun, Li Hsien-nien and Po I-po all publicly endorsed the "upsurge", and Li Hsien-nien was one of those accompanying Mao to Moscow. Peng Te-huai, the principal military figure, also made the trip to Moscow, where he and other Chinese leaders apparently tried and failed to secure a Soviet promise of nuclear weapons.* *Until the time of this trip, Chinese comment had suggested an expectation of early accession of nuclear weapons; after the trip, Chinese comment strongly suggested the reverse. Sanitized - Approved For ReIe f~RE,TCIA-RDP79S00427AO00600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RP06 F : CIA-RDP7 00427A000600110001-1 The scope of the intended Chinese challenge to Moscow-- on questions related both to the building of Communism and to world Communist strategy--was not apparent in 1957. This 25X1A was not to become apparent until the launching of the unpre- cedentedly audacious commune program in 1958 (discussed in detail in the early ~ papers) and the systematic develop- 25X1A ment in 1958-1959 (discussed in detail in later - papers) of certain strategic concepts put forward by Mao in Moscow in November 1957. No doubt Peiping's thinking was not fully developed by the end of 1957. However, events of 1958-59 suggested increasingly that Mao and the party machine leaders had made a number offundamental and closely-related decisions as far back as the period June - November 1957. These were: to abandon the conservative program of economic development based on the Soviet model, which had hitherto prevailed, and to launch a radical program based on the utmost possible organization, exhortation, and exploitation of the human mate- rial; to abandon the relatively liberal line on intrabloc relations, to become champions of unity and discipline, and at the same time to resist Soviet efforts to bind China it- self tighter to the bloc; further, contending that there had occurred a decisive shift in the balance of power, to incite the Soviet party to lead the world Communist movement in a much more aggressive program, especially in Asia and the other underdeveloped areas; and, in the interest of all of these policies, to denounce conservatism, conciliation, and "revi- sionism" wherever they were found. During 1958, this complex of decisions was expressed in many ways, among them the following: in early 1958, the trans- formation of the "upsurge" in economic development into the "great leap forward"; in the spring, the sustained Chinese at- tacks on Yugoslavia and "modern revisionists" everywhere, at- tacks aimed in part at the Russians; in the summer, the begin- ning of the mass campaign for the study of Mao's thought; in August, directly following the Mao-Khrushchev talks, the or- ganization of the "people's communes" on a nation-wide basis; in the late summer and early fall, Peiping's venture in the Taiwan Strait, which followed an apparent Chinese effort (suc- cessful) to prevent Khrushchev from arranging a summit meet- ing on Middle Eastern developments. The party machine leaders in 1958 continued clearly to be the most powerful group of Mao's lieutenants. Following Mao's lead, they were constantly on stage to proclaim his policies. Sanitized - Approved For R leasse : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 SRT Sanitized - Approved For R S A CIA-RDPM600427A000600110001-1 In early 1958, again on Mao's signal, party machine figures played the principal roles in exhorting the "great leap forward" (which was to last for three years) and in threatening those opposed to a headlong course. Although Chou En-lai and some others of the administrator-economist group associated themselves moderately with the "leap" in February 1958, these leaders were silent in March and April during the wildest gyrations of the "leap", with its profusion of unrealistic goals--goals which displaced those with which the administrator-economists were personally associated. The status of the party machine leaders was strikingly illustrated at the party congress in May: the most important report--summarizing the party's situation, general line,* and tasks--was given by Liu Shao-chi. The other two major reports, on intrabloc relations and on agricultural development--were given respectively by Teng Hsiao-ping and Tan Chen-lin; and all three of the party leaders added to the politburo--the new agricultural spokesman Tan Chen-lin and the regional leaders Ko Ching-shih and Li Ching-chuan--were proteges jointly of Mao and the party-machine leaders. Added to the politburo stand- ing committee at the same time was the ailing Lin Piao, Mao's longtime favorite military leader, who had apparently improved enough for limited activity. And added to Teng Hsiao-ping's party secretariat were Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien-nien, two of the three most active economic specialists, who were not party- machine figures and who almost certainly had reservations about the policies of these leaders but who could serve the party machine well in its expanded role in the "leap" and the immi- nent "commune" program; the addition of the Li's to the sec- retariat was a shrewd move, as it gave them a new point of view, the view from inside the party machine, and thus served to reduce the differences between party-machine leaders and these key figures of the administrator-economist group. The party congress of May 1958 in passing criticized three alternate members of the central committee, each of them a provincial party secretary, as "rightists." None of the three-- Ku Ta-tsun, Feng Pai-chu, and Pan Fu-sheng (first secretary in Honan)--was regarded as an important figure or as a member *The general line, reflecting Mao's confidence in the power of the will ("subjective" factors), called and still calls for "going all-out, aiming high, achieving greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism." Sanitized - Approved For Rele` 7EURRA-RDP79SO0427AO006001 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET ~..: of any one of the groups in the leadership with which we have been concerned. Peiping's comment on them at the time did not suggest an immediate intention to drop them from the central committee, and they appeared occasionally in the news there- after. However, none has appeared since early 1959, and all three may since have been dropped. Mao, Teng, and the military leaders Lin Piao and Peng Te-huai (Peng's dominance of the military group was now con- tested, with the return of Lin to active duty) all spoke at a conference of military leaders in July 1958, with Peng also making the summary speech. None of these was published, but, in the light of articles in military journals at the time, and also in view of the unusual length of the conference, the party leaders were apparently taking up with the military the entire matter of party control of the armed forces, including the party's right to impose doctrine (e.g., Mao's strategic thinking in the light of failure to obtain nuclear weapons), and the related matter of Mao's plans for the military in the "leap" and commune programs; the conference may also have discussed the forthcoming venture in the Taiwan Strait. In July 1958 Mao Tse-tung was firmly identified (by his spokesman Chen Po-ta) as the architect of the commune program, and the party machine leaders Liu Shao-chi and Tan Chen-lin took the lead in promoting the program in the countryside (Liu found occasion to remark that Communism in China would be realized "very soon," and Tan made a number of equally extra- vagant predictions), followed by Mao himself in tours in August. Also in August, Mao initiated the campaign for mass production of iron and steel, i.e. the 'backyard steel' pro- gram, which was probably opposed by most of the administrator- economist figures, especially by Chen Yun, the only one of the party officers not credited by Peiping with having provided "guidance" for the "leap." In September, Mao, Liu, and Teng Hsiao-ping all found occasion to advocate the formation of urban as well as rural communes. Other party leaders played much smaller roles in this period, although Chou En-lai ac- companied Liu on an inspection tour, Li Fu-chun spent September on a tour of the Northeast with his new boss Teng, Chou and Peng Te-huai took part in the Mao-Khrushchev talks in early August, and Po I-po was active. In Mao's venture in the Taiwan Strait, which began in earnest in late August 1958, shortly after his talks with SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R 9T: CIA-RDP74W00427A000600110001-1 Khrushchev, individual leaders of the CCP did not play public roles, apart from Chou En-lai's role as premier in the retreat- ing phase of the venture. Earlier in the year, the most im- portant party-machine figures (Liu, Teng, Peng Chen) and the leaders of the administrator-economist group (Chou En-lai and Chen Yun) had alike associated themselves with certain of Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy--especially the con- cept of the East Wind prevailing--which underlay the Strait venture in the late summer. However, at the time of the ven- ture itself, the party's position was stated under a pseudonym, in a harsh article in Red Flag which justified and in effect signalled the venture. Retreats, 1958-1959 The Taiwan Strait venture was the beginning of a bad autumn for the Chinese leaders. As we have argued controver- sially in other papers, Mao Tse-tung, in order to exert maxi- mum pressure on the Nationalist offshore island garrisons and on the Sino-American alliance, needed a firm and high-level expression of Soviet support in the advancing stage of the venture, i.e. in late August or early September. But Mao did not get it until the retreating phase of the venture had been initiated by Chou En-lai's 6 September offer to renew ambas- sadorial-level talks with the United States. Peiping's humiliation in the Taiwan Strait venture called for a massive application of propaganda. Mao and party lead- ers of various groups--e.g. Chou, Peng Chen, Peng Te-huai-- played roles in this effort to explain that not Peiping but another party (the CPSU) was really responsible for the failure. By far the most important development in the campaign was the publication in October 1958 of a collection of Mao's writings on the theme of the imperialist "paper tiger," which conceded that the paper tiger was still too much of a match for Peiping itself. Addressing itself, in effect, to the question of why the Soviet decisive superiority (asserted by Peiping) was not brought to bear in China's just cause in the Taiwan Strait, the collection replied that the question of assessing the balance of forces was one which still bewildered "many people." Mao's insistence on the need to exploit aggressively the world's revolutionary opportunities was made in several ways, most slyly in these terms: "If the East Wind does not prevail over the West Wind, then the West Wind will prevail over the East Wind." Sanitized - Approved For R%1,9&; CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For I eF sse : CIA-RDP7 600427A000600110001-1 During the same period, autumn 1958, there developed a serious conflict between the commune in theory and the commune in practice. Responding both to the pressure of events and to increasing Soviet and domestic criticism of the commune pro- gram, the CCP leadership in a series of urgent conferences ex- tending through November and early December decided on a major overhaul of the commune program. The party retreated from the principle of distribution "according to need," modified the role of the commune as the organizer of all aspects of rural life, and enhanced the authority of the lower-level production brigade at the expense of the commune administrative committee. At the same time, the party decided to undertake a less obvious and less abrupt, but equally substantial, overhaul of its "great leap forward" program, which had admittedly been under attack by a "small number" of party members. At about this time, the party apparently purged two al- ternate members of its central committee, both provincial party secretaries. Li Tao, a secretary in Liaoning, was re- moved from his post amid comment suggesting that he had been guilty of a Kao-Jao type of activity, i.e. attempting to dis- place some of his superiors in the hierarchy. Chao Chien-min, a secretary in Shantung, was removed on the grounds of "indi- vidualism and localism." Neither has been mentioned since. Li was not regarded as aligned with any of the principal groups of leaders, but Chao had been a lieutenant of Teng Hsiao-ping's for some years; Chao was the first person regarded as a party machine figure to fall since the fall of Jao Shu-shih in 1954. This brought to five the number of alternate members of the central committee, all of them provincial secretaries and one a first secretary, publicly brought down during 1958. The party's decisions to retreat, in the "leap forward" and commune programs, were formalized at a party plenum last- ing from 28 November to 10 December 1958, at which time Mao's decision to resign as chairman of the government was revealed. The plenum was attended by all 20 of the full members of the politburo (a deliberate display of solidarity) and by 64 of the 77 remaining full members of the central committee, plus 82 of the 95 alternate members. The resolution adopted by the plenum attempted to conceal the extent of the retreat on the commune program, but its magnitude was apparent in a clumsy effort to balance the con- cept of "uninterrupted revolution' by the concept of "revolution Sanitized - Approved For Rea CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RMFT CIA-RDP00427A000600110001-1 by stages," by acknowledgement of the Soviet position that mate- rial abundance in industry and agriculture were necessary for the advance to Communism, and in suspension of the claim that the communes were applicable to other countries. With respect to the "leap forward," the plenum called for the party to put economic planning on a "completely reliable basis" and to main- tain suitable proportions between targets. Nevertheless, the plenum accepted and publicized exaggerated estimates of 1958 production and put forward very ambitious goals for 1959, in- eluding the preposterous goal of 525 million tons of grain. The plenum was said to have been held under the "guidance" of Mao, and Mao was credited with originating the decisions to retreat. The plenum went to some effort to demonstrate-- falsifying the record to do so--that Mao all along had charted the correct course despite the opposition of "rightist conser- vatives" on one hand and of "leftist adventurists" on the other. In fact, it was precisely Mao and the party machine leaders-- principally Liu, Teng, and Tan Chen-lin--who had assumed per- sonal leadership of the "leap forward" and commune movements throughout 1958. This fact could not possibly have been con- cealed from the administrator-economist and military leaders who had had reservations about these programs and had opposed various features of them. Nevertheless, Mao's resignation from the government post was almost certainly not forced. The strongest group of his lieutenants--the only group which ap- peared strong enough to press him--were the very leaders who had been most closely identified with his policies, and most of the administrator-economist and military leaders themselves had been drawn into the programs sufficiently to be in a com- promised position. Only a few--including Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui--seemed to bear little or no responsibility for the party's erratic course. In the three months following the December plenum, there continued to be significant differences in emphasis between the pronouncements of the party machine figures and those of the administrator-economists. The former group--including Liu Shao-chi and Tan Chen-lin* and Liao Lu-yen, and possibly Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen in their unpublished speeches, sup- ported by the economic specialist Po I-po who a year earlier Tan Chen-lien remained the most extreme of the extremists. Sanitized - Approved For ReIg?pRE;CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Re %TCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 *_41r, Vee had seemed to go over almost completely to the party-machine group--chose to emphasize themes that would make it appear that they had been right all along. These were the leaders who strongly defended the policies and programs of 1958, who again implied that Chinese programs were applicable to other bloc states, who reaffirmed the principle of "putting politics in command," who denounced the "ebb" of 1956-57 and called for "continuous forward leaping," who exhorted struggle against "rightist conservatism," and who spoke darkly of the "tide- watching clique" and the "account-settling clique." The emphasis in the pronouncements in this period of the administrators and economists--including Chou En-lai, Chen Yun, Li Fu-chun, Li Hsien-nien and Teng Tzu-hui, supported by one party-machine leader, Ko Ching-shih--was on practical problems. These leaders--in particular, Li Hsien-nien, Ko Ching-shih, and Chen Yun--introduced the concept of operating the country as a "coordinated chess game." This concept constituted a strong, although indirect, criticism of most of the economic policies favored by the party-machine figures during the "leap." The essence of the "chess-game" argument was that the party machine on local levels had outdone itself in wielding the "three major keys"--the "general line," and "leap forward," and "communes." Costly production of unusable products and poorly planned construction of economically infeasible pro- duction facilities had diverted labor and materials from the key production facilities and key construction projects which constituted the core of the Chinese industrialization effort. The "chess-game" theme called for more centralized control of economic activity, according to firm priorities, and condemned, as People's Daily put it, "laissez faire dispersionism and organizational egoism which are alien to the practices of cen- tralized leadership and overall arrangements." There seems to be little doubt that the December plenum had endorsed this line, for the theme was already being circulated at provincial meetings in early January. So far as is known, none of the party-machine figures (except Ko) chose to associate himself publicly with this line. Later in the year, one writer plau- sibly imputed authorship of the "chessboard" theme to Chen Yun. In February and March 1959, the party held an expanded meeting of the politburo in Chengchow, at which a "series of important decisions" was made. These decisions related to specific measures for carrying out the December directive to "tidy up"--i.e., overhaul--the commune program. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 i Sanitized - Approved For ReI q QIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 25X1X For some months after March 1959, the pattern of pro- nouncements was much as it had been during the "ebb" of 1956- 57. That is, the party machine figures in general were silent, while the administrator-economists took the lead in explaining and justifying the party's less radical policies. In the first week of April the party held another plenum in Shanghai. The party evidently did not revise its 1959 goals at this time, as several leaders publicly reaffirmed them later in the month. However, Mao made an "important speech" at this meeting on methods of work--methods which, as indicated in heavy publicity given them in the next three months, emphasized flexibility and encouraged a scaling-down of targets. The same encouragement was provided in the speeches of several of the administrators and economists. In this more sober atmosphere, the conservative agricultural expert of the party, Teng Tzu-hui, who had long been silent, reappeared, emphasizing the retreats that had been undertaken in the com- mune program and deriding the "foolish ideas" of those who had wanted to move rapidly from socialism to Communism. Early in May, Mao sent a letter to party committees at all levels. Although the contents have not been reliably re- ported, it is clear that the letter gave further encourage- ment to the process of revision of goals. Also in May, Red Flag--always a vehicle for Mao's views of the moment--emphasized that targets should be realistic, that they "should not be formulated in the imagination of a handful of persons behind 25XlXppr closed doors." The result, was that a sharp scaling-down of targets was undertaken in May, under the name of "verification"--a process which could not be stopped at the desired level. Peng Te-huai, at that time still the regime's principal military figure as Minister of Defense, returned in early June from a two-month tour of the bloc--during which he had talked with Khrushchev. At the end of June, Peng disappeared from the news. Although Peng's public record was one of firm as- sociation with the positions and policies of Mao and the party machine figures, subsequent pronouncements by the regime's leading political officers suggested strongly that some of the military leaders had in fact been opposed; and reports received much later indicated that Peng himself had not only opposed the policies of the dominant leaders but had taken Sanitized - Approved For ReIERF-cWE IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R & ' : CIA-RDP79.%00427A000600110001-1 his case to the USSR--presumably on his spring tour--where he had found much sympathy and had ensured his own downfall. There were several interesting articles in June, most of them by the administrators and economists. In two articles Teng Tzu-hui again criticized a number of the policies asso- ciated with the enthusiasts. Hsueh Mu-chiao, who as director of the State Statistical Bureau had been personally victimized by the procedures which encouraged false reporting, gave a radio talk which amounted to a systematic defense of Soviet principles of economic development. Chou En-lai, at a banquet for visiting Soviet officials, observed that China should learn from the Soviet Union and also from "Soviet leaders." Two articles by party-machine figures in June made clear that they were well aware that mistakes had been made in both the conception and the management of the regime's programs. Liao Lu-yen, who earlier in the year had been among the lead- ing sloganeers, put aside his slogans and urged that people try to get the facts. Tao Chu, in an article about Mao's working methods, contended that "greatness" lay not in being infallible--which was impossible--but in adapting intelligently to new situations. This article by a party-machine figure, clearly intended as a defense of Mao and the party-machine group, also made clear that they had been under attack. The party's dominant figures were being attacked not only by the right wing in China but by their comrades abroad. Speak- ing in Poland in mid-July, Khrushchev publicly derided the concept of the commune in early Soviet society, in terms which left no doubt that he meant his remarks to apply to Peiping. Much later, Red Flag, reviewing a book on the theme of not fearing ghosts (imperialists, reactionaries, rightists, etc.), observed that the book was put together in the spring of 1959 when imperialists, reactionaries and "revisionists of various countries" had organized a "grand chorus of vilification of China." The book was completed, Red Flag said, in summer 1959, "at just the time when domestic revisionists rose to respond to international revisionists and staged a wanton attack on the leadership of the party. " The party's version of the attack on the dominant figures and their policies conceals the degree to which Mao himself in the spring of 1959 had fostered the very attitudes which Sanitized - Approved For W Mf : CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized -Approved For Re'ds' CIA-RDP7 00427A000600110001-1 were later to be denounced as rightist opportunism. In the party's account of the matter, ...after the Chengchow conference, during the period of April, May, June, and July, a small number of right opportunists...staged a wanton attack against the party and against so- cialism. They were against the general line, the great leap forward, and the commune policy; and they opposed leadership by the party, command by politics, and large-scale mass movements... According to this same account, the party meetings held 25X1X at Lushan in July and August of 1959 were help precisely to "strike back resolutely" at these right opportunists. The first of these, in July, another expanded meeting of the polit- buro apparently did not in fact 'strike back resolutely." the July meeting was apparently concerned instead with "suimnarizing experience," i.e. with debating the issues, and it was not until the August meeting that the rightist trend throughout the country was reversed. This was admitted by Li Fu-chun in a report in March 1960; he observed that `'right opportun- ists" had organized "sectarian groups" and had attacked the positions of the majority, and that it was the August 1959 plenum which "thoroughly frustrated /hese7 frantic attacks..." However, the question of which group was to emerge in the dominant positions in the party--Mao and the party machine figures who defended their programs, or those leaders of the administrator-economist and military groups who attacked them-- was never in doubt. Of the 20 full members of the politburo at that time (one has since died), it seems likely that only one--Deng Te-huai--attacked strongly in the July meeting, while one more--Chen Yun--stated a conservative position; only Peng--who had taken his case to the USil{--was later purged. Of the six alternate members of the politburo, Chang Wen-tien is believed to have joined the attackers; there is some evid- ence that he went far enough to be linked with Peng in private party discussions of the affair. Of the national leaders just below the politburo level (lesser and local figures will be discussed later), only Teng Tzu-hui (a specialist in agricul- ture), Huang Ko-cheng (then chief-of-staff), and Chia To-fu (specialist in light industry and economic planning) are suspected of having been i:_ the attacking group. Of these Sanitized - Approved For Release CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For F el0ase : CIA-RDP7 00427A000600110001-1 three, only Huang seems to have been purged in the same sense that Peng Te-huai was purged (loss of party posts), and per- haps more for the closeness of his association with Peng than for the heat of his attack. The other administrators and eco- nomists among the top-level figures (Chou En-lai, Li Fu-chun, Li Hsien-nien, Po I-po) had at one time or another indicated reservations about the programs imposed by the dominant group and they may well have criticized certain features of them in the July meeting, but it seems clear that they acquiesced in these programs as a whole and were not thought to be non-co- operative in carrying them out. During the first two weeks of August 1959 there was an- other plenum of the party in Lushan. Whereas in May and June there had been indications that the party might revise down- ward its claims for 1958 and its targets for 1959, pronounce- ments in August, during the plenum, indicated that if the do- minant leaders did indeed make these revisions they would do so only while proclaiming at the same time that they had been right all along. People's Daily editorials on 6 and 7 August discussed the overcoming of rightist sentiment among "some cadres" and argued that the situation favored a continuing for- ward leap. The editorials criticized those who had exaggerated difficulties and underestimated achievements, who had a right- ist conservative attitude and therefore favored a simple plan and modest targets, who had engaged in the "criminal" activity of dampening mass enthusiasm, and who had failed to "let poli- tics take command." The resolution adopted by the party plenum on 16 August-- a plenum again held "under the guidance" of Mao--formalized the retreat. Although the great victories of 1958 and 1959 ''fully testified to the absolute correctness of the party's general line," it had been necessary to retreat further from the original concept of the commune,* the party had grossly _.. *The resolution announced that the "production brigade" (a lower level) now possessed "basic" ownership of the means of production in the commune. In other words, the production brigade--generally corresponding to the pre-commune collective farm--was at least nominally to have the main responsibility for organizing production and the daily life of the peasants, to be the main owner of the tools and animals with which work was carried on, and to have most of the authority in distributing income. These modifications, if carried out, would restore farm operations to something resembling the picture before 1958, while permitting retention of the communes. However, as will be dis- cussed later, the system was not implemented as promulgated. Sanitized - Approved For R1 e&: CIA-RDP79500427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R AMT. CIA-RDP7 00427A000600110001-1 overestimated agricultural production in 1958 (it had estimated 375 million tons of grain; the "verified" figure was 250 million tons),* the steel produced in the backyard steel program had been found unsuitable for modern industry, and the party had made drastic reductions in its four principal targets for 1959--grain, cotton, coal, and steel. The reduction in the grain target was spectacular--from 525 million tons to 275 million tons. The resolution of 16 August insisted (correctly) that the revised plan was still a plan of "continued leap forward," and it gave various practical directives. It underlined the point that the party's programs represented Mao's own "creative in- tegration" of Marxism-Leninism and China's situation. It also attributed the "great victories" of 1958-59 "precisely" to the increased role of the party machine, its principle of "putting politics in command," and its reliance on mass movements. In other words, although Mao and the party machine leaders had fallen far short of what they had insisted at the tops of their voices that they could do, the party and its redefined programs were to continue under the same management. The Purge, Autumn 1959 On 16 August, ten days before the resolution of the August plenum was published, Red Flag attributed a rightist tendency to a "small number" of cadres who exaggerated difficulties, discouraged the masses, and wanted a further reduction of goals-- i.e., were not satisfied with the extent of the retreat, with respect to both the "leap" and the communes, agreed on by the party plenum. In this brief first stage of the anti-rightist campaign these people were not defined as enemies--indicating that the August plenum was discussing what to do with them. The communique and resolution of the eighth plenum, both published on 26 August, had much to say about rightist senti- ment--in harsh language aimed at "enemy" and "hostile" elements" *It was much later asserted that Mao at this plenum had specified the development of agriculture as the most important economic problem. Sanitized - Approved For ReIg R,,pIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A roved For F~4 9iFe : CIA-RDP74WO0427A000600110001-1 both within China and without. The resolution observed that such quarters had attempted to influence "infirm elements" in the party, and it strongly implied that some of the latter were about to be purged. The communique added the detail that the rightists had described both the "leap forward" and the commune program, in Leninist invective, as "petty bourgeois fanaticism." On the same day (26 August), Chou En-lai reported on the revision of the 1959 targets. He followed the line of the eighth pleaum and surrounding comment in emphasizing the "vic- tory" of the leap, in denying that the commune program was either premature or unsuccessful, in presenting shortcomings as "isolated and transient," and in asserting that the "small number" of pessimists must not be allowed to dampen the enthusiasm of the masses. Perhaps recognizing that he lacked the power to challenge the party machine leaders even when they had clearly been mistaken, Chou attributed the mistakes of 1958-59 not to the ignorant sloganeers of the party machine but to the inexperience of the regime's "organs in charge of planning and economic affairs." He also denounced the ''right opportunists''--people, not simply sentiments--but devoted very little of his long speech to this. People's Daily went further the next day in specifying that there were 'right opportunists" within the party, that they had 'joined" hostile forces, and that they were "incorrigible." Red Flag on 1 September continued the attack on the right- ists, clearly aiming its remarks in part at the Soviet party leadership, some of whose positions were being invoked by the rightists. The party journal reaffirmed the importance of revolutionary initiative and energy, in "direct contradiction" to the view espoused by "opportunist leadership." It again insisted that the successes of 1958-59 were owed to the prin- ciple of putting politics in command and the practice of mobilizing the masses, and it again denounced reactionary ef- forts to influence "infirm elements" in the party. It observed that in making a new world there were not available "ready-made patterns for everything"--i.e., Soviet programs would not answer all of China's requirements--and it derided those who thought otherwise as "fools who do not know what revolution is." It concluded that the right opportunists were people wino had "lost faith in the undertaking as a whole," people who in disseminat- ing their pessimism were guilty of "criminal activity." Sanitized - Approved For Relee? CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RARE CIA-RDP74SO0427A000600110001-1 In the same period, mid-August to mid-September, Mao and the party machine leaders (and those who had come to terms with them) began to reaffirm strongly their positions on world Com- munist strategy. The immediate occasion was the announcement of a forthcoming exchange of visits between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. During 1955, the Chinese party leadership had stated clearly Mao's view that the East Wind was prevailing and that the consequent revolutionary opportunities should be seized; and earlier in 1959 it had criticized the assumptions of Khru- shchev's tactics toward the United States, taking the line that the nature of imperialism could not change and that American policies therefore would not significantly change. On 16 August, in the same number of Red Flag that signalled the beginning of the anti-rightist campaign with respect to internal policies, the party leadership readdressed itself to the rightist posi- tion in foreign policy. "Yu Chao-li," whose article in the same journal a year earlier had justified and signalled the Taiwan Strait venture, in this August 1959 article argued that the United States was devoted to its "policy of aggression" and could not be expected to give up this policy. Although the U.s. under pressure might agree to some degree of relaxation of tension, the article went on, it would never agree to the conditions of genuine coexist- ence--namely, a withdrawal from foreign bases and the ending of "occupations" (e.g. of Taiwan). This article, and a state- ment by foreign minister Chen Yi the same day, called for "un- remitting struggle." The 16 August article was comparatively restrained and polite, implying rather than stating clearly Peiping's posi- tions. "Yu Chao-li" made up for this in another article in Red Flag on 16 September, the day of Khrushchev's arrival in the United States. This attack on Khrushchev's positions, cast in the form of an account of the Chinese people's struggle against imperialism, contended that the Chinese under Mao had learned how to defeat imperialism. Mao long ago had pointed out that imperialism could not change its nature, the article said. The bourgeoisie were "afraid" of exposing imperialism, of struggling against it, and of provoking it, as if restraint could induce a change of heart; but Mao had insisted on drawing Sanitized - Approved For Re. CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R f& : CIA-RDP74900427A000600110001-1 a "clear line between reactionaries and revolutionaries"* and had insisted also that one 'must not show cowardice in the slightest degree." The article cited the Korean war as a bril- liant example of the way to fight imperialism: the war had showed that the U.S. was a "paper tiger," had given courage to all revolutionary forces, and was a great contribution to "world peace." The East Wind was now prevailing, the article said, and,if the people struggled against all expression's of imperialist aggression, they would win. On 17 September, in the first public action against the rightists, Peiping announced a number of changes in government posts. The most important related to the military establish- ment. Peng Te-huai was replaced as Minister of Defense by Lin Piao, and Huang Ko-cheng was replaced by Lo Jui-ching as chief- of-staff. These changes installed in the two most important military posts Mao's longtime favorite military leader (Lin) and a security specialist (Lo) who had long been close to Mao; Lo himself was replaced as Minister of Public Security by one of Teng Hsiao-ping's proteges, Hsieh Fu-chih. Subsequently, the party almost certainly dropped Peng from the politburo and Huang from the secretariat and dropped both from the central committee too. Their complete disappearance from the news soon removed any doubt as to whether their replacement was a punitive action. Chang Wen-tien was removed as deputy foreign minister at the same time. The full extent of the purge of the military undertaken or begun at that time cannot be stated with confidence, be- cause Peiping, which has never given much publicity to its military leaders, has given even less in the past two years, presumably as part of the effort to put and keep the military in its place. However, among the senior military figures of the regime who were active in 1959, there is reason to ques- tion the status of at least the following: Yang Te-chih, com- mander of the Tsinan headquarters, long close to Peng Te-huai; Hung Hsueh-chih, then director of the logistics department *The Chinese party in the same month (September 1959) gave practical expression to this dictum on drawing a clear line by refusing to cooperate in several of the world Communist front organizations, demanding a more militant line addressed to a narrower audience. - 17 - Sanitized - Approved For R~ r: CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Red&S#JT CIA-RDP7WO0427A000600110001-1 of the general staff, closely associated with Huang Ko-cheng, who disappeared from the news at the same time as Huang; Chang Ta-chih, then commander of the Lanchow headquarters, who was closely associated with Peng and has not appeared since 1959; Teng Hua, then commander of the Mukden headquarters and once Peng's deputy commander in the Korean war, who was apparently relieved of the Mukden command in November 1959 and demoted to a petty post in Szechuan; Chou Huan, political officer of the Mukden headquarters and also an associate of Peng's, who was apparently demoted to a provincial post at the same time; and Wan I, Hsu Hai-tung, Chou Pao-chung, Wang Shih-tai, and Liu Chen, most of whom had been associated with Peng and all of whom have been out of the news since 1959.* Although it is likely that some of these military leaders will reappear in favor, it also seems likely that others who have seemed to be still in favor--at least to the extent of appearing at ceremonial occasions, such as Deputy Ministers of Defense Su Yu and Liao Han-sheng--will turn out to have been sharply demoted. Perhaps as many as eight or ten of the regime's senior military men, most of them concurrently members or al- ternate members of the central committee, were brought down in the fall of Peng Te-huai and Huang Ko-cheng--thus amount- ing to a substantial, although not spectacular, purge of the military. Other party leaders--all members or alternate members of the central committee--who dropped out of the news in autumn 1959, and have not reappeared, are: Tong Tai-yuan, minister of railways; Chia To-fu, the specialist in light industry and economic planning who lost one of his posts at that time but was given another; Yang Hsien-cheng, director of the central committee's own senior party school, who was subsequently re- placed in this post by a party-machine figure (Wang Tsung-wu); and Chou Hsiao-chou, first secretary of the party's Hunan Committee and a onetime deputy of Huang Ko-cheng's, replaced in the Hunan post at that time. Although some of these pro- longed absences (e.g., Teng's) may be explained by illness, some of these leaders too were probably caught in the anti- rightist campaign. *Of these persons, Teng and Hsu are full members of the central committee; Yang, Hung, Chang, Chou, Wan, Chao, Wang, and Liu are alternate members. Sanitized - Approved For ReI d TCIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For I48RsTe : CIA-RDP7QS00427A000600110001-1 The senior figure among all of those believed to be right- ists, Chen Yun, a vice-chairman of the politburo and a member of the standing committee (superpolitburo) of the politburo, who retained these posts, made few appearances in autumn 1959 and said and wrote nothing publicly. The next in party rank, Chang Wen-tien, alternate member of the politburo, disappeared from the news, possibly undergoing reindoctrination. Teng Tzu- hui seemed not to be in disfavor, as he appeared twice with articles on agriculture in that period and rea.ained director of the party's rural work department. These three apparently had not carried their opposition as far as the purged military leaders had, i.e., were more careful in stating their dissent and had not committed the unforgivable offense of carrying their case outside the party to the Soviet party. On 23 September, with the purge of the rightists well along, Liu Lan-tao, a party-machine figure, an alternate mem- ber of the secretariat and the most important person on the party's control (disciplinary) commis ion, made clear that there had indeed been a high-level purge. Writing in People's Daily, Liu explained that imperialism and reaction at home ana broad were constantly trying to secure agents within the party, "even within the core of leadership of the party." The party was endangered additionally, Liu wrote, by those with bourgeois views who attempted to turn the party into a "party of opportunism." Liu reviewed the cases of Chen Tu-hsiu (1920s), Chang Kuo-tao (1930s), and Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih (early 19F-0s), the best known of those party leaders found to be "bourgeois agents," and he related these cases to the current crop of "rightist-inclined opportunist elements" who had en- gaged in "anti-party activities" in opposing the general line, the leap, and the communes. He observed that "absolutely no views and activities aimed at splitting or usurping /The lead- ership of7 the party can be allowed," and that opposition to the principle of "putting politics in command" was found in those who thought in terms of 'independent operations" or even "Independent kingdoms." (These were very similar to the charges against Kao and Jao in 1954-55.) Party members, "especially high-ranking functionaries," who opposed the party's complete domination of all non-party organizations / . g . the military establishment, the government apparatus? would be led inevit- ably on an "evil anti-party and anti-people's road." Liu con- cluded with a sustained eulogy of Mao ("the most outstanding Sanitized - Approved For RM ': CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReIe'CeR IA-RDP79S1O0427A000600110001-1 contemporary revolutionist, statesman, and theoretician of Marxism-Leninism"), contending that Mao's guidance--in effect the object of the rightists' attack--was essential to the suc- cess of the revolution. In the next two months, Mao played the role of a semi- divine being whose revealed truths--with respect both to build- ing Communism and to world Communist strategy--were furiously defended against unbelievers at home and abroad. In what was clearly meant to be a display of solidarity, every important member of the politburo--except the purged Peng Te-huai, the apparently shelved Chen Yun, and the probably shelved Chang Wen-tien--appeared with at least one major article or speech on some portion of Mao's gospel. Differences in emphasis between party-machine leaders and others were less readily ap- parent in this period than normally. Upon Khrushchev's arrival in Peiping on 30 September-- fresh from his trip to the United States--the Chinese laid down a barrage of articles in People's Daily and Red Flag, some of them printed also in Soviet publications, cefendiing Chinese domestic programs and attacking various features of Khrushchev's strategy. The most important of these, by the party--machine leaders Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping, dis- cussed both complexes of problems--building Communism, and world Communist strategy. Li Fu-chun discussed only the former, Chen Yi and Wang Chia-hsiang discussed only aspects of the latter, Kang Sheng discussed the failure of the right oppor- tunists to grasp Mao's "dialectical" approach, and Lin Piao discussed the military's subordination to the party and Mao.* As previously noted, the Chinese party in mid-August 1959 had contended that there could not be a meaningful "peaceful coexistence" with the West; and had contended in mid-September that appeasement of the West was harmful to the world Communist cause and that the struggle should be waged more aggressively, *It is of some interest that Chen Yun was kept out of Peiping during Khrushchev's visit. Chen had represented the Chinese party at the Warsaw Pact meeting in spring 1958 and had talked with Khrushchev at the time; unlike Peng Te-huai, he had evi- dently not solicited Soviet support for his positions, and thus, presumably, need not have been kept away from Khrushchev on this occasion; however, Chen spent the period of the visit in Shanghai. Sanitized - Approved For ReIg;CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap oved For RAHRF. CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 inter alia through greater attention to local wars and libera- tion wars. Chen Yi in his 1 October article stated a politely derisive view of the prospects of negotiations. The 1 October articles of Liu, Teng and Wang concentrated their fire on Soviet policy toward the underdeveloped areas (both colonial and inde- pendent), the areas in which they anticipated the greatest suc- cesses for an aggressive program. They all contended that China was a valid model for the underdeveloped countries, with respect both to Communist seizure of power and the rapid construction of socialism and Communism thereafter; and they emphasized the importance of armed struggle and of Communist capture of lead- ership in the early stages of revolution. Wang's article added much detail on the unreliability of bourgeois nationalist govern- ments. The 1 October articles of Liu, Teng and Li Fu-chun all defended the increased role of the party machine in China's economic development, the principle of "politics in command," and the heavy reliance on mass movements. They all defended the creative expression of these in the general line, the leap, and the communes, praising the achievements of these programs and minimizing their shortcomings. They all denounced the rightists, exhorted strenous efforts in 1959 and in the years thereafter, and had high praise for Mao personally. Lin Piao, the new minister of defense, in his 1 October article took the theme of the need for the party's absolute domination of the military establishment. The military must accept for its own good, Lin wrote, the system of party com- mittees and political officers in the armed forces, the party's decisions as to the share of national income to be allotted the military and the related matter of the pace of moderniza- tion, the massive employment of the armed forces in the "leap forward" and commune programs* and the related militia program, the party's formulation of military doctrine /e.g., its minimiz- ing of the importance of nuclear weapons at the same time it was working madly to get them7, its decisions as to tactics in particular situations / .g. the fiasco in the Taiwan Strait a year earlier/, the party's insistence on officers serving in the ranks a month each year, and so on. In an unprecedented *Lin conceded that the peasant soldiers might understandably have doubts about the communes. Sanitized - Approved For Re,I~er CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rd 'g T CIA-RDP7U00427A000600110001-1 declaration of allegiance, Lin pledged the "unconditional loyalty of the People's Liberation Army to the party and Com- rade Mao Tse-tung." Hsiao Ching-kuang, commander of the navy, published a much slighter but similar article at the same time, as did the director of the political department of the air force. Some of these leaders appeared again in the following five weeks, and all of the other leaders of important groups (except Peng Te-huai and Chen Yun) declared themselves publicly in the same period. Chou En-lai appeared again on 6 October, with a long article on domestic policies and programs much like his late August report and the 1 October articles of Liu, Teng, and Li. Again Chou gave an impression, however, of greater sophistication than the party machine leaders Liu and Teng; he put more emphasis on the value of Soviet experience and aid, and he observed that at best China's economic level could not be high for a long time to come. Tan Chen-lin spoke on or about 6 October, exhorting a leap in agriculture, and Teng Tzu-hui spoke at the same time of the favorable conditions for such a leap. Po I-po wrote in mid-October on the need to carry out quickly the technical transformation (mechanization) of agriculture, evidently de- cided on at the August plenum; Mao was later said (by Tan Chen- lin) to have declared in the spring of 1959 that it was essen- tial to mechanize agriculture, and that this could be done in ten years. Teng Tzu-hui appeared again on 18 October, defend- ing the entire course of the party's agricultural policy, but again in a more modest fashion than the party machine figures. Several party leaders--Po I-po, Tan Chen-lin, Li Hsien- nien, Li Fu-chun--spoke to a workers' conference in late October. All of these speeches emphasized the success of mass movements and the importance of a rapid modernization of agriculture. Po's speech, which resurrected the concept of the "Mao Tse-tung era," could not have been distinguished from that of any party- machine figure. Li Fu-chun's was much the same. On 1 November, Red Flag announced that the struggle against right opportunism continued, and indeed was "very ferocious and penetrating." The right opportunists were still the "main danger," and the struggle must be carried "to the end." Sanitized - Approved For Relef~L:zlCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A Wroved For F e~iease : CIA-RDP74S00427A000600110001-1 Peng Chen on 6 November became the last of the key figures-- the last, that is, of those remaining in favor--to associate himself with the propositions of Mao and the dominant group to which he himself belonged. He did so in a speech for October Revolution Day in which he offered much praise of the Soviet Union but went on to defend Chinese programs, and, anticipat- ing two lines which were to get much emphasis in 1960, to praise the November 1957 declaration of the Communist parties and to denounce unnamed "revisionists." Chen Po-ta, not a key figure in his own right but a con- sistent spokesman for Mao, appeared in Red Flag in mid-November with an article equating the "right opportunists" who opposed Mao's domestic programs with the "modern revisionists" who op- posed Mao's views on world Communist strategy. Although the examples given of "revisionist" thinking were of Yugoslav rather than Soviet positions (no party was named), Chen attributed to Mao a proposition about revisionism which was to be used repeatedly in 1960 in attacking Soviet positions: The revisionists, or rightist-inclined op- portunist elements, pay lip service to Marxism and also attack "doctrinarism." But the real targets of their attack in actuality are the most fundamental propositions of Marxism... The anti-rightist campaign was in effect closed in mid- December 1959 with an article in Red Flag by Wang Tsung-wu, a party-machine figure junior to Liu Lan-tao on the party's control committee. Wang's theme was the need for "iron dis- cipline" in the party, and he conceded the truth of the right- ists' complaint that "they are not /now7 allowed to speak with- in the party." New Offensives, Early 1960 On New Year's Day of 1960, the Chinese party launched new offensives with respect both to the building of Communism in China and to the promotion of the world Communist cause. The guiding principles for both campaigns were attributed to Mao; the leading roles in publicizing the domestic programs were given primarily to the economic specialists, supported by party machine figures, while Mao and his theorists virtually Sanitized - Approved For %~': CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rele'REDETCIA-RDP79r 00427A000600110001-1 monopolized the process of stating the party's positions on world Communist strategy. People's Daily on 1 January was aggressively optimistic about the prospects for the regime's domestic and international programs in the coming decade. Nevertheless, the party journal found it necessary to defend China's domestic programs as con- sistent with the decisions of the Moscow meeting of the Com- munist parties in November 1957, decisions presented as reject- ing "mechanical imitation of the policies and tactics of the Communist parties of other countires." The party newspaper also observed that these "new things" (programs) had met with some "skepticism" which had been answered by the results of 1959, and it asserted that there would be a "continuous leap forward" throughout the coming decade. Li Fu-chun, writing in Red Flag on the same date, held that the "tremendous leaps" of-1-915S-and 1959 had completely vindicated the general line and the principles of reliance on mass movements, leadership by the party machine, and "politics in command". Although the situation in Chinese agriculture had not yet reached the proportions of a crisis, as it did in late 1960 and early 1961, Li emphasized the regime's increased concern with the agricultural problem. He cited Mao on the "extreme importance" of agriculture, and he underlined the need to study Mao's thinking and to carry out "Mao's policies." Even though Li went to some lengths to credit Mao with having consistently advocated the need for "taking agriculture as the foundation of the economy", he noted that this formulation was "conspicuously a new thing in our planning work as a whole...; it is a new objective in the 1960 national plan to seriously and thoroughly carry out this policy." It thus appeared that while Chinese domestic programs remained theoretically marvellous, the problems inherent in the appli- cation of the programs--particularly in agriculture--were beginning to assert themselves. "Yu Chao-li" also appeared in Red Flag on 1 January, to attack some positions on world Communist strategy which Khru- shchev had taken in a number of speeches in the USSR after re- turning from Peiping the previous October. Yu's article ob- served that Mao had pointed out two years earlier (November 1957) that the East Wind prevailed, but "not all people saw this new situation clearly." Faced with the change in the balance of power and the struggle of anti-imperialist forces, Sanitized - Approved For Relg?,E,,CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For I09DNW : CIA-RDP7 600427A000600110001-1 the article went on, the West had taken up the banner of peace in the hope of deceiving the simple. The article noted that the American aim remained that of destroying the bloc, and it concluded with a citation of Mao's dictum about not overesti- mating the enemy or underestimating one's own forces. During January, there was apparently a conference of party leaders and provincial first secretaries in Shanghai, concerned with the 1960 economic plan and related matters. While this conference was going on, the regime on 22 January issued a communique asserting that the 1959 production targets had been overfulfilled, and that grain production was about 270 million tons. This latter claim, of an increase of about eight per- cent, even if accurate would have fallen short of the party's own definition of the minimum requirement of a "leap" in agri- culture (stated by Chou En-lai as a 10-to-20 percent increase); and the true figure is estimated to have been about 190 mil- lion tons. Nevertheless, the 1959 figures were presented as demonstrating the "absolute correctness" of the general line and the leap and commune programs, which were noted again to have been proposed by Mao himself. During January and February, the Chinese Communists were giving further expression to their dispute with Moscow on Com- munist strategy by clashing with Soviet representatives in the world Communist front organizations--in the World Peace Coun- cil in January, and in the International Union of Students in February. In the same period, Kang Sheng, the Chinese ob- server at a Warsaw Pact meeting, stated what was clearly a minority position at the meeting, a position critical of So- viet approaches to the United States and particularly critical of Soviet positions on disarmament. Kang's speech, not re- ported by bloc media outside China, was said to have been so offensive in the original that Khrushchev was moved to rebut it, criticizing a number of Chinese positions. Party leaders in late February and March gave much atten- tion to the importance of Mao's thought and to the need to develop agriculture.* As in January, Li Fu-chun again attributed *Muc ater in the year, Red Flag asserted that Mao at the eighth plenum, in August 1959, had proposed placing agriculture "in the position of foremost importance" among economic ques- tions. Sanitized - Approved For Re TCIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 SYURE Sanitized - Approved For ReF& "CIA-RDP7S 00427A000600110001-1 the "great achievements" of 1958 and 1959 to the strength of mass movements under Mao's guidance, movements undertaken in the spirit of 'uninterrupted revolution" and with "politics in command." Qualifications of the sort associated with lead- ers of the administrator-economist wing of the party were also apparent, however, in Li's mention of the need for not ignor- ing material incentives and the need to combine great enthu- siasm with scientific analysis. The emphasis of the dominant group was apparent in a Peop1e's Daily article at the same time, which credited Mao with the 'discovery" that political indoctrination was more important than material incentives. The party-machine figure Liu Ning-i, in a longwinded speech of early March exhorting a great "leap" in 1960, pointed out that adherence to Mao's thought meant assurance of success, whereas "should we once deviate from Mao Tse-tung's ideology, we would most assuredly commit mistakes." The party-machine figure Tan Chen-lin, writing in Red Flag in mid-March, provided the first top-level endorsement of the 10-year plan for the mechanization of agriculture ad- vanced by Po I-po the previous October--a delay possibly ex- plained by continuing debate on the plan. Tan insisted that the plan could be achieved if the party adhered to the instruc- tion of the central committee and Mao; he called for such mechanization through a mass campaign, stimulating revolution- ary enthusiasm, acting boldly, wiping out "rightist-inclined conservative ideology," and so on. The party machine figure Ko Ching-shih spoke later in the month, with less sloganeering than had Tan, in support of a new campaign to stimulate techno- logical innovations in all sectors of the economy. The economic specialists Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien-nien, and the party-machine figure Tan Chen-lin, gave the principal reports to the National People's Congress in late March and early April. These reports praised the achievements of Mao's thinking, spoke scornfully of the activities in 1959 of a "hand- ful of right opportunists," called for a 23 percent increase in the value of industrial and agricultural output in 1960 (an increase of 31 percent was claimed for 1959), and exhorted the campaign for technical innovations. These reports emphasized the importance of developing agriculture, and the 1960 plan and budget provided for a substantial increase in resources to be allocated to this end. However, heavy industry was still to get a much greater share of resources in 1960, and Tan's speech gave a relatively modest target for agricultural production Sanitized - Approved For ReIg?~REICIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 SECRET as of 1967--about 375 million tons, or an annual increase of about seven percent.* Li Fu-chun's report revealed that urban communes were being set up "in a big way" in China. The resumption of this program, which had been postponed indefinitely by the party plenum of December 1958, was perhaps the best indication of the period that the thinking of Mao and the party-machine leaders still dominated the party. However, Mao's thinking had apparently changed in one important respect, as the national agricultural development program published a few days later called inter alia for popularizing birth control--a program favored less in the past by Mao and the party-machine leaders than by the administrators and economists. Chou En-lai gave a minor report to the National People's Congress, on the international situation. He stated some of Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy--that the East Wind prevailed, that peace was to be achieved by struggle, and that American policies could not change--but he did so in a non-polemical manner. He included a strong expression of grati- tude for Soviet aid to China, and he spoke of the "sacred duty" of proletarian internationalism. There were only a few pronouncements by party leaders on the party's domestic programs in the remainder of the spring of 1960. Po I-po found occasion in May to describe the economic situation as 'very good," with industrial production in the first quarter of 1960 far above that of the same period in 1959, and with the commune program developing well. Po and Li Hsien- nien both gave considerable attention to the campaign for tech- nical innovations; Li attributed the "lines" of this campaign to Mao. The most important development in Communist China--and in the world Communist movement as well--i.r. the spring of 1960 was unquestionably the publication in April of the Lenin Anniversary pronouncements of Mao Tse-tung and his theorists. These constituted a systematic defense of Chinese positions *Tan's displacement of Teng Tzu-hui was emphasized by this appearance: the extremist Tan had been wrong, the rightist Teng had been right, nevertheless it was Tan who was chosen to state this more conservative line, as if he had been right all along. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approvved For ReIeAW" IA-RDP79SbO427A000600110001-1 with respect to both domestic and foreign policy, and a com- prehensive indictment of Soviet positions on world Communist strategy. These pronouncements--which came in the form of anonymous or pseudonymous articles in Red Flag and People's Daily, plus a long speech by Lu Ting-i--were soon put n pam- plet form and circulated by the Chinese party to other Com- munist parties, thus carrying to the world Communist movement the Chinese challenge to Soviet leadership of the movement. Virtually every point made in the Chinese party's pro- nouncements during April 1960--with respect both to building Communism and to world Communist strategy--had been made earlier in the course of the Sino-Soviet dispute on one or another occasion by one or another spokesman. However, there had been nothing on the scale of these April pronouncements, nothing so scornful in tone, and nothing so clearly meant to represent the views of Mao Tse-tung. The most important item in the col- lection, the long article which appeared in the mid-April Red Flag, was later described by an official Chinese source as one o the great articles embodying the "glorious contributions" of Mao to historical materialism (the others named being the two long articles of 1956 on the "historical experience of the proletariat" and the official version of Mao's "contradictions" speech published in June 1957). Comparatively small portions of the April pronouncements were devoted to Chinese domestic programs. The pronouncements did contain, however, spirited defenses of the general line, the "leap," the commune program and related programs, and the doctrinal concepts underlying all these policies and programs, against the "modern revisionists" and "slanderers." The es- sential argument was that Mao and his comrades, close students and faithful followers of Lenin, had made creative contribu- tions to Leninism which Lenin would surely have applauded, in contrast to the behavior of certain contemporary Communists who neither knew nor followed Lenin, were incapable of making such contributions, and did not even have the wit to recognize them. By far the greatest part of each of the April pronounce- ments was devoted to attacking Soviet positions on world Com- munist strategy. The essentials of the Chinese case were stated in each of the articles, and every point in the Chinese case--as summarized below--was contained in the Red Flag article later specified as embodying Mao's thought. Sanitized - Approved For Releases- tDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 ICKE Sanitized - Approved ved For Relg@~lA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 'low With respect to the basic assessment, the balance of power, whereas Moscow conceded the West to be still militarily strong, the Chinese Lenin anniversary pronouncements again disparaged Western strength and insisted that the bloc's military superiority would permit a much more aggressive world Communist program, Whereas Moscow spoke of the disastrous consequences of a world war for the world, Peiping emphasized the survival capabilities of the bloc (especially of China) and its ability to build a new world rapidly, and contended that fear of war was an ignoble and unacceptable reason for failing to pursue an aggressive program. Further, whereas Moscow emphasized the possibility of avoiding world war, Peiping emphasized American preparations for war and the consequent need for the bloc to prepare its people for that possibility. Whereas Moscow asserted the bloc's increasing ability to deter the West from local wars as well, and also emphasized the danger of the expansion of such wars, Peiping contended that there was an increasing prospect of such Western-initiated wars and that the opportunity to fight them should be welcomed, and it minimized the danger of their ex- pansion. Whereas Moscow promised to support "just" wars--both Western-initiated local wars and Communist-sponsored-or-exploit- ed "liberation" wars--Peiping contended scornfully that Moscow's fear of world war was deterring it from giving adequate support to "just" wars, the successful prosecution of which would be greatly to the advantage of the world Communist movement. Further, whereas Moscow asserted that "peaceful coexist- ence" was a long-term objective of the bloc, Peiping insisted that this concept misrepresented any conceivable relationship with the West, that appeasement of the West under this slogan would gain nothing, that even a militant interpretation of the concept impeded the world revolutionary struggle, and that the struggle--struggle against a clearly-defined enemy--was far more important than "peace." Whereas Moscow held that there were "realistic" leaders in the West, that negotiations were worth- while, and that disarmament was both a useful issue and a feasible long-term goal, Peiping charged that Moscow was being gulled by the West, that the emphasis should be on struggle and not on talks, and that disarmament was neither possible nor desirable. Further, whereas Moscow asserted the desirability and in- creasing possibility of Communist parties coming to power by Sanitized - Approved For Re t TCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP 00427A000600110001-1 peaceful means, Peiping argued that violence was both necessary and desirable and that Communists must have the courage to use it. Similarly, whereas Moscow spoke of the decreasing import- ance of armed struggle in colonial areas and encouraged coopera- tion with bourgeois forces in such countries, Peiping emphasized the importance of armed struggle in gaining independence and the importance of seizing the leadership of the revolution in the early stages. Whereas Moscow spoke of the usefulness to the bloc of the independent countries and envisaged protracted cooperation with the bourgeois nationalist leaders of them, Peiping charged Moscow with exaggerating the importance of the neutrals, emphasized the unreliability of their leaders, and called for efforts to bring them down more rapidly. Whereas Moscow called for a gradualist program for Communist parties in developed Western countries, Peiping derided this program as opportunist, asserted that civil wars in the West were in- evitable, and called for the revolutionary overthrow of West- ern governments. Finally, whereas Moscow pursued a flexible policy in the world Communist fronts, aiming at enlisting the maximum cooperation of non-Communists, Peiping called for a more militant line at whatever the cost. The Red Flag article later said to embody Mao's thought was the most sustained polemic of the lot, and it included several of the imprecations against "modern revisionists" which Chinese spokesmen were soon to hurl at the Soviet party in face-to-face encounters, e.g., that the modern,revisionists tried to prove Lenin "outmoded," that there was "nominal op- position to dogmatism which is actually opposition to Marxism- Leninism," and that revisionism was the "main danger" to the movement. Lu Ting-i made these same points and went so far as to accuse the revisionists--in a context clearly aiming at Khrushchev--of "revising, emasculating, and betraying" Marxism- Leninism. On 27 April, Defense Minister Lin Piao reaffirmed some of Mao's propositions on military strategy. He emphasized that, while Peiping recognized the "important role technology plays in war," the Chinese were confident that they could meet an American nuclear attack with a "people's war." One of the articles cited above (People's Daily, 22 April) had observed that "we see no substantial anger n American policy on the eve of the summit meeting in Paris. In early May, Peiping was much cheered by the U-2 incident. Mao was Sanitized - Approved For ReJ CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 ~'ECCRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP74600427A000600110001-1 directly quoted on 14 May, citing the incident as "exposing" the true character of U.S. imperialism and expressing the hope that those who had held "illusions" about the U.S. "would be awakened" by this development. Mao said further that, while the Chinese supported summit talks, winning peace depended on "resolute struggle," e.g. driving the United States out of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The party machine leaders Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen, and the government leader Chou En-lai, spoke on 19 and 20 May in support of some of Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy. Peng and Chou, speaking at occasions for an Algerian delegation, both praised the Algerian rebellion as an example for other peoples and spoke of the revolutionary storm rising throughout the world. Teng, in a speech endorsing Khrushchev's action in breaking off the summit talks, reaffirmed that nego- tiations were useful only to expose the imperialists and that the emphasis must be on "struggle," and he too spoke of the rising storm. There is no doubt that the failure of the summit talks gave the Chinese added confidence in the righteousness of their entire position on world Communist strategy. The Soviet party is reliably reported to have proposed to the Chinese party on 2 June that they meet in Bucharest later in the month to discuss world Communist strategy in the light of the summit failure. The Chinese are said to have sought a postponement in order to prepare properly, but Khru- shchev is said to have replied that the Bucharest meeting would be merely preliminary, not a meeting seeking "defini- tive solutions." The Hard Summer, 1960 The emboldened Chinese party returned to the offensive, on questions of world Communist strategy, at the meeting of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Peiping in early June. The party machine leaders at this time took up the leading roles, which they have played ever since, in the Sino-Soviet dispute. In speeches immediately preceding and during the WFTU meeting, Liu Shao-chi, Liu Ning-i, and Liu,Chang-sheng all attacked Soviet positions in harsh terms, along the lines of Sanitized - Approved For R916eT: CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A proved For R I T: CIA-RDP74900427A000600110001-1 the Chinese party's Lenin Anniversary pronouncements in April. Also during the meeting, some of the Chinese leaders--including Liu Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping and Chou En-lai--had private meet- ings with various of the delegates in which they lobbied against Soviet positions. The Soviet and Chinese parties exchanged insults in their party journals in mid-June. The Soviet journals pointed to "leftist sectarian" errors and "leftwing deviationism," and criticized Chinese domestic programs as "revisionist." Chinese journals derided the views Khrushchev had allegedly brought to the summit talks, compared itself to the wise peasant who had saved the naive schoolmaster (Khrushchev) from the wolf (the U.S.), observed nastily that "the essence of modern revi- sionism is capitulation in the name of peace," and denounced those who accused the Chinese of "stiff dogmatism" while pre- senting their own "shameful actions" as a "creative development of Marxism-Leninism." At the same time, stopping in Moscow on their way to the Bucharest conference, the Chinese reportedly maintained their righteousness in discussions with Soviet repre- sentatives and said that they would alter their views only if they were "proved" wrong--in other words, that they would not back down merely if outvoted in such meetings, a position which they have maintained ever since. Khrushchev spoke on the first day--21 June--of the Bucharest meeting. He reaffirmed Soviet positions under attack by the Chinese, and he described the opponents of his ideological in- novations as persons who "act like children." On the same day, 25X1Casthe Soviet delegation reportedly began to meet with other dele- gations to give them a systematic account of the vino-Soviet 25X1C dispute The Soviet delegation then took the initiative in draft- ing a communique which was subsequently discussed by the dele- gates. Before the Chinese spoke, at least 13 of the delega- tions reportedly spoke in favor of the communique as drafted, and were critical of the Chinese; the Indonesian delegate, however, Sanitized - Approved For ReJ~aT CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A l,proved For I e~ease : CIA-RDP74WO0427A000600110001-1 was either non-commital or pro-Chinese. At this point Peng Chen of the Chinese delegation spoke, complaining that much of the criticism had been "unjust" and asking for more careful consideration of the Chinese point of view; Peng defended Chinese domestic and foreign policies at some length. Several other delegates then spoke, with only the Albanians of this group supporting the Chinese. Khrushchev then spoke in reply to Peng's speech; he reviewed the charges in the Soviet party letter of 21 June and reportedly made some fresh charges re- lating to Chinese chauvinism, Chinese non-cooperation in So- viet-proposed defense projects, the purge of Peng Te-huai for agreeing with certain Soviet positions, the foolishness of various Chinese domestic programs (including the "leap forward" and the communes), and Mao's personal vanity. Peng Chen re- portedly replied in kind, emphasizing that the Chinese party would not tolerate a father-son relationship with the Soviet party and asserting that it was the Soviet party which was splitting the world movement by organizing meetings of this type against the Chinese. Kang Sheng reportedly followed Peng in criticizing aspects of Soviet strategy. The Chinese did, however, sign the innocuous communique published by the Bucharest conference. Immediately there- after, the Soviet and Chinese press published editorials--in which Moscow sought to give the false impression that it had the support of the entire world Communist movement, while Pei- ping emphasized the continuing danger of "revisionism." The CPSU central committee met in plenum in mid-July and adopted a resolution on the Bucharest conference; the resolution ac- cused the Chinese, without naming them, of dogmatism, leftwing sectarianism, and narrow nationalism. The Chinese party apparently held a series of top-level meetings (but not a plenum) in June and July. The meetings were presumably concerned with both the Sino-Soviet dispute and Chinese economic problems. The changes in the commune program ordered in 1959 had nominally transferred the main "ownership" from the commune level to the production brigade, the smaller unit approximat- ing the pre-commune collective farms. That is, the changes were intended to return to the brigades most of the authority for organizing production and distributing income, and to ensure that the smallest farm unit, the production team, had some voice in the actual field work. The commune was to Sanitized - Approved For RiAl- : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appoved For ReIIR CIA-RDP79 OO427A000600110001-1 supervise the activities of its subordinate brigades but was to stay out of the management of day-to-day farm activity. The system was not operated in 1960 as promulgated in 1959, and this was in large part Peiping's own fault; discus- sions of how authority was to be returned to the brigades had been accompanied by insistence on the past and future import- ance of the communes. Thus, in 1960, many or most communes saw to it that politics remained "in command." Non-cultiva- tion activities continued without regard to cost or usefulness, private farming activities of the peasants were prohibited, rural free markets were closed, arbitrary sowing plans and production targets were imposed, and rural manpower was trans- ferred arbitrarily from task to task. The bad effects of such management practices were compounded by the reduced capabilities of the overworked and underfed peasants. Moreover, a serious shortage of farm labor developed. Some 10 million people were diverted to expand collective hog-raising in the busy agricul- tural month of May; many or most of the collectively-raised hogs, poorly indoctrinated, died later in the year. The labor force in commune industry was expanded from 5 million to 8 million by spring 1960, and most of the increment was used to manufacture new and untested items of farm machinery; a much- advertised mechanical rice transplanter was turned out by the millions before it was found impractical. A great amount of rural construction work was also done on irrigation projects, roads, and hillside terracing; most of this proved to be of little value. The "leap forward" attitude had also prevailed in heavy industry. The party had continued to emphasize all-out pro- duction--the 1960 target for crude steel, for example, was 18.4 million tons, as compared with 13.5 million tons in 1959-- with little regard for quality, cost, and apportionment of output. The campaign to encourage the masses to invent new tools and devise new production methods itself reflected the party's disregard of careful planning and scientific tech- nology. By June 1960, the party was seeing the results: the labor force was tired and machines were breaking down, while unusable products and devices were piling up. During June and July, while the party meetings were going on, the party was struck two unexpected and heavy blows. The first of these was a very poor wheat harvest, which, together with the difficulties in the commune program noted above, moved Sanitized - Approved For Re sT CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appr ed For Release : IA-RDP79SQ 27A000600110001-1 People's Daily in July to declare flatly that "agriculture must a taken as the first task." It was only in October 1960 that the party press got around to crediting Mao person- ally with having initiated this line, allegedly at the party plenum of August 1959. The second blow came in mid-July, when the Soviet Union suddenly began the withdrawal of its technicians. It was ap- parent that this Soviet move, as the Chinese reportedly pro- tested to Moscow at once, would greatly retard the economic development of Communist China. This damage, reflecting the loss of the great technological contribution of the technicians, could not possibly be repaired by any of the policies pursued under the "general line." The Soviet move was thus an ideal practical expression of Soviet criticism of the "general line." The first response of the Chinese party to this latest blow came in the 5 August number of the organ of CCP's Shanghai committee, of which the party-machine figure Ko Ching-shih was first secretary. Ko may have written, and in any case he ap- proved, this editorial. The editorial discussed the need for bitter struggle in the face of the problems posed by a back- ward country, by the frank opposition of the imperialist enemy, and by those who "call us fools who do not know our limitations"; the editorial derided those who would "have us merely stretch out our hands for aid," and it emphasized the need for self-reliance. People's Daily a few days later re- minded the party that Mao had 'a ways instructed us...to pre- pare for the worst" while working for the best. Li Fu-chun, the regime's principal economic planner, was chosen to state more systematically--in the mid-August Red Flag--the party's decisions of June and July and its attitude toward the withdrawal of the technicians. Li reviewed the "victory" of the general line, the "leap" and the commune pro- gram, a victory which "aroused the hatred of domestic and foreign reactionaries and modern revisionists." The party was to proceed along the same lines, "to continue to develop to- ward perfection." The aid of the "people" of the bloc had been an important factor in Chinese victories. However, since 1958 imperialists, reactionaries, "modern revisionists and Sanitized - Approved For FW@#py : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - AQproved For Re eeseT CIA-RDP77600427A000600110001-1 those who echo them" had engaged in 'anti-Chinese activity" and had attempted to "isolate us," thus proving that "we are real Marxist-Leninists." Li went on to state that the party "must place agricultural production in the foremost position" as a long-term policy and must immediately achieve an increase in food crops. The immediate answer, Li wrote, was to econo- mize manpower in all sectors in order to 'reinforce the agri- cultural production front," while the long-range solution lay in the mechanization of agriculture. The targets for all sectors of economic planning, Li said, should be "both for- ward-looking and reliable, leaving appropriate room for over- fulfillment." The country was again to be taken as 'one co- ordinated chess game," and capital construction was to be re- duced appropriately. As for help from abroad, the Chinese party's "long-term policy" was that of "self-reliance"; while maximum help would be sought, "the party has consistently held that we should mainly rely on our own efforts; this was so in the past and will be even more so in the future." Li called for a nationwide campaign to reindoctrinate both cadres and masses in the concept of relying on one's own efforts rather than upon others. The Soviet party remained on the offensive in August. Various Soviet journals, defending a range of Soviet positions in the dispute, derided "dogmatists and sectarians," "publi- cists" who selectively quoted Lenin, people who had made ab- d d rawn 25X1C solute departures" from Marxism-Leninism and ha pletely absurd" conclusions. The Soviet press also warned the the bloc i f . on rom Chinese of the consequences of iROJA 25X1 C A further indication of a Chinese intention to stand firm in the wino-Soviet dispute came in early September at the Viet Minh party congress at Hanoi, where the Soviet and Chinese rep- resentatives stated their opposing views at point-blank range. Li Fu-chun,;expanding his role in party affairs, was the Chinese spokesman, reaffirming Chinese positions and concluding with the observation that "we must not take the struggle against dogmatism as a pretext for departing from fundamental theoretical positions of Marxism-Leninism, nor allow Marxism-Leninism to Sanitized - Approved For RelegRigR IA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Reftft p CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 be replaced by revisionism." The Soviet delegate, angered, struck back hard with a denunciation of the "divisive acti- vities of the dogmatists and sectarians" (the Chinese) as a 25X1C "serious danger" to the movement. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 5X1 C Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Next 2 Page(s) In Document Exempt Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RefeaseT: CIA-RDP79&00427A000600110001-1 25X1 C 25X1 C Intransigence and Retreat, Autumn 1960 Throughout the autumn of 1960, the Chinese party remained intransigent with respect to issues in the Sino-Soviet dispute, while, under the pressure of its economic problems, it virtually abandoned the economic policies introduced in the "leap forward" years. 25X1 C the party-machine leaders Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen went to Moscow as the Chinese delegates to the 26- party preparatory meeting for the November conference. The senior party-machine leader, Liu Shao-chi, was to return to Moscow with them in November as chief of the delegation. On 1 October, Communist China's National Day, the regime began to distribute a fourth volume of Mao's collected works, edited by the publications committee of the CCP central com- mittee. This action, with subsequent commentary, made Mao himself the principal spokesman for the party in this period. In the speeches and articles surrounding National Day, Mao's theorists, some lesser party-machine figures than those in Moscow, some of the administrator-economist group, and some of the military leaders, played supporting roles for Mao and for Teng and Peng in Moscow. Sanitized - Approved For Rg tq&G~: CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized. - Approved For RAW CIA-RDP74$00427A000600110001-1 Comment on Mao's fourth volume, his writings during the 1945-49 period of the civil war, was supplied by Peiping radio, by editorials in People's Daily and Red Flag, and by the mili- tary leaders Lin Piao Minister of Defense and Fu Chung (a deputy director of the political department). The speeches on National Day were given by the administrator-economist leaders Chou En-lai and Chen Yi (both in Peiping), and by the ? party.machine figure Ko Ching-shih (in Shanghai). In another display of unity, all of the leaders of the party-machine group (except Teng and Peng, in Moscow) of the administrator- economist group (including Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui), and of the military group (except the purged Peng Te-huai), appeared on the rostrum with Mao to view the National Day parade.* These various Chinese pronouncements reaffirmed, in one ? place or another, virtually all of the points made in the Lenin Anniversary articles of April and in the Chinese party letter of 10 September, with respect to Chinese domestic programs and (in much more detail) world Communist strategy, as well as reiterating and enlarging on the party's views on "modern re- visionism." On this latter question, some of the points made were that Mao Tse-tung was the world's foremost Marxist-Lenin- ist thinker, that Mao's line was contrary to all forms of "op- portunism," and that to "equip our minds" with Mao's thinking and "oppose modern revisionism in all its forms" was the party's *Following National Day, Chen Yun, who had been out of the news for six months prior to this appearance, disappeared from the national news for three more months; however, the provincial press revealed that he was in Anhwei in late October and early November, and may have had a hand in the replacement of the first secretary of the Shantung committee by the first secretary from Anhwei. Teng Tzu-hui, absent for five months before this occasion, disappeared again for seven months. Lin Piao was also out of the news for several months after National Day, but almost certainly owing to illness; Communist sources them- selves described him as "physically weak," and he was reported to be very ill again. All other leaders of the various groups appeared frequently after National Day 1960, except for Peng Te-huai, whose last appearance was as a member of a funeral committee in May 1960, who was probably formally found guilty of "anti-party activity" soon thereafter, and whose next appearance may be at his own funeral. Sanitized - Approved For Rele S ,91A-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R 6%%V CIA-RDP7900427A000600110001-1 "most important task at present." None of these pronouncements, however, was nearly so ambitious as either the mid-April Red Flag article or the 10 September letter, and none of them dis- cussed issues between the Soviet and Chinese states such as military and economic relations or the key issue between the parties of whether the world Communist movement was to operate on the principle of majority rule. During the first three weeks of October, Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen headed the Chinese delegation to the Moscow meet- ings of the preparatory committee for the November conference. All the bloc countries and 14 non-bloc countries were represent-, ed--a total of 26 delegations. Suslov and Kozlov headed the Soviet delegation. Looking forward to a declaration to be published by the November conference, the preparatory committee in October was given a Soviet draft declaration to consider. This was organized on the scheme of the 6 December declaration of the parties. The Chinese for their part reportedly circulated their 10 September letter. With respect to matters of world Communist strategy and of authority and discipline in the movement, Teng and Peng reportedly stood on the positions taken in the Lenin Anniver- sary pronouncements and in the 10 September letter. During the three weeks, the committee managed to find acceptable lan- guage for the draft declaration with respect to almost all questions of strategy. It did this, as the 6 December declara- tion was to make apparent, by stating both the Soviet and Chi- nese positions on the issue or by offering evasive formulations. The committee was unable to find acceptable language, however, on several critical questions relating to authority and disci- pline in the movement. In particular, the Chinese stood firm in refusing to agree to any language which would imply that Soviet party resolutions were binding on other parties or would establish the principle of majority rule in the movement. The draft was left uncompleted, for referral to the conference in November. During the course of the meetings, the Albanian delegation reportedly gave strong support to the Chinese, and several Asian delegations--bloc and non-bloc--reportedly supported the Chinese on some important questions. It was apparent that in the forthcoming November conference the Chinese party, while opposed by the great majority of the parties, would not be isolated. - 43 - Sanitized - Approved For R Je : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A roved For Reh.' TCIA-RDP7$W00427A000600110001-1 By October, the Chinese economy was clearly in even worse trouble than it had been in June. The outlook for agricultural production, the task publicly placed in the "foremost position" two months earlier, was especially bleak. Despite the assur- ance of some of the party journals in September that the situa- tion was "quite favorable" and that there was a "bumper harvest" ahead, food shortages had persisted through the summer without any prospect of improvement in the winter. Drought, flood, and insects had inflicted "serious losses" on much of the area sown to grain. During October and November there was apparently another top-level meeting (not a plenum) of the Chinese party in Pei- ping, which undertook the most extensive review of the rural commund program since August 1959. The results of the review were codified in a 12-point resolution issued on 3 November. Although the directive was not published, its contents were made fairly clear by discussions in the press and in develop- ments in local areas. Whereas the changes ordered in 1959 had been compromised by the party's concurrent campaign against the rightists, the November 1960 directive evidently made clear that the party leadership was serious in wanting to re- verse policy. The evidence indicates that the November directive had three principal aims: to reduce peasant resentment; to over- haul finances and curtail wasteful investments; and to imcrove farming methods and management practices. Peasant unrest had reached serious proportions after three years of overwork and two years of undereating. The new direc- tive provided that the pace of work was to be eased, the peas- ants were not be be maltreated, compensation was to be given for property confiscated since 1958, wages were not to be with- held in the form of forced deposits, and food rations were to be increased (or at least some effort made to alleviate starva- tion). Moreover, private plots were reinstituted, and the peasants were given supplies of seed and fertilizer and time off to work the plots. Further, rural trade fairs (limited free markets) were reopened. The new, relatively conservative financial rules for com- munes and brigades were summarized by Red Flag as the "policy of keeping less and distributing more and the policy of distri- buting less by the free supply system than by the wage system." Sanitized - Approved For Re ease:CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 SEC Sanitized - Approved For RejggggT CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 In a further retreat from the original concept of the commune, the brigades were told to keep "free supply"--foodstuffs dis- tributed communally through the messhalls --below 30 percent, leaving a maximum amount to be distributed directly to the peasants on the basis of workpoints. Moreover, the brigades were told, when distributing gross income, to see that at least 90 percent of commune members got an increase in income; the proportion of gross income distributed for consumption was to be 65 percent rather than 55-60 percent. Finally, tight controls over production costs were reimposed, in order to discourage reckless investments of the "leap forward" years. Drastic changes also occurred in management policies af- fecting all rural production, i.e. production in commune industry, cultivation of crops, and other agricultural activities. These changes were brought about by curtailing commune industry, collective hog farms, and construction activities; reassigning the labor released from these activities back to the produc- tion teams to work in the fields, and transferring thousands of officials downward to production teams; discontinuing almost all of the superintensive farming methods introduced since 1958 (the "eight-point charter" which had been closely identi- fied with Mao Tse-tung himself); and giving production team officials more responsibility for deciding how to grow crops. As for the latter, perhaps the most important feature of the November directive, the brigade was to assign to its teams fixed amounts of land, manpower, draft animals, and tools, and was then to give the teams full authority over the use of these resources for the duration of farming season. It may have been in the October-November meeting--in any case, not later--that the Chinese party decided to re-establish its regional bureaus, dissolved in 1954 in the aftermath of the Kao-Jao case. Because the Kao-Jao challenge to the party leadership had been based in part on the regional organizations built up by these two leaders, the party was presumably reluct- ant to set up again these powerful complexes of political, economic and military authority which by their nature present the threat of "independent kingdoms." The decision to resur- rect them--for Northwest China, North China, Northeast China, Southwest China, Central-South China, and East China, with jurisdictions probably much the same as those of the earlier commands--reflected both a concern with popular discontent and a recognized need for better coordination of economic activity from the party center. Sanitized - Approved For Rdgo&T CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RelggREZCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Only one of the first secretaries of these regional bureaus has been identified--Sung Jen-chiung of the Northeast bureau, a longtime lieutenant of Teng Hsiao-ping, brought to Peiping in 1955 to serve again as Teng's deputy and later named to head the ministry believed responsible for developing atomic energy. Most or all of these first secretaries will probably be found to be party-machine figures--not merely men who have risen through the party machine and occupy those key posts in it, but men who have been closely associated in the past with the party-machine leaders Liu Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen. It also appears likely that these regional leaders will be men more sensitive to and experienced in economic affairs than is the case with most of the party machine figures. Two party-machine figures who are also politburo members, Ko Ching- shih and Li Ching-huan, have long been the regional leaders in East China and Southwest China respectively, and would be logical choices as the new first secretaries there. Similarly, Tao Chu, a party-machine figure and a likely member of the next politburo, long the most important iigure in the Central- South area, would be the logical candidate for first secretary there.* There seem several candidates for the Northwest and North China posts. At the same time, while the party machine leaders were strengthening their positions in the structure of power with the establishment of the great regional bureaus, the month of November saw the first fall of an important party machine figure since that of Jao Shu-shih in 1954.** Shu Tung, who had been for years a lieutenant of Jao's but had survived his fall and had taken over the important Shantung committee of the party, apparently did not repeat Jao's mistake of attempt- ing to displace his seniors; indeed, in the year before his fall he had repeatedly and emphatically associated himself with the propositions and programs of Mao and the party machine leaders and had become a much-advertised exegete of Mao's *Both Ko Ching-shih and Tao Chu have been noted in the past as more practical and less dogmatic, in their comments on Mao's economic policies, than other party machine figures. **A lesser party-machine figure, a deputy of the man removed in November 1959, had been removed in 1958. SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A ,proved For Ft Ire s; : CIA-RDP77$00427A000600110001-1 thought, seeming to be a bright candidate for the next polit- buro. Mao's programs, however, were particularly unsuccessful in the chronically blighted province of Shantung. Although in February 1959 Shu had suggested concern with the dangers of building on the fake statistics encouraged by the exhorters of the party machine, his later pronouncements suggested that he had overcome his scruples on this point and had committed himself to results he could not possibly achieve. He was re- moved as first secretary of the Shantung committee in November 1960--pursued by an article by his temporary successor observ- ing sourly that "all cadres should overcome high and mighty bureaucratism and the habit of excusing themselves by plead- ing special circumstances"--and has not appeared since.* The "special circumstances" remained; economic conditions in Shantung by spring 1961 were said to be so bad that the regime permitted no visitors. Liu Shao-chi was named to lead a powerful delegation to the Moscow conference of the 81 Communist parties in November. The other members were the party-machine leaders second and third in importance, Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen, a- the party-machine figures Li Ching-chuan (politburo member, first secretary in Chengtu), Yang Shang-kun (of the secretariat), Liu Ning-i (labor organizations), and Liu Hsiao (ambassador in Moscow);** plus three of Mao's theorists and writers who had played important roles in stating Chinese positions in the Sino-Soviet dispute, Kang Sheng (politburo), Lu Ting-i (politburo, and director of the propaganda department), and Hu Chiao-mu (secretariat), and the unaligned Liao Cheng-chih (a specialist in the fronts). There were no administrator- economist figures or military figures in the delegation, although several of the leaders of these groups saw the delegation off.*** *The lst Secretary of the Tsingtao party committee and the mayor of Tsinan were also removed. **Liu Hsiao is a special case; perhaps reflecting his role as an ambassador, his pronouncements have consistently seemed designed to flatter and gratify the USSR. ***Peng Te-huai, Chen Yun, and Teng Tzu-hui were not among those seeing the delegation off. Sanitized - Approved For Re T CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For RefffjgT CIA-RDP7.%300427A000600110001-1 Liu Shao-chi in Moscow and the administrator-economist leaders Chou En-lai and Chen Yi in Peiping all offered a num- ber of agreeable remarks--on Soviet achievements and the im- portance of the Sino-Soviet unity--on the occasion of the October Revolution anniversary, the eve of the Moscow confer- ence. At the same time, they all reaffirmed certain Chinese positions in the dispute. Soviet spokesmen were doing the same. The Moscow Conference and After, Winter 1960-61 Most of the leaders of the world Communist movement gath- ered in Moscow in November 1960 to discuss questions of world Communist strategy and of authority and discipline in the move- ment itself--and, if possible, to paper over the Sino-Soviet dispute on the basis of the uncompleted draft declaration pre- pared in October. There were delegations from 81 of the 87 Communist parties claimed to exist; they did not include Mao Tse-tung or Kim Il-sung. 25X1C 25X1 C The Soviet party began as it had at the Bucharest confer- ence the previous June, In so doing, the Soviet party was making clear to everyone that it had not abandoned or appreciably modified its positions: in other words, the agreements reached in the draft declaration were nominal agreements. Beyond this, the Soviet party was appar- ently soliciting massive support for an effort to get at least one hard agreement--on the principle of majority rule for the world Communist movement, a principle which would oblige the Chinese to refrain from public attacks on Soviet policy and 25X1C from lobbying with other parties. 25X1 C Sanitized - Approved For ReaT CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rek%a Q CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 *IW "Vi also done by Khrushchev himself, in a long speech on the first day of the Moscow conference.* 25X10 25X1C With the benefit of some fragmentary reporting - 25X1C it is possible to reconstruct much With respect to matters of world Communist strategy, the balance of power commended a bloc strategy of steady progress pri- 25X1C warily by non-military means, not a headlong and violent pro- gram of the type the Chinese seemed to be exhorting; that bloc strength was such that the West was increasingly deterred from world war, but that the West was still militarily strong (not a "paper tiger"), and, the consequences of a world war being disastrous, the bloc itself should not accept serious risks of a world war; that in building bloc strength to a posi- tion of decisive superiority with which to speed the world revolution, the Soviet model should be followed by other bloc countries and Chinese economic planning should be better co- ordinated with the bloc plan; that the West was increasingly deterred from local wars as well as world war, and, because local wars might easily expand, the bloc should try to deter or halt such wars; that the bloc would give adequate support to "liberation" wars--including "popular uprisings"--every- where, but should be wary of actions risking Western interven- tion; that "peaceful coexistence" remained the basis of So- viet policy, and that Moscow would interpret this concept with sufficient militancy; that the Soviet party remained genuinely interested in complete or partial disarmament and in negotiations with the West; that "armed struggle" in the colonial areas was a less important means of attaining inde- pendence than were other forms of action, and that Communist parties should cooperate with the national bourgeoisie there; that the newly-independent countries were useful to the bloc, that bloc aid was important in ensuring their neutrality and eventual seduction, and that "national democracy" was the mid- dle-run objective; and that Communist parties in the West faced difficult conditions and should pursue "democratic" goals at this time. With respect to questions of authority and discipline *T ese Soviet reaffirmations, clarifications, and amplifi- cations were stated publicly by Khrushchev in his 6 January report, in Moscow, on the November conference. Sanitized - Approved For Release TCIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 25X1 C Sanitized - Approved For Rele Ef IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 11"W I%wl' 25X1 C in the movement, Chinese nationalism, dogmatism and sectarianism were dangerous to the movement, and--the most important point--that the world Communist movement should operate by majority rule. 25X1 C Teng Hsiao-ping of the Chinese delegation reportedly re- lied Khrushchev with a four-hour speech. its behavior in the October meetings, fragmentary reporting on the conference, and Peiping's subse- quent presentation of the 6 December declaration, permit some fairly confident conclusions as to what Teng said in his speech. With respect to world Communist strategy, he evidently contended that the balance of power favored a much more aggressive bloc program; that the Soviet party was exaggerating Western strength, and that a more aggressive program would not increase the risks of war; that Soviet emphasis on, and exageration of the conse- quences of, world war served to depress morale, and that the Soviet emphasis on the possibility of avoiding a world war would leave people unprepared for it if it came; that in building bloc strength, the Chinese would persist in their present do- mestic policies and would retain the aim of economic autarky; that the West was if anything increasingly attracted to local wars, that such wars could be contained and should be fought; that the bloc should give stronger support to "liberation" wars; that "peaceful coexistence" must not be allowed to retard the world revolution; that disarmament was undesirable, and even limited disarmament unlikely; that there was little to be gained, and perhaps much to be lost, from negotiations with Western leaders; that "armed struggle" in the colonial areas was still of greatest importance in achieving independence, and that Communist parties should attempt to seize leadership in the early stages of the revolution; that the Soviet party exaggerated the importance of the neutralists and of bloc aid to them, that the concept of "national democracy" for the in- dependent countries envisaged a program too cautious for the existing opportunities, and that more pressure should be put on bourgeois nationalist leaders; and that Communist parties in those countries and in the West could come to power only by violence. With respect to authority and discipline within the movement, Teng evidently reaffirmed that revisionism was the main danger, denied that the Chinese party was guilty of nationalism, dogmatism or sectarianism, and--of greatest import- ance--refused absolutely to accede to any formulation which would establish the principle of majority rule. Sanitized - Approved For Relea C"61A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For R$W : CIA-RDP74800427A000600110001-1 In the discussions which followed the speeches of Khru- shchev and Teng--both of whom reportedly spoke again in these discussions--the great majority of the delegations supported Soviet positions on questions of strategy and/or authority and discipline, either strongly or on balance. However, the Chinese were not isolated: they were reportedly supported strongly by the Albanians, supported on balance by the dele- gations of North Korea, North Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, and Malaya, and supported on various specific points by some other Far Eastern parties (India, Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand) and by certain of the Latin American parties. In the final days of the conference, Liu Shao-chi report- edly negotiated with the Soviet delegation in an effort to find acceptable language for certain critical points in the draft declaration. The declaration that finally appeared--on 6 Dec- ember--made clear that Liu won the most important point: the declaration did not establish the principle of majority rule. The 6 December declaration--the result of two months of labor and discussion--was a curious document. Purporting to set forth a program for the world Communist movement, it in fact was a clumsy job of papering over the Sino-Soviet dis- pute. While it included a number of articles of faith of the world Communist movement, some of these representing genuinely agreed positions, for the most part it consisted of a mish- mash of Soviet and Chinese positions. With respect to the substantive issues in dispute, the declaration represented, on balance, a Soviet victory: Soviet propositions were given the greater weight, and were developed at greater length. But with respect to questions of authority and discipline in the movement, the declaration clearly repre- sented a Chinese victory. On the most important substantive issue, the definition of the epoch (the central question being the assessment of the balance of power), the declaration reflected primarily the Soviet position that the bloc was "becoming" the decisive factor in world affairs and could deter the West from military forms of action, and that long-range economic competition would be decisive. Soviet positions also prevailed in the declara- tion's further discussion of the bloc, in that the USSR was conceded to be far out in front in building Communism, and Soviet economic principles were endorsed as well as the Soviet call for better coordination of bloc economies. Sanitized - Approved For R5: CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReI"TCIA-RDP7a800427A000600110001-1 The declaration again reflected Soviet positions primarily on the question of world war, affirming the Soviet view on the dreadful consequences of nuclear war and on the importance of avoiding such a war. It was equivocal, however, on local wars, asserting both the Chinese position that Western-initiated local wars were likely and the Soviet position that the bloc would usually be able to deter or quench them. The declaration was equivocal on questions related to "peace- ful coexistence." Communists were instructed not to underesti- mate either the possibility of such coexistence or the possibility of war, and it was contended that coexistence favored the strug- gle while the struggle contributed to coexistence. The declara- tion endorsed negotiated settlements of international problems, but in a brief and slighting fashion. It reflected Ri-scow on the importance of disarmament, but Peiping primarily on the difficulties of achieving it. In the discussion of the colonial areas, Soviet positions were reflected in the emphasis on the importance of non-military means of gaining independence and in the omission of a pledge of greater support to "liberation" wars. Chinese positions were reflected in the recognition of the importance of "armed struggle" and liberation wars. The declaration was evasive on the question of whether to be patient or impatient with the national bourgeoisie. With respect to the independent countries, the objectives for united fronts in such countries were stated primarily in Soviet terms. The declaration set forth the Soviet concept of "national democracy" (a state like Cuba) as the transitional form to socialism for independent countries. Communist parties were given evasive instructions on the question of the degree of their support for governments led by the national bourgeoisie. The declaration reflected Soviet positions primarily in its discussion of tactics for Communist parties in the West. It had both the Soviet emphasis on the desirability and pos- sibility of peaceful accession to power and the Chinese emphasis on the possibility of violence, while it affirmed the Soviet gradualist program for these parties. The Chinese did very well indeed in the most important section of the declaration, dealing with authority and disci- pline in the movement. This section stated positions the Soviet Sanitized - Approved For Rehja j, CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 SECRET Noe and Chinese parties could appeal to equally in condemning re- visionism, dogmatism, and sectarianism, in calling for adher- ence to assessments worked out "jointly" at world Communist conferences, in holding the parties responsible to the entire Communist movement, and in providing for further conferences and, in the interim, bilateral talks. However, the effect of those provisions was to reduce the stature of the Soviet party, and to increase that of the Chinese party, in the world move- ment. The Soviet party had failed absolutely to establish the principle of majority rule, while the Chinese had succeeded in establishing positions which could be plausibly presented as providing for unanimity to be reached before any world Com- munist program could be presented. The declaration seemed to indicate a Sino-Soviet agree- ment to refrain for a time from polemics about bloc strategy, but it also seemed to give additional force to certain pres- sures on the Soviet party which the Chinese had been exerting-- to take a hard line in any talks with the West, to intervene in any Western-initiated local wars, to give more substance to professions of sympathy and support for "liberation" wars, to put more pressure on bourgeois nationalist leaders of in- dependent countries and so on. The most significant development of the conference seemed to be the success with which the Chinese had challenged Soviet leadership of the movement, in that the conference provided an official procedure for the challenge to continue. Given the lack of clarity in the 6 December declaration, the number of positions susceptible to differing interpretations, the probable Soviet and Chinese persistence in differing interpre- tations, and the existence of parties and factions within parties sympathetic to Chinese rather than to Soviet interpre- tations, it seemed quite likely that there would be a Sino- Soviet contest for predominant influence in some of the parties. Soviet and Chinese media began to offer tendentious in- terpretations of the 6 December declaration within 24 hours of its publication. By late January both Moscow and Peiping, without resorting to polemics, had reaffirmed their positions on virtually all of the issues which had been in dispute prior to and during the Moscow conference. The principal role in reaffirming, amplifying, and clarifying Soviet positions was SECRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 i Sanitized - Apprved For Release9RffA-RDP79SQ0427A000600110001-1 played by Khrushchev himself, in his 6 January report.* The Chinese equivalent of Khrushchev's report, Teng Hsiao-ping's report in mid-January, was withheld from publication, presum- ably in the interest of bloc "unity." However, Chinese com- mentaries in People's Daily and Red Flag soon amounted almost to.a published equivalent to Khrushci rs report. Peiping's attention in December and January was directed primarily to preparations for a public retreat in its domestic policies. Some observers have speculated that this retreat represented an agreement concluded with the Soviet party at the Moscow conference, but this view seems clearly mistaken. Not only did the Chinese fiercely defend their past and cur- rent policies in the Moscow meeting; they had substantially modified the commune program before the November conference began; and it was during the conference that it became clear to them how far they would fall short of their 1960 agricul- tural and industrial goals. It was in response to the imbal- ances created in the economy by the "leap forward" policies of the previous three years, to two successive years of poor crop weather, and to the Soviet withdrawal of industrial tech- nicians--and not in response to Soviet exhortation--that the Chinese party made the more comprehensive shift at the ninth plenum in January 1961. The first Chinese announcements--in November and December-- of econadc achievements during 1960 made clear that agricul- tural production had been a major disappointment. People's Daily stated that China had been visited by the "most severe natural calamities in 100 years," with no harvest at all in some places. Although Peiping gave no figures, it seemed likely that the 1960 grain crop would again, as in 1959, total no more than 190 million tons, a shortfall of about 100 millions tons from the goal stated early in 1960. Even with the same grain output as in 1958 and 1959, the food situation had become much worse, because there were about 30 million more people to feed than in 1958. *The anuary report, evidently a sanitized version of Khrushchers speech on the first day of the November confer- ence, served the same purpose as had the Soviet party letter of early November--to make clear that the Soviet party had not changed its mind on the issues, despite nominal agreements reached in a multiparty statement. Sanitized - Approved For Relgg8flE IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET Sanitized - App ved For Release : CIA-RDP79SQ8427A000600110001-1 It was apparent in November and December that the party would fail to achieve many of its goals in industrial produc- tion as well. Although Peiping asserted that its 1960 targets for steel, iron, coal, electric power, petroleum, machine tools and tractors would be reached, again it provided no figures. It was evident that light industry also would fall short. Red Flag made clear on New Year's Day in 1961 that a major reassessment of the party's domestic programs was underway. It "estimated" that the principal industrial goals of 1960 had been achieved, but it could only praise the "heroic strug- gle" against natural disasters on the agricultural front. Showing little repentance for having rejected Soviet advice on planning, the party journal observed that the party would learn from the USSR but would take as the "first consideration" the "actual conditions of our country." The journal went on to concede that the party had not "completely understood the objective laws" governing the economic development of China, and it called for a more earnest effort to "sum up our experi- ences," adopting a "realistic attitude," as Mao had "instructed us from time to time."* The journal called upon the party to learn from its failures as well as from its successes, and it conceded that in its economic development China had "taken only the first step." The journal emphasized that the regime in 1961 must increase its efforts to accumulate funds and labor power from other sources to reinforce the "agricul- tural front." The Sag Backward, Early 1961 The ninth plenum of the Chinese party's central committee was held in Peiping for five days in mid-January. This was the first announced plenum since August 1959, a delay reflect- ing the reluctance of the party to admit the painful degree to which its domestic programs had failed. *That was exactly the case: Mao had called for a realistic attitude "from time to time," i.e. when disaster had overtaken programs conceived and executed in a manic state. Sanitized - Approved For Rel,gLfECIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Relegig"'UIA-RDP79S&0427A000600110001-1 The communique of the plenum noted that the session "heard and discussed" a report by Teng Hsiao-ping on the No- vember conference of the Communist parties, and it expressed "satisfaction" with work of the Chinese delegation headed by Liu Shao-chi. It noted also that the plenum "fully approved" the 6 December declaration issued by the conference, and it called on the party and people to hold aloft this declaration together with November 1957 declaration. The conference being over, with at least a tacit agreement to refrain from polemics for a time, the communique had nothing further to say on this subject, while it had much to say about the party's domestic programs. The communique stated that the plenum had also "heard and discussed" a report by Li ]Fu-chun* on the achievements of the 1960 economic plan and on the main targets for the 1961 plan. Li's report was not published, and the communique itself gave no figures for either 1960 achievements or 1961 targets--omissions indicating serious disappointment with 1960 and sharply reduced hopes for 1961. The communique in- stead spoke in general terms of the achievements of the past three-year period, offering what comfort it could in such assertions as that China had risen to sixth place in the pro- duction of steel and to second place in the production of coal. The communique admitted flatly that the agricultural plan in 1960 "was not fulfilled," which it attributed to natural calamities. It immediately pointed out that the organization of the communes had "steadily improved," that water conservancy had made "tremendous progress," that mechanization was proceed- ing, and that the party's complex of agricultural policies had been "enriched" in practice; it asserted that "all this" had mitigated the loss from calamities and provided favorable conditions for greater agricultural production in the future. In sum, this portion of the communique declared, holding hard to the slogans if not to the actual programs, the achievements of the previous three years had demonstrated that the general line, the leap forward, and the commune program "suit the realities of China." *It was Li who had sounded the first notes of a coming policy of retrenchment in his Red Flag article in August 1960. Sanitized - Approved For Release A-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App ed For Release : CIA-RDP79S9 427A000600110001-1 The communique went on to state that the nation's energies in 1961 must be concentrated on the development of agriculture in general and of grain production in particular. The process of "consolidation" of the communes was to continue. Light in- dustry was to try to overcome the shortage of materials and to meet the people's needs "as far as possible." As for heavy industry, in the light of its achievement of the goals origin- ally scheduled for 1962,* capital construction in 1961 was to be "appropriately reduced," the rate of development of industry was to be "readjusted," and efforts were to be made "to improve the quality of products, increase their variety, strengthen the weak links in production, and continue to develop the mass movement of technical innovations..." The communique went on to admit, in effect, that the dis- appointments of 1960 were caused by something more than natural calamities--namely, popular opposition, and poor performance by the party. This was done in terms of asserting that "more than 90 percent' of the people supported the policies of the party, that "more than 90 percent" of party and government cadres worked conscientiously, and that among this great majority there were "a few functionaries who, although good-willed and well-intentioned,... lack understanding of the fundamental policies of the party..." These "fundamental" policies were specified as the policies embodying the various retreats forced on the party since 1958; these mistaken cadres, in short, had remained leftist when the party leadership was turning right. In view of "all this," there was to be a nation-wide "rectifi- cation" campaign among the cadres, with the emphasis evidently to be on respecting "objective reality"** (two People's Daily editorials in the next few days took up this theme The communique went on to observe--in an unusual if not unprecedented formulation in recent years--that the plenum had "emphatically" pointed out that the tasks for 1961 were *Western economists calculate that the rate of Chinese industrial growth in 1960 was about 18 percent, as against a planned rate of 29 percent. **The emphasis in the 'rectification" of 1957 was very dif- ferent, in effect a preparation for ignoring reality; in the 1961 campaign, little was said about "rectification," although the theme of respecting reality remained. Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap ved For R EW : CIA-RDP79900427A000600110001-1 "extraordinarily great and arduous." It called on the party and people to persist in "going all-out and aiming high" (the general line), but it refrained from invoking the principle of "putting politics in command" and asked instead that they "seek truth in facts" and work hard. Finally, the communique noted that the plenum had "de- cided" to set up six regional bureaus of the party--the bureaus in fact set up some months earlier. Whereas the eighth plenum in August 1959 had been held "under the guidance" of Mao Tse-tung, the ninth plenum in January 1961 was "presided over" by Mao. There seems no reason to doubt that Mao was the ultimate arbiter for the ninth plenum as well as for the eighth; in both cases, Mao did not care to emphasize his association with a shift to the right. Mao and the party-machine radicals, particularly Tan Chen-lin, no doubt suffered some further loss of prestige in this shift to the right, as they had in September and December of 1958 and in August 1959. However, Ko Ching-shih and Li Ching-chuan of the party machine group had not been so firmly associated with discredited policies as had others of this group. With the new evidence of the failure of policies with which Mao and the party-machine leaders had been most strongly associated, the prestige of the administrator-economists would be expected to rise. However, following the purge of autumn 1959 and through most of 1960, the administrator-eco- nomist leaders had contributed to the fostering of the "leap forward" psychology appreciably more than they had in the previous two years, and were thus in an even less favorable position for gaining an advantage than they had been in earlier periods of retreat. In any case, there was apparently no advantage to be gained even by those who had stuck to their guns; Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui, believed to be the most conservative leaders of this group and with the best claim to having been right, remained out of the news. The communique of the ninth plenum provided some clues as to the extent of the party purge in autumn 1959 and sub- sequently; it stated that "83 members and 87 alternate members of the central committee attended" the plenum. There had been 97 full members and 95 alternates after the elections of 1956. Sanitized - Approved For ReAgase fi CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 CRE u CRET Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP79S&0427A000600110001-1 Of the 97 full members as of 1956, one had died (Lin Po- chu), another was dying (Chen Keng), another had long been ill in Moscow (Chen Shao-yu), and three others were believed ill (Lin Piao, Teng Tai-yuan, Chang Yun-i), leaving eight full ? members to be accounted for, therefore possible victims of the purge. Persons of questionable status included: Peng To-huai and Huang Ko-cheng, who had very probably been purged; Chang Wen-tien, who rarely appeared; Hsu Hai-tung, Chia To-fu, and Yang Hsien-cheng, who had all disappeared after autumn 1959; Shu Tung and Liu Ko-ping, who had been dismissed from their posts in 1960 in disagreeable circumstances; and Wang Wei-chou, Cheng Tzu-hua, Chien Ying, and Teng Hua, who had all been out of the news for several months. However, it is likely that some of these listed as possible purgees--especially among those named last--were in fact sick or preoccupied. Of the 95 alternate members as of 1956, as against 87 attending the January 1961 plenum, two had died (Chang Hsi and Tsai Shu-fan), and two may have been purged in 1958 (Li Tao and Chao Chien-min, previously noted), leaving four to six alternate members to account for. There were about 20 candidates as possible purgees, i.e. alternate members who had been associated with those figures believed purged and/or had been out of the news for a long time, mainly military figures and provincial secretaries, all of them identified in earlier sections of this paper. Thus the total bag, of the purge of autumn 1959 and after, was fairly modest as of Jarluary 1961: evidently no more than 12, and probably not as many 12, of the 189 full and alter- nate members of the central committee who were living when the purge began. The number of those demoted or pushed aside was probably much higher, but we have used the word "purge" here as entailing dismissoal from the central committee and sometimes imprisonment as well. The new conservative line for industrial development, stated in the communique of the ninth plenum, was taken up by Po I-po in the 1 February Red Flag. Adopting the same strategy of pointing to "tremeenncous developments" in the period 1958-1960 rather than discussing the disappointing achievements of 1960, Po went on to defend the concept of "undulatory" development, a concept which must surely have reminded many of his readers of the concept of 'U-shaped' Sanitized - Approved For ReI-- CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Aoved For Release E'&IA-RDP79Sd0427A000600110001-1 development which the party had criticized severely in 1958.* Undulatory development, Po wrote, was one of a very high rate for several years, then of a "comparatively low" rate for several years, after which it "might" be very high again for several years. Further, rather than providing goals for 1961, Po wrote of the coming period--clearly one of a trough--as one of "consolidating, filling out, and raising standards." This was to entail, first of all, strengthening support for agriculture. Within heavy industry, emphasis was to be placed on the mining industry. In capital construction, the emphasis was to be on finishing the enterprises now underway (i.e. those enterprises on which work stopped when the Soviet technicians were withdrawn). Po followed the line of the communique in endorsing the general line of "going all-out and aiming high" without mentioning the principle of "politics in command." Indeed, Po emphasized the need for getting the facts and for not giving the job to irresponsible or ignorant people. The Red Flag article of 1 February on not fearing ghosts was in effect a summary of the party's position, on matters of world Communist strategy and on domestic problems, as of early 1961. The concept of "not fearing ghosts" was another version of Mao's "paper tiger" concept. Ghosts were defined as "imperialism, reactionaries, revisionism, and all kinds of calamities..." Just as the party, when pushed to the wall, had explained that paper tigers were also real tigers that "can still bite" in the short run, so this Red Flag article went on to explain that ghosts were real. It summed up the matter this way: ...on the whole, ghosts are not to be feared and can be completely defeated and subdued by men. But in dealing with each specific ghost, men must adopt a cautious attitude and must use stratagems in order to win ultimate victory. It went on to define the 6 December declaration of the Com- munist parties as a "fear no ghost" statement, and, inter alia, it admitted that "internally, there are still great *The party later was at pains to distinguish between the two. Sanitized - Approved For Rele], lA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ROME: CIA-RDP79"" 00427A000600110001-1 difficulties." Possibly because the concept of real ghosts was hard to present as a contribution to dialectical materi- alism, Chinese media did not develop this concept.* The Moscow conference of November 1960 was repeated in little at the Albanian party congress in February 1961. The line-up of the parties was similar to that of November, with the Chinese and Albanian parties, in their pronouncements at the conference, standing solidly together--supported, on balance, by the North Korean and North Vietnamese parties, and, apparently, by the delegates from the Indonesian, Burmese, Malayan, Japanese and Thai parties. The Quiet Spring, 1961 During the spring (March-June) of 1961, Chinese Communist leaders were quiet. None of the party leaders made a major speech or wrote an important article in this period. The party's long-standing propositions on world Communist strategy were reaffirmed (without polemics) in passing comments by some of these leaders and in editorials and articles by lesser figures; on one hand, the Chinese party approved the tougher Soviet policies toward the West, while on the other hand it continued to compete with Moscow for influence in the world Communist movement. The Chinese party's relatively conserva- tive domestic policies were amplified (with some dampness of spirit) in minor pronouncements by party leaders and by party organs; at the same time, Peiping continued to defend past and present aspects of its programs offensive to Moscow, and the USSR did not restore the program of aid to Peiping which existed before mid-1960. In mid-March, People's Daily and Red Flag published several articles on the 90th anniversary of the Paris Commune. In these articles the party reaffirmed a number of positions on Communist strategy, especially on the need for armed struggle *It is presume that this concept was just as offensive to the Soviet party--and for the same reasons--as the "paper tiger" concept and the concept of the "East Wind prevailing." All three tend to minimize the strength of the enemy, and all three are excessively literary for sober Marxist-Leninists. Sanitized - Approved For Rele s&EcIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 T Sanitized - Appired For ReleaSsECRIA-RDP79S S1427A000600110001-1 in gaining and keeping power. Some of these articles, like many before them, implied the relevance of Chinese experience for the parties of the underdeveloped countries. The articles also explicitly reaffirmed the validity and importance of the party's incendiary Lenin Anniversary articles of April 1960. These mid-March articles at some points came close to polemics, but were much more restrained than the 1960 articles had been. During March and April, the continuing Sino-Soviet dis- agreement on aspects of strategy was given practical expression in disputes in the world Communist fronts. The Chinese insist- ed that the fronts should openly charge the United States with the prime responsibility for all current crises and should work primarily to promote militant anti-imperialist, national lib- eration struggles. They wished to de-emphasize those front campaigns which promoted disarmament and which publicized the benefits non-Communists might gain from peaceful coexistence. They opposed concessions to the non-Communist left and to "revisionists." Soviet and pro-Soviet participants in meet- ings of these organizations tried to maintain moderation in the language of resolutions, to avoid undue emphasis on anti- American formulas, and to give priority to appeals for strug- gles for disarmament and peaceful coexistence. However, the Soviets gave greater attention than before to expressing solidarity with anti-colonial and national liberation struggles along lines long advocated by the Chinese. Soviet efforts to conciliate the Chinese involved substantial concessions, par- ticularly in resolutions adopted at New Delhi at the end of March and the Afro-Asian Solidarity meeting in Bandung in April. During April, in what was probably the Chinese action most offensive to Moscow during the entire spring, Peiping gave a handsome reward to Albania for its support in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Peiping granted a credit to Albania of $125 million, roughly 80 percent of the aid Albania was seeking from all sources for its Five Year Plan. The aid agreement involved the dispatch of Chinese technicians and equipment for construc- tion of 25 industrial projects, as well as foodstuffs (in the face of starvation in China itself). Li Hsien-nien, who had headed the Chinese delegation to the Albanian party congress in February, headed the Chinese group in the April talks in Peiping. Mao, Chou En-lai, and Teng Hsiao-ping all received the senior Albanian representative (Kellezi). With the an- nouncement of this agreement, dissident elements in the world Sanitized - Approved For Releg.2itRA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For eese : CIA-RDP7 0427A000600110001-1 Communist parties could not fail to see that the Chinese were willing to back such forces.* During April, the Chinese party found cause for rejoicing in the failure of the invasion of Cuba, Chinese comment pointed out that the Chinese party had insisted all along that imperi- alist strategy was increasingly attracted to local wars, that the failure of the venture again showed the United States be "outwardly strong but inwardly weak" (a paper tiger), to the U.S. would learn nothing from this and would initiate further such ventures, that local wars must be fought, that they should be fought both by local forces and by the forces of the bloc, and that engagement in such wars would make a "tremendous" contribution to world peace.** In the same period, Mao Tse-tung himself received a group of Cubans, and, in his first public statement in ten months, spoke of the common struggle against imperialism. A week later, Mao told some Latin American visitors that the Cuban venture showed that the "Kennedy administration is worse, not better, than the Eisenhower administration." (This declaration has been cited many times since by Peiping, but not by Moscow.) Mao reaffirmed to some Afro-Asian visitors at the same time ._._*The Chinese party had earlier given new credits to two other bloc states--North Korea and North Vietnam--which had on balance been Chinese supporters at the Moscow conference. The Chinese had given North Korea a credit of $105 million in October 1960, which was followed by Soviet cancellation of $190 million of North Korea's debt in November. After the Soviet offer of a $112 million credit to North Vietnam in December 1960, the Chinese had countered with a $157 million credit. **Liu Shao-chi and Chou En-lai teamed up in early May in a letter to Castro stating that the Chinese "fully support" Castro's warning against a new attack. Sanitized - Approved For R%Ig@W CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Relea a A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 llwl1W his proposition that revolutionaries who struggle will pre- vail, no matter how small their forces at the beginning.* In mid-May, Liu Shao-chi received an Algerian delegation. Reaffirming the Chinese position on the importance of libera- tion wars and on the proper conduct of negotiations with the enemy, Liu praised the "heroic resistance" of the Algerian rebels while not excluding the possibility of achieving inde- pendence through negotiations in which the enemy would be "exposed ceaselessly." Liu held up the Algerian struggle as a "brilliant example for African peoples and oppressed nations throughout the world." Also in mid-May, the Chinese party stated a somewhat grudging acquiescence in the forthcoming Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting. Peiping expressed hope of "positive" results, while observing that the Cuban venture had exposed the President as a true imperialist; Chinese newsmen did not cover the meeting. In early June, Soviet comment described the meeting as having been a "good beginning," whereas Chinese comment failed to concede that the talks had been useful. In late May and early June, Peiping took pleasure in a number of harsh Soviet articles and broadcasts criticizing anti-Communist actions taken by the United Arab Republic. This was another case in which the Chinese could argue that, as the Cuban venture had proved with respect to local wars, they had been right all along--i.e. they had` contended since 1959 that Nasser was a bad risk and that aid to him would harm the cause of the Arab Communists, whom it was now time to support. Peiping joined the fray in early June by publicizing some of the Soviet charges, but, after Moscow and Cairo ex- changed rebuttals in mid-June, both sides called off the fight. *At about-this time, Peiping issued an English-language edi- tion of the fourth volume of Mao's works. A new paragraph in the introduction repeated Lin Piao's assertion of October 1960, when the Chinese-language edition was published, that the volume was a "great event" not simply for China but for the world Com- munist movement. The introduction pointed particularly to Mao's propositions on the need for courage, the character of imperi- alism as a paper tiger, the need for an anti-imperialist front, and the inevitable victory of revolutionary forces no matter how small their beginnings. Sanitized - Approved For Release R'IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReIea8RE'1CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 *Awl 1*0 During June, Liu Shao-chi, Chou En-lai, Chen Yun, Teng Hsiao-ping, Peng Chen and others received an Indonesian Com- munist party delegation led by the pro-Soviet Aidit, whom Peiping tried hard to impress. This was not an occasion for a public review of Chinese positions in the Sino-Soviet dis- pute, as Sukarno was a guest in Peiping in the same period and was received by Mao and Liu. At a banquet which both Sukarno and Aidit attended, Liu gave a polite speech (appro- priate to the audience) emphasizing common interests and aims. Also in June, Peiping made much of North Vietnamese premier Phan Van Dong, stopping on his way to Moscow. Later in June, Mao, Liu, and Chou received a Japanese Communist party delegation, in more favorable circumstances for reaffirming Chinese positions. People's Daily during their visit praised the Japanese party 's adership of mass (violent) actions in the previous two years and reaffirmed the Chinese party's positions also on the East Wind prevailing, the unchanging nature of imperialism, and the American attrac- tion to local wars. Matching Moscow's action in naming polit- buro member Mukhitdinov as CPSU delegate to the JCP's scheduled congress in July, Peiping named Peng Chen; but all foreign Communists were refused visas. In late June Peiping again affirmed the party's positions on local wars and liberation wars. This was done in comment- aries on the 11th anniversary of the opening of the Korean war-- which has consistently been Peiping's prize exhibit in the case for daring to engage in local wars--and on the fighting in Angola. The "armed struggle of the Angolan people" was described as the'inost striking development of the continued upsurge" of the national independence movement in Africa. Throughout the spring of 1961, there were fragmentary in- dications of Soviet and Chinese differences on the terms for a settlement in Laos. However, Moscow, Peiping, and Hanoi ap- peared to have the common aims of a "neutralist" Laos, lean- ing toward the bloc, and a common interest in frustrating plans for effective international supervision, together with a com- mon willingness to resume military action against the RLG if their terms were not met. Things seemed to be going so well in Laos for both Moscow and Peiping, in spring 1961, that there was little to quarrel about. Sanitized - Approved For ReiggER CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - ApIwoved For Relea~SeETCIA-RDP79680427A000600110001-1 Also throughout the spring, Khrushchev's challenge to the structure of the UN pleased Peiping. Previously, Peiping had not only failed to endorse Khrushchev's activities at the UNGA but had chided him for getting pushed around by the United States. Khrushchev's efforts during 1961 were described by the Chinese as "fruitful" in exposing the aggressive nature of imperialism, and Peiping supported the Soviet line in the UN. The Chinese in June were clearly pleased by two S:jviet actions. The first of these was Moscow's release of a memo- randum Khrushchev had given President Kennedy in which Khru- shchev.had categorically set the end of 1961 as the deadline for conclusion of a separate treaty with the East German regime, and, subsequently, Khrushchev's pronouncements that force would be met with force. The Chinese emphasized the militant features of Khrushchev's statements, and in general suggested a belief that Soviet policy on Berlin would be the testing- ground for Soviet professions of militant leadership of the world revolution.* The Chinese in June also showed their pleasure in the So- viet action in forcing the issue on a nuclear text ban agree- ment. Chinese propaganda during the test ban talks had been consistent with Soviet propaganda, and did not reflect any con- cern about the possibility of agreements inconsistent with Peiping's desire to have nuclear weapons. The Chinese followed the Soviet lead in blaming the U.S. for the failure of the talks. With regard to the world Communist fronts, by June Moscow and Peiping had apparently reached agreement on at least one critical point, as virtually all the fronts, except the "peace" fronts, had abandoned reserve in attacking the United States. *Red Flag was soon to publish an article drawing conclusions from what it depicted as the Kennedy administration's record of "aggression" and "defeat" in Cuba and Laos. Alluding to the "so-called Berlin crisis" as the most recent example of the new administration's "adventurist" desire to undertake local wars, Red Flag pointedly added that experience with the Kennedy administration had shown that whenever it was met "head-on" and dealt "powerful counterblows," it was "forced to retreat." Sanitized - Approved For Relea!.RSA-L,&-1 Sanitized - A oved For RNE aseT: CIA-RDP79600427A000600110001-1 However, the first Soviet and Chinese comment on the latest draft program of the WFTU--adopted in late June--show- ed differences in emphasis in treatment of the United States and on other issues related to the use of the fronts. More- over, there was evidence in organizational developments of continuing Sino-Soviet differences. The Soviets seemed to be moving to prevent the Chinese from gaining decisive influence in any front organization body or project. With respect to the sick Chinese economy, Peiping's pro- nouncements during the spring of 1961 were very different from those of spring 1958, similar in some respects to those of spring 1959, and again different from those of spring 1960. Whereas spring 1958 had been featured by exhortations to a "leap," the profusion of unrealistic goals, and attacks on the rightists, and spring 1960 had seen expressions of con- fidence in a continuing "leap" and a commitment to still am- bitious goals, the emphasis in spring 1961 was on the dif- ficulties, on the need for caution, on the undulatory develop- ment of the economy, and there was no public statement of any goals at all. During March, People's Daily and Red Flag carried a num- ber of articles on such themes as the importance of Mao's thought in all fields of activity ("the guide to all work"), on Mao's humble spirit in making thorough and penetrating in- vestigations, on the need to ask old peasants for advice, on the need to combine the principle of "placing politics in com- mand" with the principle of "adopting realistic and concrete measures," and so on. The last-named article, in the 16 March Red Flag, was the last gasp for some time of the slogan "politics in command." During April, there were many articles in the party jour- nals similar to those of March: citing Mao on the need for "all things" to go through a process of trial-and-error; in- sisting on the need for a "realistic approach," and rejecting the view that an emphasis on realism would dampen initiative ("this view is quite wrong") or the view that "respect for objective conditions would hinder the display of man's conscious activity" (this view was "not correct"); and so on. In the same month, party journals called for commune industry to de- vote itself to agriculture and the people's livelihood, and for an improvement in the quality of light industrial products; Mao was cited on the need to improve the people's livelihood because livelihood affects production. Sanitized - Approved For ReI"ftj CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - ApWved For ReI "Y-BIA-RDP79 427A000600110001-1 On 1 May, there was a long authoritative article in China Youth, "On the Question of the Sustaining and Undulation of - Great Leaps Forward." It was contended that "leaps" could be sustained owing to the general laws of socialist economy, favorable conditions since "liberation" (large population, huge domestic market, vast territory and natural resources, bloc support--especially "advanced experience"), and new factors since 1957 (the results of rectification, overf ul f it lment of the First Five Year Plan, the leadership of the party and Chair- man Mao as embodied in the general line of pressing ahead con- sistently for greater, faster, better, and more economical re- sults). The increase in production would not be equally great in every year; as "Comrade Liu Shao-chi taught us,"* the rate of development would "undulate." The article went on to dis- tinguish between "undulatory" development and "the 'U-shaped' development which we criticized some time ago."** "Undulatory" development, the article went on, reflected objective condi- tions, whereas U-shaped development did not make the best of objective conditions but instead reflected conservatism and lack of enthusiasm. In other words, Mao and the party-machine leaders would appropriate the 'good' concept of "undulatory" development, while the conservatives would be stuck with the 'bad' concept of "U-shaped" development. The article went on to observe that the concept of undulation involved alternat- ing periods of "development" and "consolidation," the present period being one of consolidation. Many articles in the party journals in May took up the question of working realistically. Although it was often stated that party members must retain their "revolutionary faith," the emphasis was on such matters as Mao's long-stand- ing devotion to investigation and study, the need to solve concrete problems "realistically," the importance of reporting *Liu in his 1 October 1959 article in Problems of Peace and Socialism had made the point that "the speed o eve op- ment o t e national economy cannot possibly be the same every year. It may be higher in one year and lower in another." He had not presented this as the concept of "undulation," however, and the emphasis of his 1959 article was very dif- ferent. **At the party congress in May 1958, Liu Shao-chi and Tan Chen-lin both had strongly criticized the concept of 'U- shaped' development. Sanitized - Approved For Releas j RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appoved For Reeaee: CIA-RDP79&00427A000600110001-1 accurately to party organs in order not to "mislead the lead- ership and make it impossible for the leadership to arrive at correct judgments," the need to recognize that situations exist "independently of the human will," the advisability of listening to different opinions before formulating policies and so on. The party journals in June continued to hammer on the need for collecting evidence before making decisions. One bad-tempered article in People's Daily, "Clarify the Situation Before Jumping to Conclusions," an article which read as if written by a rightist critic of Mao and the party-machine leaders, was additionally remarkable for not even mentioning Mao as the source of this new guidance. However, later articles on this theme did again invoke Mao: "Comrade Mao Tse-tung clearly told us...," etc. Soviet spokesmen in the spring of 1960 carried on Khru- shchev's criticism of the Chinese aim of autarky and specific Chinese programs. For example, one spokesman recalled how Lenin "resolutely opposed leaps forward, building castles in the air." Another strongly emphasized Soviet experience as the "general rule" for all countries building socialism, and warned that no bloc country could develop according to its "own, national laws." Soviet publications pointedly called attention to the Chinese failure to meet export commitments to the USSR last year and to Peiping's failure to fulfill its agricultural plans for 1959 and 1960. Other commentaries made clear that China's troubles derived less from bad weather than from distortions of Marxism reflected in erroneous policies. Throughout the spring, the Sino-Soviet economic relation- ship seemed cool and correct. On one hand, Moscow was not known to be taking any additional measures to contribute to China's economic difficulties--it was apparently content with the continuing damage done by the withdrawal of the technicians in summer 1960. On the other hand, measured in terms of China's needs and of Soviet ability to provide aid, the USSR took no major steps to assist its hard-pressed ally--not even the step of returning the technicians. In early April, as the first result of talks begun in February, a Sino-Soviet trade agreement was signed. The agree- ment called for Soviet deliveries of heavy industrial machinery and equipment, petroleum products, and similar exports, in Sanitized - Approved For Red, tCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App oved For Release : CIA-RDP79W'0427A000600110001-1 return for Chinese raw materials and light industrial goods. Moscow also agreed to "loan" Peiping some 500,000 tons of sugar and to defer China's repayment of the trade deficit accrued in 1960 (the debt was to be repaid in four install- ments beginning in 1962). Talks continued on the question of longer-range economic and technical aid.* Reflecting the absence of Soviet technicians, the reduced level of Chinese exports to the USSR, and the absence of large new credits, shipments of machinery and equipment from the USSR to China were declining sharply in spring 1961. It seemed likely that in 1961 China's imports of machinery and equipment would be no more than half the level maintained in 1959 and 1960. Similarly, the Chinese industrialization program--in which the USSR had promised to supply China with the necessary machinery, blueprints, and experts to build and equip 291 major industrial plants by 1967, only half of which had been completed when the technicians were withdrawn--was still disrupted. This was especially true in the fields of military industry and atomic energy, which were exceptionally dependent on the services of the Soviet. technicians.** A new Sino-Soviet economic and technical agreement was signed on 19 June. The communique provided no details, sug- gesting that Moscow still had not agreed to restore the former schedule for the construction of large modern industrial facilities or to return the technicians en masse. Soviet of- ficials implied that the June agreement covered the same period-- 1961-67--and would provide for Soviet technical aid on a smaller scale and with a much smaller number of technicians. As noted previously, none of the key figures of the Chi- nese Communist leadership had much to say during the spring of 1961. Mao appeared frequently, received visitors, was cred- ited with oracular remarks, and was constantly cited as the originator of Chinese positions in the dispute with the Soviet *Peiping got more help from the free world than from the bloc in meeting the problem of its critical food shortages; by May, Peiping had arranged to buy about 10 million, tons of grain from non-bloc countries. **It also appeared that the USSR was supplying very little military equipment to China in spring 1961, and that Chinese weapons development and production programs had bogged down. Sanitized - Approved For Relea"&44-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A ved For Release: CIA-RDP79SS427A000600110001-1 pp party and as the authority for the shift to the right in domestic policies. Liu Shao-chi played much the same type of role in this period, but a lesser one. Of the other party machine leaders, Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen also appeared frequently, and Peng made some passing remarks reaffirming Chinese positions on world Communist strategy. Ko Ching-shih appeared in the news occasionally, in Shanghai; Tan Chen-lin was out of the news from March to June, and Li Ching-chuan was out of it altogether. Of the leaders of the group of administrators and eco- nomists, Chou En-lai and Chen Yi continued to be very active in a routine fashion, receiving people, making minor pronounce- ments, giving interviews. Chen Yun made only a few appearances, and said nothing. The economists Li Fu-chun, Li Hsien-nien and Po I-po were all active in minor matters; Po replaced Li Fu-chun in May as director of the government's fourth staff office, coordinating the work of ministries concerned with industry and communications. Teng Tzu-hui was out of the news until May, and appeared only rarely thereafter. The only military figure on a level with the above lead- ers, Lin Piao, made very few appearances. He almost certainly continued to be ill--perhaps so ill that he could not be con- sidered a leader of any kind. None of the above figures seemed to be in serious trouble. However, Tan Chen-lin had probably lost prestige with the shift to the right, and Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui had appar- ently not been fully forgiven for having been right. The 40th Anniversary, July 1961 On 1 July 1961 the Chinese Communist party "celebrated" its 40th anniversary. In contrast to the 30th anniversary, on which occasion most of the Chinese Communist leaders had delivered themselves of major articles on aspects of the party's history or its current program and the party had pub- lished its massive official history, the 40th anniversary was allowed to depart after a modest speech by Liu Shao-chi and two supporting editorials in party journals. Sanitized - Approved For ReI - CIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReleaseR''IA-RDP79S427A000600110001-1 Liu began his speech with a brief review of the party's carrying out of the "democratic" revolution from 1921 to 1949 and of the "socialist" revolution since 1949. He noted the party's "huge successes" in socialist construction, but also its recognition that "much time is still required to build China into a great socialist country" and an even "longer historical period" to make the transition from socialism to Communism. Liu contended, as often before, that the party's history exemplified the integration of Marxism-Leninism with Chinese conditions. In every period of the party, Liu said, Mao Tse- tung has proved to be the "most able" in effecting this inte- gration. In citing the "serious" errors of the "right oppor- tunist" Chinese leaders of 1927 and the "'left' dogmatist" leaders of 1931-34, Liu did not make explicit that these lead- ers had been following Soviet advice, but his audience knew that this was his point.* Liu went on to note that the party's cause had proceeded "much more smoothly" after Mvlao's leadership of the party was established in 1935. In the light of Peiping's present trou- bles, however, Liu did not say, as he had often said before, that the party had not made any mistakes in its line since 1935. Reviewing developments since 1935, Liu concluded that the revolution had proceeded "comparatively rapidly and smoothly." Liu gave credit to Ilao and the central committee jointly for having formulated the "general line" ("going all out, aim- ing high," etc.), which was responsible for the "great leaps forward" of 1958-60. In this period, Liu said mildly, the people's communes had been formed by "agriculture cooperatives joining together"--a formulation which, like the party's cur- rent policies, put the emphasis on the collective farms rather than on the communes.** *Pravda omitted this part of Liu's speech. **Liu's treatment of the commune in this speech was in amus- ing contrast to his line in iris October 1959 article, in which he had been at pains to show that the commune was very differ- ent from the collective and that it would greatly speed the advance to Conmiun ism . Sanitized - Approved For Release,;et+RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rele fE IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Liu went on to defend the general line, the leap forward, and the commune program as "absolutely right and necessary." He conceded that there had been "quite a few shortcomings" in the party's work, but he contended that it would be "inconceiv- able" for programs so ambitious to proceed without difficulties. He expressed confidence that the Chinese people, under the leadership of the party headed by Mao, would overcome the"tempo- rary difficulties." Liu specified that the "basic policy" of Chinese economic development was "put forward by Comrade Mao Tse-tung." Under this policy, "agriculture should be the foundation and industry the guiding factor," i.e., problems in agriculture had to be solved first. Liu did not give any production goals for either agriculture or industry. Stating that the party had more than 17 million members (about 2.5 percent of the population), 70 percent of whom had joined since 1953, Lau pointed out one of the party's abiding problems: "many" of the newer members who had not gone through long revolutionary struggles, were not yet politically reliable, while the reliable old-timers had "not yet had adequate experi- ence in socialist construction.' Liu called for all party members to study socialist con- struction. Mao had "consistently said," Liu went on, that party members must 'make meticulous investigations and studies... to derive from objective reality the inherent laws, and not imaginary laws." As Mao had "pointed out long ago," Liu said, victory depended on the "Chinese /sic7 comrades' understanding of Chinese conditions"; policies must not be formulated "by a handful of people in a room"; the Marxist-Leninist style "advocated by Mao" meant "seeking truth from facts"; and earl- ier leaders of the party had failed to adhere to these precepts. Many in Liu's audience must have known that in recent years it was precisely Mao and the party machine leaders around Liu who had been most vulnerable to the charges--made by Soviet leaders and by Mao's domestic opponents--of having been a small group which had discovered specious principles and had devised its policies in disregard of the facts; but who now, in the light of modifications forced on them by circumstances, were turning these charges against any possible objectors to their continued domination of the party. Sanitized - Approved For Rel~iE&' CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Apppoved For Rel a' CIA-RDP79 0427A000600110001-1 Liu went on to note that the party had received assist- ance from the Soviet and the rest of the bloc, and "sympathy and support" from workers and "progressive" forces everywhere. In this perfunctory reference to Soviet aid, Liu implied that such aid was neither of great importance in the past nor a significant factor at present. As for foreign policy, Liu began this part of his speech by rejecting the Soviet party's "general line" of "peaceful coexistence." For the first time publicly, Liu stated that the Chinese party had its own "general line" in foreign policy-- the others in which peaceful coexistence was only one element, being the objectives of building the strength of the bloc and providing support to revolutionary struggles everywhere. Liu then made clear that the Chinese party's strategy continued to envisage an unremitting struggle against a clearly-defined enemy--the United States, which continued to "occupy" Taiwan, to maintain military bases near China, and to pursue a policy of "aggression and war." Liu reiterated Mao's line (without crediting it) that the Kennedy administra- tion was "more dangerous" than the Eisenhower administration.* Liu also reiterated the proposition, offensive to Moscow, that the East Wind was prevailing over the West Wind. He cited the Moscow declaration of December 1960 in support of this, and he praised the Moscow conference as having "further strengthened the unity" of the bloc and the world movement. He went on to approve the hard Soviet positions on disarmament, a nuclear test ban, and conclusion of a German peace treaty. And he hailed various developments in Asia, Africa and Latin America as evidence of "ever deeper and wider revolutionary struggles" against the West. He concluded with a call for a "broad international united front", with the Communist states and parties as its "core," in the struggle for peace and pro- gress as defined above. The 1 July People's Daily editorial ("Forty Great and Glorious Years") and the 1 July Red Flag editorial ("Develop the Fine Traditions of the Party" did not add much to Liu's speech, although they were combined with the speech to make *Pravda toned down this part of Liu's speech. Sanitized - Approved For Released.4-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App oved For R t9T: CIA-RDP79W'0427A000600110001-1 a booklet for study throughout China. Both editorials speci- fied, as Liu had not, that Mao had "creatively" developed Marxism-Leninism, and Red Flag called on everyone to study Marxism-Leninism, Mao' works, and Soviet and other bloc experience (in that order). The Red Flag piece was devoted in large part to the theme of the importance of the "mass line" in the partjs work--a line which meant both that the masses must liberate themselves* and that the party must un- dertake careful investigation and study, soliciting their opinions rather than simply organizing and exhorting them.** Red Flag concluded with a call--more explicit than Liu's--for the people to unite under the leadership of the central com- mittee headed by Mao, and People's Daily concluded with a call-- not explicit in either Liu or Red Flag--for a valiant march forward under the "banner of Mao Tse-tung's thinking." All three of these pronouncements on the 40th anniversary implied a belief that Mao would continue indefinitely as the party's chairman. It had been suggested in various POLO papers since 1956, when the party set up the post of "honorary chair- man," that the party's ninth congress in 1961 might coincide with the 40th anniversary of the party and that Mao might take that occasion to step aside, in favor of Liu Shao-chi, as the active chairman. However, none of the material surrounding the anniversary said a word about the ninth congress scheduled for 1961, and none of it gave any hint that Mao was about to step aside. The message; of congratulation sent to the Chinese party from the other Communist parties on the 40th anniversary re- flected the unformalized and unpublicized division in the world Communist movement which had been apparent at the Mos- cow conference of November 1960. In general, the messages from the Soviet party and those which had supported the Soviet *This had an echo of the party's insistence, during the Sino- Soviet dispute in 1960, that the Chinese must rely on themselves. **In 1958-60, the opinions of the masses had been found by Mao and the party-machine leaders to coincide marvellously with their own; the party's policies of 1961 were of course much closer to the real opinions of the masses. Sanitized - Approved For ReI& TCIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appooved For ReleaECRE Sse : 6IA-RDP79Q0427A000600110001-1 party at Moscow were cool; the messages from those which had been Chinese supporters, either strongly or on balance, were warm.* The Soviet party's message offered "warm congratulations," observed that the Communist victory in China contributed greatly to the change in the world balance of forces, and noted the "enormous successes" of the Chinese in building socialism. However, it reminded Peiping that its prospects for constructing a socialist society depended on close rela- tions with other bloc countries, it failed to mention any of the Chinese "red banners" (the general line, the leap, the commune program) or any Chinese role in foreign policy, and, in contrast to anniversary messages to other parties this year, it had no praise for the Chinese leader and did not credit the Chinese party with fidelity to the aim of strength- ening bloc unity. The Eastern European messages (except Al- bania's) were of this general character, and most of them pointed to Soviet primacy in the bloc. Most of the non-bloc parties apparently failed to send messages; and most of those received were perfunctory, reserved, or monitory. The warmest message came from the Albanian party, Pei- ping's only all-out supporter at Moscow, which praised Mao personally, Chinese domestic programs and foreign policies, and, especially, the Chinese party's struggle against "modern revisionism." There were also warm messages from the North Vietnamese, North Korean, Malayan, and Burmese parties, all of which had been on balance Chinese supporters at Moscow,** and from some of the parties which had reportedly supported the Chinese on specific points or had been neutral at Moscow-- the parties of Australia, Japan, San Marino, Thailand, and Venezuela.*** 25X1A **Although the Indonesian delegation, headed by a pro-Chinese, had been on balance a Chinese supporter at Moscow, the Indonesian party did not send so warm a message on this occasion; perhaps the pro-Soviet leadership had asserted itself. ***There was also a fairly-warm message from the Outer Mongolian party, which had not supported the Chinese at Moscow. Sanitized - Approved For Relppp- - CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReI ECIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 *400, -Iwo, Twelve of the 19 full members and four of the six alter- nate members of the politburo attended the rally in Peiping, on the 40th anniversary, at which Liu Shao-chi spoke. Two other full members, Ko Ching-shih and Li Ching-chuan, appeared respectively in Shanghai and Chengtu, where they are based, and a third, Chen Yi, was in Geneva. The two other alternate members, Ulanfu and Po I-po, appeared in Ulan Bator and Mukden. Those unaccounted for, all full members, were vice-chairmen of the party Chen Yun and Lin Piao, and Tan Chen-lin and Peng Te-huai. This failure to appear was consistent with the strong evidence that Peng had been purged and that Lin was ill, with the fairly good evidence that Chen Yun had not been fully re- turned to the inner circle, and with the plausible speculation that Tan had lost prestige with the failures in agriculture. Continued Caution, July-October 1961 Most of the Chinese Communist leaders remained silent for the rest of the summer of 1961. They were out of Peiping for long periods from the end of July to late September, and were almost certainly meeting in secret sessions. With their ninth party congress due in 1961 and the Soviet party congress already scheduled for October, the Chinese leaders were pre- sumably trying to decide whether to hold their congress and attempting to work out an acceptable program, as well as pre- paring a response to some unacceptable propositions in the Soviet party's draft program. The Chinese party in this period continued its practices of reaffirming lightly some of the positions long disputed with Moscow and competing at least selectively for influence in the movement, while at the same time cooperating with the Soviets in most areas of foreign policy and in the diminished economic and military relation- ship. The comparatively little comment in party journals on Chi- nese domestic policies suggested that the party leaders con- tinued to think in relatively conservative terms. Red Flag on 1 July wrote at length on the principle of "proceeding from reality," entailing continual investigation and the dis- covery of "objective laws," and so on. The same journal on 1 August was conservative in tone throughout, and People's Daily on 4 August, after several weeks of silence on domestic policies, discussed the need to "Systematically Solve Problems Sanitized - Approved For ReI1 CiEbIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - ApppQ.ved For Rele9 'FCTIA-RDP79SGe427A000600110001-1 One by One. Chen Yi, one of the few leaders to say anything publicly, told a college audience on 10 August that emphasis should now be given to the development of professional quali- fications rather than to political activity. At the same time, the dominant leaders made clear that they were not prepared to concede that their earlier policies had been ill-conceived: Peng Chen in July, and Teng Hsiao-ping in September, spoke warmly of the "red banners" of the general line, the leap for- ward, and the commune program, while noting temporary "diffi- culties." Neither industry nor agriculture had recovered. There was little new construction in industry, and there were ap- parently slowdowns throughout industry in order to rebuild stockpiles of fuels and raw materials and to make major over- hauls of equipment. No industrial goals were published, and it seemed likely that there would be little or no increase in heavy industrial production and a significant decline in light industrial output. The 1961 harvest was expected to be poor, with total grain production no higher than 1960. With an in- creasing population, this would mean a further decline in public health and in labor productivity, and an increase in popular disaffection. There was still no indication that the USSR was prepared to undertake an economic aid program to ease either short-terns or long-term difficulties in Communist China: Peiping con- tinued to need help to resolve its food and financial crises. A Soviet trade delegation came to Peiping in August, and on 26 August the two groups issued an ambiguous statement to the effect that Sino-Soviet trade had been "satisfactory" in the first half of 1961 and that measures would be taken to improve it. There was some evidence of limited Soviet aid to Peiping in developing some components of the armed forces. The Red Flag and People's D,ily editorials on National Day--1 October--illustrat ed the decision of the dominant Chi- nese leaders to continue in a cautious course while maintain- ing that their policies of the incautious days had been correct and, indeed, to carry out a conservative program under some of the slogans of the radical years. Both editorials, "Long Live China's General Line for Building Socialism" and "Hold Aloft the Great Banner of the General Line and Strive For New Victories," praised the line adopted in 1958 ("go all-out, aim high," etc.) the "great leap forward," and the commune Sanitized - Approved For Relea%t6-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 C ECRE Sanitized - Applied For Release : 6IA-RDP79SAG427A000600110001-1 program, while admitting that the "leap" was over, emphasizing the cooperative rather than the commune, and failing even to mention the urban communes. Loth adhered to the tactic of stat- ing that most of the "principal" industrial goals (i.e. the original goals) of the second Five Year Plan had been preful- filled, rather than admitting that the fantastic goals for both industry and agriculture set during the 'leap" had been aban- doned.* Both admitted that total agricultural production had been disappointing for the third year in a row, while one held out a hope of a "slightly better' autumn harvest than 1960's; neither gave any figures or reported on the progress of mech- anization of agriculture. The achievements of the past, People's Daily contended, enabled the Chinese "to make full use" of the remaining two years (1961-62) of the Second Five Year Plan to carry out the policy set forth at the January 1961 plenum of the central com- mittee, namely the policy of readjusting, consolidating, filling out, and raising standards; to concen- trate our strength on making readjustments to overcome the new discrepancy in the balance of the national economy which appeared during its great expansion; to consolidate the successes al- ready achieved; to overcome the difficulties created by natural calamities, to strive to restore and develop our agricultural production; to en- able backward departmcttts and backward links in production to catch up; to make full use of the productive power of new industries; and to create good conditions for future expansion of the national economy during the third five-year plan. Both editorials described the difficulties as "temporary," both attributed them primarily to natural calamities, and both expressed confidence that they could be overcome--in particular, said Red Flag, by constantly summing up experiences (i.e., in this context, reconsidering policies in the light of developments) *People's Daily said that 14 of the "main targets" of the plan had been met; Peiping had claimed in March 1960 that 13 had been met even then; thus industry in 1960-61 had made vir- tually no progress over 1959. Sanitized - Approved For ReI% i f IA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Releas'E6IA-RDP79WO427A000600110001-1 "so that our subjective understanding and the measures and policies of our party may increasingly conform to realities." Both editorials defended the "wass line" and the slogan of "placing politics in command"--past appeals to which had done much to ensure that the party's policies would not conform to reality. In the most shameless and comical such maneuver since spring 1961, when the dominant leaders had appropriated the 'good' concept of "undulatory" development while sticking the rightists with the 'bad' concept of "U-shaped" development, the Red Flag editorial of 1 October contended that the purpose of "placing politics in command"--the favorite slogan of the party-machine exhorters--was precisely that of ensuring "greater care and efforts in economic work." People's Daily also made the point, as had other Chinese media earlier, that Chinese policies would continue to be based on the study of "fundamental Marxist-Leninist theory" and the study of the past policies put forward by the central committee and Mao Tse-tung, which in turn would "take into account" the experience of other bloc states. Neither editorial said a word about Soviet material aid, past, present, or future. (Ambas- sador Liu Hsiao in Moscow expressed gratitude for past Soviet aid.) Peng Chen, making the National Day speech, emphasized the "tremendous achievements'' of 1958-60, defended the general line, leap forward, and commune program, called for continued reliance on these three "resplendent red banners," and minimized diffi- culties. There were no systematic statements of Chinese positions on world Communist strategy during this period. The dominant impression was of Chinese encouragement of Moscow in a direction in which the USSR was already proceeding. Throughout this period, Chinese comment took common positions with Moscow on developments in Laos and continued to show pleasure in militant Soviet statements on Berlin. Peiping expressed much satis- faction with the Soviet announcement in late August of a deci- sion to resume nuclear testing, and the Chinese defended this decision in a series of pronouncements. The Chinese took various occasions in this period, how- ever, to reaffirm many of the points on which they differed, in substance or in emphasis, with the Soviet party. For example, Sanitized - Approved For ReleaseR'IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET Sanitized - Apoved For Release : CIA-RDP70427A000600110001-1 Peng Chen, at a dinner for Kim I1-sung ii,. early July, re- affirmed the Chinese assertions that the United States was the main enemy of the world, that the Kennedy administration was "more cunning" than its predecessor, that the United States was openly preparing for war (which Soviet media were also saying), and that Washington was particularly active in planning local wars (which some Soviet spokesmen were likewise saying) and inciting reactionaries to launch "civil" wars. Red Flag in August reiterated that the United States was unabT to change its imperialist nature, was carrying out policies of "war and agression," was emphasizing local wars while preparing for general war, and was a "paper tiger." While conceding that the paper tiger must be respected tacti- cally, it was this editorial which argued that the United States would retreat if struck heavy blows. Teng Hsiao-ping, at the North Korean party congress in mid-September, spoke at length of the Korean war as a contri- bution to peace and repeated some of Red Flag's points on the character and policies of the UnitecU States. Chinese media in September, during the Belgrade confer- ence of nonaligned countries, reaffirmed Chinese positions on types of neutralism. Red Flag detailed the activities of the "traitorous" Tito regine in the service of U.S. imperial- ism. Other Chinese comment denounced Nehru for holding that the issue of war or peace was of greater moment than the is- sue of colonialism, and praised such leaders as Sukarno and Nkrumah. Peiping put forward again, aiming immediately at Nehru, a thesis aimed in 1960 at the Soviets and serving as a reminder to Moscow now. Those who use the threat of war created by U.S. imperialism as an excuse to tie the hands of the people of all countries, to prevent them from waging a resolute struggle...,actually help only to encourage the imperialist policies of ag- gression and war.. .Peace can be won only be fight- ing for it, not by begging... Liu Shao-chi, at a dinner for Cuban president Dorticos in late September, praised the Cuban leaders for having neither illusions about nor fear of the United States and the Cuban revolution as the "bright banner" for all Latin American peo- pies. Peng Chen took the same line, in even stronger language, Sanitized - Approved For ReIg CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Rele R lA-RDP79S0000427A000600110001-1 in a speech on 25 September. Chinese comment on President Kennedy's speech to the UN General Assembly on 25 September rejected the speech in toto, describing as "particularly nauseating" expressions of American sympathy for anticolonial- ist forces. The Red Flag and People's Daily editorials on National Day, 1 October, were devoted primarily to internal policies but found space to review the changing balance cf power and the character and policies of American imperialism (the "most vicious enemy of the people of the whole world"). One of these, after citing American "war threats" related to Berlin, urged a policy of "standing firm" against such threats, a policy which would "prevent the outbreak of a world war." Peng Chen in his National Day speech made some of the same points, in rather stronger terms than used by Chou En-lai in a minor speech at a reception. As for influence in the world Communist movement, Sino- Albanian relations continued to be warm, although there was some evidence of Albanian disappointment with Chinese economic support; leaders of all other Eastern European regimes continued to give allegiance to the Soviet party. Peiping moved quickly to match a Soviet initiative on North Korea; after the USSR and North Korea concluded a mutual defense pact in early July, the Chinese, in an apparently hasty decision, invited Kim Il- sung to Peiping, gave him an extraordinary welcome, and signed with him a mutual defense treaty virtually identical with the Moscow-Pyongyang pact. While in Peiping, Kim joined the Chi- nese in denouncing "modern revision"--an action aimed at So- viet overtures to Yugoslavia. The Chinese sent the high-rank- ing Teng Hsiao-ping to the Korean party congress in September; the resolution passed by the congress showed strong Chinese influence. The Chinese apparently remained unable, however, to make significant inroads into Soviet influence with the Western European parties or in the few African parties. Moreover, So- viet influence with the Latin American parties, long dominant, apparently increased. Chinese influence apparently remained dominant in some of the smaller Asian parties (Burma, Malaya, Thailand), while the situation in the larger parties (India, Indonekia, Japan) remained ambiguous. Sanitized - Approved For Re1e*1A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReIgp~RE.ICIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 w The most important public development in this period was the publication of the CPSU's draft program on 30 July. The Chinese party a month earlier had indicated that it expected some objectionable propositions to be included in the draft program and that it would not be bound by them. For example, Chen Yi, in an interview broadcast in early July, had replied to a question on the Sino-Soviet dispute this way: Owing to differences in the concrete in- ternal and external conditions of different countries, each of the socialist countries and Communist and workers' parties, under the guidance of common principles of Marxism-Lenin- ism, pursues its own internal and external policies... More sharply, Red Flag at the same time had quoted Lenin on the "national" character of party programs. The journal also, again turning the charge of "dogmatism" against critics of Chinese programs, had defended at length Mao's application of Marxist-Leninist theory to Chinese conditions, had explained that it was precisely the dogmatists who ignored these condi- tions, and had criticized those who--unlike Marx, Engels, and Lenin--expressed opinions about a nation's problems without having thoroughly studied those problems. The draft program paid a little deference to "national peculiarities," but the program as a whole was clearly meant to reassert the proposition that Soviet experience is univer- sally valid. The program was presented as a "constructive generalization of experience of socialist construction," tak- ing account of the experience of revolutionary movements through- out the world, and determining the "main tasks and principal stages of building Communism" without qualifications as to time and place. As for the internal policies of Communist states, the CPSU draft program ignored "Mao's thought," reaffirmed the import- ance of material incentives, and emphasized that the general laws of socialist construction applicable to "every" socialist country include the need to "continuously perfect the system of international division of labor!' In other words, the Chinese Sanitized - Approved For ReIiig&ETCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Appjved For Re1eRE6IA-RDP79O427A000600110001-1 general line, "leap forward," and commune program were all ill-conceived, and the Chinese aim of autarky was inadmissible.* With respect to world Communist strategy, the CPSU draft program followed the 1961 pattern of standing firm on most of the positions earlier disputed with Peiping while retreating somewhat on others. The program reiterated the doctrine that war can be excluded from the life of society even while capi- talism still exists, while asserting also that Western leaders "openly declare their mad plans" for making war on the bloc. It repeated that a "part of the bourgeoisie" understands the consequences of nuclear war, and it again advocated the solu- tion of problems through negotiations. It described "peace- ful coexistence" not quite as the general line of the party but as the "general principle of foreign policy" of the Soviet state. It again promised an unspecified degree of support to "just wars of liberation", and it again promised to repel--by unspecified means--imperialist intervention in revolutions. In this connection', it returned to the practice--objectionable to Peiping--of alluding with studied vagueness to "wars" in general as unnecessary for revolution. The program again en- dorsed the concept of "national democracy" as an intermediate stage for underdeveloped countries on the way to Communist con- trol; while conceding that the national bourgeoisie are unreli- able, it stated that the "progressive" role of such leaders is "not yet exhausted"; and it reiterated the thesis, not ac- cepted by Peiping, that the nationalism of newly-independent countries should always be supported by Communists. The pro- gram also defended the strategy--criticized by Peiping--of forming very broad alliances for "democratic" rather than "socialist" goals in Western countries. The CPSU's draft program reiterated Soviet warnings about the danger of "nationalism" in the bloc. Repeating the warnings *Khrushchev apparently would prefer Chinese development to concentrate on economic areas which are labor-intensive and technologically simple, such as agriculture, light industry, and certain types of metallurgical, chemical and machine-build- ing industries. Peiping would be expected, in this view, to leave the technologically complex fields, such as delivery systems for nuclear weapons, to the more advanced members of the bloc. Sanitized - Approved For ReleascIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReIEIA-RDP79S427A000600110001-1 which the Soviet party had given the Chinese party both before and after the withdrawal of the technicians in July 1960, the program noted--for the benefit of all bloc members--that any country suffering from nationalism worked harm to the "common interests" of bloc countries but damaged itself even more as its "isolation from the socialist camp retards its development." There was little doubt that the draft program indicated Soviet preparations for new affirmations of Moscow's authority at the party congress in October. The Chinese party just as clearly indicated its reservations about the claims of univer- sality in the program. Peiping printed the text of the program but offered no comment whatever on it until mid-September, when Teng Hsiao-ping at the Korean party congress referred briefly to the Soviet program as outlining the "gigantic plan of the Soviet /sic7 people for building Communism..."* Elsewhere in the bloc, Albania did not join the other Eastern European re- gimes in applauding the program, while North Vietnam and North Korea were cautious in their approval. Most of the key figures of the Chinese party leadership played much the same public roles in this period as they had in the earlier months of 1961. Mao made several appearances, received visitors, and was credited with some remarks; he con- tinued to be treated as The Leader, then and for some time to come. Liu Shao-chi was active in much the same way, and made the only major speech (the 40th anniversary speech) by any party leader in the period. Of the other party machine leaders, Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen made a number of routine appearances; and Teng went to Korea and made a speech, while Peng made at least three minor speeches in Peiping. Ko Ching-chih appeared fairly often in Shanghai and made a minor speech on the 40th anniversary; Tan Chen-lin, who as previously noted had probably lost pres- tige, appeared only twice; and Li Ching-chuan, after his ap- pearance in Chengtu on 1 July, was again out of the news alto- gether, possibly organizing the new Southwest bureau. *Red Flag on 1 October went a bit further, in conceding that, on the basis of the "relatively rich experience" of China it- self, China could "absorb more" of Soviet experience to solve complex economic problems. Sanitized - Approved For ReI9 CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App paved For Rele A9R IA-RDP79Se427A000600110001-1 Of the leaders of the group of administrators and econom- ists, Chou En-lai and Chen Yi were very active throughout the period. Chen Yun, the senior of the presumed rightists, made no appearance at all until National Day. Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien-nien, apparently in good favor, made several appearances, and Po I-po, presumed to be in favor, made two appearances. Teng Tzu-hui, the other important rightist among these leaders (Chang Wen-tien is regarded as a rightist but not as a leader) remained out of the news until National Day. Lin Piao, who had missed the 40th anniversary celebrations, also remained out of the news until National Day, and it may be that most of his duties were being discharged by Lo Jui- ching, his senior deputy. No announcement was made of the dis- position of the case of the purged Peng Te-huai. On National Day, 1 October, the leadership put on another deliberate display of unity, just as it had a year earlier. All of the full members of the politburo--except the purged Peng Te-huai and the regional leaders Ko Ching-shih and Li Ching-chuan, who were at their home bases--were identified as present at the celebrations in Peiping. (Of the alternate members, Chang Wen-tien was missing.) Chen Yun appeared in his proper place among the officers of the central committee, and Teng Tzu-hui (non-politburo) appeared with his proper title, in the company of party leaders. As was the case in the 40th anniversary pronouncements on 1 July, the 1 October commentaries gave no hint that Mao would soon step aside as party chairman and said nothing about the party congress due in 1961.* The leadership made less of an effort to display unity below the national level. In the materials surrounding Na- tional Day, it was revealed that, of the 26 first secretaries of the party committees of provinces and autonomous regions, four had been replaced during 1961 while four others were un- accounted for. Those replaced were Wu Chih-pu of Honan (de- moted to second secretary), Chang Chung-liang of Kansu, Kao The party could elect new officers without waiting for a congress; any central committee plenum could do it. Sanitized - Approved For Releas g RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET Sanitized - ApjWoved For Release : CIA-RDP79 0427A000600110001-1 Feng of Tsinghai, and Liu Chien-hsun of Kwangsi.* Those miss- ing from accounts of the celebrations in their areas were Lin Tieh of Hopei, Tao Lu-chia of Shensi, Chou Lin of Kweichow, and Yang Ching-jen of Ninghsia. Some of those replaced or missing may have been reassigned to some of the party's regional bureaus not yet given publicity-- those of Northwest China, Southwest China, the Central-South, and North China. This possibility was strengthened a bit by the fact that there were no replacements or missing names among the first secretaries in East China and the Northeast, in which the regional bureaus and several of their secretaries have been publicized for some months. It seemed very doubtful, however, that reassignment to the regional bureaus explained more than three or four of the eight cases. The most interesting cases were those of Lin Tieh (missing) Wu Chih-pu (demoted), and Tao Lu-chia (missing as first secre- tary). All were about 55; all had backgrounds as political officers; all had been secretaries in their provinces for 12 to 15 years, and first secretaries for several years (Lin be- came first secretary in 1949, Wu in 1958, Tao in 1954); Lin and Tieh had been elevated to the central committee in 1956, Tao to an alternate membership in 1958; all had been repeatedly and emphatically associated with the positions of Mao and the party-machine leaders, on the matters of the general line, the "leap", and the commune program in the period 1958-1960; two (Lin and Wu) had been regarded as among the six or eight pro- vincial secretaries with the best chance to be elevated to the politburo at the next CCP congress. The careers of Lin, Wu, and Tao had been very similar, in fact, to that of Shu Tung, the first secretary in Shantung who, as noted earlier, had been brought down in late 1960. However, Shu had associated himself strongly with the policies of the leaders and later had been charged with pleading "special circumstances" to explain failure to achieve expected goals. *These four replacements bring to seven the number of known replacements of provincial first secretaries since the "leap" began in early 1958: the others were Pan Fu-sheng of Honan (1958), Chou Hsiao-thou of Hunan (1959), and Shu Tung (1960). Some of the missing persons will probably add to the list. Sanitized - Approved For Releas rn .IA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - ApWoved For Release':TCIA-RDP79O0427AO00600110001-1 In Wu's case, the Honan press suggested that he had been de- moted for lack of "realism"; i.e. not that he had retreated to a rightist position, as Shu had, but that he had failed to turn right sufficiently after the leadership had given the signal. The same thing could have happened to Lin and Tao. However, Wu was demoted only one grade--in Chinese Communist usage, a 'leftist' mistake is always given in quotation marks, signifying that it is less serious than a rightist error--and Lin and Tao may not have been demoted at all. Lin last appeared in public in Shanghai on 1 July, and was ambiguously identified as a central committee member "now in Shanghai''--a formulation which might have indicated either exile or assignment to the East China bureau. And Tao appeared later in October, although still without his title. The other five first secretaries noted as replaced or miss- ing were all from provinces with very serious economic problems-- like the secretaries noted above--and also with national minor- ities. The fall of any of these figures could be plausibly explained simply by failure. Chang Chung-liang (Kansu), Kao Feng (Tsinghai), and Liu Chien-hsun (Kwangsi) were replaced respectively by Wang Feng, Wang Chao, and Wei Kuo-ching, all three of whom had backgrounds in public security work and at least two of whom (Wang Feng and Wei) had long been concerned with minority nationalities. Only one of the replaced secre- taries, Liu, was regarded as a member of any group: in Liu's case, the party-machine figures. And only one of the replace- ments had seemed worth much attention; Wang Chao, who had been for the previous seven years a deputy minister of public security and who was of interest as a possible key figure in the group concerned with public security and secret police work. The other two missing secretaries, Chou Lin (Kweichow) and Yang Ching-jen (Ninghsia), had been regarded as small potatoes. Chou had been in Kweichow for at least ten years and had been first secretary since 1955, but he had not been named to the central committee in either 1956 or 1958 and was only lightly associated with the policies of the dominant leaders; he had been out of the news since spring 1960. Yang, a specialist in nationalities work, had been first secretary in Ninghsia for only a year or so, and had no public record. Sanitized - Approved For ReI j IA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReI Eg1A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 V"01 -"a Recapitulation, 1958-1961 Throughout the period 1958-1961, Mao Tse-tung continued to dominate the Chinese Communist party, as he had since 1935. However, his prestige, like his judgment, seemed to be deterio- rating. Mao's prestige had suffered in early 1957, with the ob- vious failure of-his policy of encouraging outside criticism of the party, at a time of "ebb" in China's economic develop- ment, and in the midst of confusion in the bloc on Chinese at- titudes toward problems of intrabloc relations. However, Mao then went on the offensive, ending the experiment with liber- alization and making the decisions to abandon the conservative program of economic development in favor of a radical program, to abandon the liberal line on intrabloc relations while resist- ing Soviet efforts to tie China itself more tightly to the bloc, and, at the same time, to incite the Soviet party to lead a much more aggressive world Communist program. During the first eight months of 1958, Mao was riding high. It was almost certainly Mao who formulated the general line and who ordered the transformation of the "upsurge" in economic development into the "great leap forward." It was Mao who designed (at least roughly) the commune program, and Mao who initiated the campaign for mass production of iron and steel. It was probably Mao who ordered the sustained Chinese attacks on the Yugoslav party, putting pressure in this way on Moscow, and it was apparently Mao, in the Peiping talks in August, who was responsible for Khrushchev's abandonment of plans for a summit meeting on Middle Eastern developments. In the affairs of the party itself, it was Mao who gave the main roles at the party congress to the party-machine leaders, and who made the final decision to add to the politburo three persons who were jointly proteges of himself and the party- machine leaders. Mao's prestige undoubtedly suffered in the late months of 1958, the beginning of the period of retreats on all fronts, and some observers speculated that his days of leadership would soon be over. That Mao continued to dominate the party, however, Sanitized - Approved For ReIemS E6IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App red For Release:EGIA-RDP79S?0427A000600110001-1 was made clear during the autumn, when Mao's compendium on the "paper tiger" theme was used to explain away the failure of the Taiwan Strait venture; and again in December, when, with the formalization of the retreats with respect to both the "leap" and the commune program, the party took the line that Mao himself had corrected the excesses, that all along he had charted the correct course between "right" and "left" opponents. Although Mao's resignation from the government chairmanship was seen by some observers as evidence of a fall, Mao's action was almost certainly voluntary, not forced by other leaders; the strongest of his lieutenants were those most closely iden- tified with his policies. In early 1959, still in the period of retreats, Mao seemed to be above the battle, saying little, permitting the radical party-machine leaders to contend publicly that they had been right all along, while permitting (or perhaps encouraging) the relatively conservative administrator-economists around Chou En-lai to emphasize practical problems and to introduce the conservative concept of economic planning as a "coordinated chess-game." By spring 1959, Mao was clearly encouraging the conservatives; his April speech and May letter both speeded the process of downward revision of goals. However, Mao soon made clear that he continued to favor as individuals the party- machine leaders who served as his principal support: Mao pro- vided the "guidance" for the August 1959 plenum which formalized a further retreat in the commune program and made a drastic reduction in the principal goals of the "leap" but which at the same time repelled the "rightist" critics of the dominant group, made clear to the conservatives the limits of criticism, and prepared for a purge of the party. Mao unquestionably approved, and perhaps directed in detail, the purge that fol- lowed, the main effect of which was to make the military establishment more responsive to him and his positions. During the autumn of 1959, Mao cast himself in the role of a semi-divine being whose propositions on the building of Communism (despite the retreats) and on world Communist strate- gy (despite Chinese weakness) were furiously defended against unbelievers at home and abroad. Mao himself again played the leading role in sending Khrushchev away from Peiping unhappy, after the Soviet leader's stop there in October. In early 1960, when the Chinese party launched new of- fensives with respect both to building Communism in China and to the promotion of the world Communist cause, the guiding Sanitized - Approved For Release C -RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap oved For RAeSse : CIA-RDP79WO427A000600110001-1 25X1 C 25X1 C principles for both campaigns were attributed to Mao. Mao in that period gave the leading roles, in publicizing his princi- ples and the derivative programs, to the economic specialists, while Mao and his theorists stated his positions on world strategy. The hubris characteristic of "Mao's thought" was clearly evident during the spring of 1960, in speeches by his lieutenants which praised him and which jeered at the "right opportunists," which called for a substantial increase in out- put over the grossly inflated claims for 1959 production, and which asserted that urban communes were being set up in a "big way." This hubris was also evident in the most important de- velopment of the period, the systematic and scornful indictment of Soviet positions on strategy in the Lenin Anniversary arti- cles--the most comprehensive and derisive of which was implied to have been written by Mao himself, and some parts of which were stated by Mao at a reception in May. In June 1960, it was Mao's positions on strategy, and to a lesser extent on building Communism, which were strongly asserted in clashes between 'Mao's lieutenants and Soviet rep- resentatives at the WFTU conference and the Bucharest meet- ing of the parties; Peng Chen at Bucharest also strongly de- fended Mao personally against Khrushchev. Later in the summer, after being struck two heavy blows by the poor wheat harvest and the mass withdrawal of the Soviet technicians, Mao no doubt approved the decisions--stated first by others--to take the development of agriculture (lagging badly) as the party's "first task," to retrench in all other sectors of economic lanning, and to stand firm against Soviet pressure. In this period, the be- inese parties was increasingly Ch~ havior of both the Soviet and shaping the dispute into the form of the Soviet party versus the Chinese party, or even Russia versus China, rather than in terms of an alliance of realistic 'conservatives' in the Soviet and Chinese parties against wild 'radicals' in the Chinese party--thus reducing the pressure on Mao from those Chinese leaders who personally tended to favor Soviet posi- tions in the dispute. 25X1 C 25X1 C Sanitized - Approved For Rele; .ErIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App,oved For Releli% 'E8IA-RDP79 427A000600110001-1 During autumn 1960, while the Chinese party on one hand remained intransigent on issues in the Sino-Soviet dispute and on the other hand virtually abandoned the domestic policies introduced in the 'leap forward" years, Mao played a leading role in the wino-Soviet relationship but no significant public role in the domestic retreat. In the dispute, Mao became the principal public spokesmen through the publication and explica- tion (by others) of the fourth volume of his works, and it was Mao who selected the tough Chinese delegation, headed by party- machine figures, to the preparatory meeting in Moscow in October for the conference of Communist parties. Also in October, Mao almost certainly attended the top-level meeting of the Chinese party which sought to make clear to the party as a whole, as the August 1959 directives apparently had not made clear, that the leadership was serious in wishing to reform the commune program; however, as often before, Mao did not associate him- self publicly with the retreat. In November 1960, it was again Mao who selected the Chi- nese delegation to the Moscow conference--several party-machine leaders and some of Mao's own writers. .gain it was Mao's positions which were defended by the Chinese delegates, who won Mao a notable (if costly) victory on the issues of authority and discipline debated at the conference. In early 1961, Chinese Communist leaders continued to stand together publicly, and perhaps privately, against the Soviet party, but there must have been a growing realization of the consequences of this position for Chinese economic and military development, and it seems certain that at least some of the administrator-economist and military leaders believed that Mao was making a bad mistake. Moreover, Mao lost further prestige with yet another retreat on the home front; although the relatively conservative leaders who had all along been critical of aspects of his "leap forward" policies presumably were glad to see Mao adjust to reality, the fact remained that it was primarily a recurrence of Mao's hubris, in early 1960, which had led the party to commit itself to goals for 1960 which it had humiliatingly failed to achieve. That Mao contiqued as the leader was indicated by the fact that he "presided over' the January plenum which conceded this failure, and by the fact that, despite the failure, the plenum defended the policies--the general line, the "leap," and the communes-- so intimately identified with Mao personally. Again Mao chose not to emphasize his personal association with a shift to the Sanitized - Approved For Release 1 IIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 "CRET Sanitized - Ap,roved For Re~l~ease : CIA-RDP79%0427A000600110001-1 right, a shift which was stated by the administrator-economists Li Fu-chun and Po I-po and in collective and anonymous pro- nouncements in the early months of 1961. During the spring of 1961, Mao, like other Chinese lead- ers, remained rather quiet. Mao's positions on strategy were reaffirmed without polemics by lesser figures. The party's relatively conservative domestic policies--approved by Mao, although painful to him--were reaffirmed by others throughout the spring. Mao's continued leadership was evident in his conduct in public appearances, in oracular remarks attributed to him, and in the continual citation of him as the originator of positions in dispute with the boviet party and as the authority for the shift to the right in domestic policies. Continuing the apparent process of gradually phasing out as chairman of the party in Liu Shao-chi's favor, Mao chose on the party's 40th anniversary (1 July 1961) to allow his leadership to be reaffirmed through Liu. In Liu's speech (the only major speech) on the occasion, Mao's 26-year leadership was praised, he was credited with the successes achievedhuun- der (or in spite of) the general line, the "leap," and t commcne program; he was said to have directed that primary attention be given to agriculture; he was cited as the source thus of the cautious principles now governing domestic policy, pre-empting the charges that might reasonably be made against him; and various of his positions and world strategy were re- af f irmed as well. Mao continued to be quiet, even more than other Chinese leaders, through the rest of the summer of 1961 and into the autumn. Fie almost certainly presided over the secret meetings of the party in this period, looking toward the imminent 22nd CPSU Congress and a Ninth CCP Congress. Mao's positions on strategy were reaffirmed lightly in Chinese pronouncements, and Mao presumably approved the policy of competing selectively with Moscow for influence in the bloc and in the world move- ment while generally cooperating in policy toward the West and Various in the diminished economic and military relationship. pronouncements suggested that I'lao continued to favor cautious domestic policies, while at the same time it was made clear in various ways that Mao and his dominant lieutenants were not prepared to concede that their earlier policies had been poorly conceived. 1oreover, it was said from time to time that Chinese policies would continue to be based on Marxist- Sanitized - Approved For Relea,WRJA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap oved For Release:TCIA-RDP79000427A000600110001-1 Leninist theory as interpreted and developed by IvMao. Through- out this period (summer-autumn 1961), Mao's leadership of the party continued to be indicated by his conduct in personal appearances, remarks attributed to him, and,the treatment of him in the Chinese press--all of which suggested no expecta- tion of his early retirement. The Party-Machine Figures Throughout the period 1953-1961, the party-machine figures around Liu Shao-chi appeared still to constitute the most power- ful group of Mao's lieutenants. However, other groups of lead- ers, in the years 1958-1961, had been given much additional reason to wish to see the party-machine leaders brought down. The party-machine leaders had begun to ride especially high, at the expense of the administrator-economist group, in mid-1957, with the failure of the liberalization policy which Chou En-lai had sponsored jointly with Iao, with the switch to a much harder line on intrabloc relations than Chou had publicized in the wintei of 1956-57, with the decision to un- dertake a radical program of economic development very differ- ent from the one with which Chou and others of that group had been identified, and with the advocacy of a world Communist program much more aggressive than the foreign policy which Chou had played the main role in implementing. The party-machine figures continued to ride very high, along with Mao, in the first half of 1953. They played the main roles in exhorting the "leap forward" and in promoting the commune program in the countryside, and, with Mao, in advocating the formation of urban communes. They played the main roles at the party congress in spring 1958, giving all three of the principal reports, and taking three of their (and Mao's) proteges into the politburo, the only three persons added in the 1957-1931 period. I.t the same time, they took into Teng's secretariat two of the key figures of the adminis- trator-economist group, Li Fu-chun and Li Isien-nien--an action aimed at giving the secretariat greater competence in economic work, and which had the secondary gain of reducing (although not eliminating) the differences between the point of view of certain of the key figures of the two groups. Sanitized - Approved For Releas?,,;, A-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 u,, URET Sanitized - App, oved For Release : CIA-RDP79IM0427A000600110001-1 After the failure of Mao's venture in the Taiwan Strait in autumn 1958, party-machine figures played roles in the effort to explain that Mao was not to blame; and in December they took part in the effort to show that the retreat in the "leap" and the commune programs was in fact a correct course between extremes. As noted above, this strongest group of Mao's lieutenants almost certainly was not responsible for Mao's resignation from the government chairmanship at that time. Recognizing that they had lost prestige and were under criticism, the party-machine leaders were still in such a strong position in early 1959 that they could contend publicly that they, like Mao, had been right all along. Their position seemed somewhat weaker in the spring, when the conservatives were being encouraged by Mao, and the party-machine figures were being indirectly criticized by some of the administrator- economists. This criticism continued into the summer, and some of the pronouncements of party-machine figures showed an awareness that mistakes had been made. However, the same August plenum which formal izec_3 a further retreat in actual economic policies also attributed the successes of 1958-59 "precisely" to the increased role of the party machine and its principles and methods of operation. This plenum, repell- ing the most rightist of the critics of Mao and the party- machine figures, had the effect of discouraging all criticism. Chou En-lai himself, knowing that a purge was imminent, took care not to attribute the mistakes of 1958-59 to the party- machine group. The purge which followed the plenum did not touch tiie party-machine figures, and one of these figures was chosen to state publicly that there had indeed been a purge; moreover, a party-machine figure became the new minister of public security. In the same period, party-machine figures played import- ant roles in defending Mao's thought, especially with respect to world Communist strategy. The most ambitious of the arti- cles with which the Chinese party challenged Khrushchev, on his visit in October, were written by Liu and Teng. In the first five months of 1960 party-machine figures played smaller public roles than had been customary, despite the fact that the party was undertaking new offensives in both domestic and foreign policies. Developments of the period did not suggest, however, that Mao was replacing them as his Sanitized - Approved For Rel%EclA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Ap'oved For Rel6ffie'TCIA-RDP79M0427A000600110001-1 favorites. The commitment to inflated production claims for 1959 and to substantial increases in 1960 over these claims, the derision of the ''right opportunists, the assertion of rapid progress in setting up urban communes, and, especially, the content of the Lenin Anniversary pronouncements, all in- dicated that the party-machine group was still riding high. Of the party-machine leaders, Tan Chen-lin gave one of three principal reports to the National People's Congress in the spring, and Teng Hsiao-ping and Peng Chen both spoke in May in support of Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy. In June 1960, at the ViFTU conference and the Bucharest meeting of the parties, the party-machine leaders took up the leading role, which they have played ever since, in confronta- tions in the Nino-Soviet dispute. At the "'IFTU meeting, Liu Shao-chi and two lesser party-machine figures attacked soviet positions in harsh terms, and Liu and Teng Hisiao-ping lobbied against Soviet positions in meetings with other delegates. At the Bucharest meeting, Peng Chen was the principal Chinese spokesman, clashing bitterly with Khrushchev and defending Mao. After the withdrawal of the Soviet technicians in July, the organ 25X10 of Ko Ching-shih's Shanghai committee was the first Chinese 25X10 source to state Pciping's intention to stand firm. During the autumn of 1960, while Peiping was virtually abandoning the policies of the "leap forward" years, the party- machine leaders were securing their prestige with Mao if not with others by standing firm in confrontations with the soviet party. Teng and Peng led the Chinese delegation tc the prepara- tory meeting in October, while lesser party-machine figures played supporting roles in Peiping. Liu went to Moscow (as head of the CCP delegation) with Teng and Peng for the November conference of the 81 parties. Tong was the principal spokes- man during the first three weeks of the conference, again clash- ing heatedly with Khrushchev and other Soviet spokesmen, while Liu took over in the final week for bilateral talks with Khru- shchev and forced the Soviet leader to back down on the key issues of authority and discipline in the movement. There is no doubt that Mao was much pleased with the performance of the party-machine leaders in Moscow; but some of the adminis- trator-economist and military leaders almost certainly believed the party-machine figures to have gone too far, and the party- Sanitized - Approved For Rele~E f IA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Apjoved For Release: CIA-RDP79900427A000600110001-1 machine leaders by their conduct had continued to give the Soviet party almost the same interest in deposing them as in deposing Mao. During this period (autumn 1960), the party machine group again strengthened its position in the structure of power, t of the six great regional bureaus of h men with the establis the party, most if not all of which were to be headed by party- machine figures. These bureaus were to reverse the trend to- ward autonomy at the provincial and local levels, reimposing strong controls at the regional level. In this period, a provincial-level party-machine figure, the Shantung the policies secretary, was brought down--not for having opposed favored by Mao and the party-machine leaders but for having fa..led to get results with them. This charge was of course applicable to Mao and the party-machine leaders too--but, in view of the purge of autumn 1959, no one seemed willing to make it. The prestige of the party-machine leaders, like that of Mao, continued to decline in some quarters of the party in early months of 1961, with the failure of the 1960 "leap," the poor prospects for 1961, and the growing realization of the effects of Soviet sanctions. Although it was barely pos- sible even to imply any criticism of the stand against the Soviet party, the emphasis on respecting reality, in comment- aries during 1961, was an indirect criticism of the earlier positions of the party-machine figures on domestic programs. And this group of leaders was inconspicuous in this period. The party-machine leaders, like other leaders, remained rather quiet in the spring of 1.961. The propositions which they had defended in the clashes with the Soviet party were reaffirmed lightly by various persons, while the domestic policies with which they had been personally associated con- tinued to recede. There was an effort in this period--comical to Western observers, but reflecting a genuine concern for prestige--to associate the party-machine figures with the 'good' concept of "undulatory" development of the Chinese economy while stacking the conservatives (who had been right) with the 'bad' concept of "U-shaped' development. The party- machine leaders clearly remained in Mao's favor: Liu con- tinued to play the public role of Mao's first lieutenant, while Teng and Peng appeared frequently. Sanitized - Approved For Rele p f4A-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For Releag1gaLc4A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Liu's apparent status (since 1945) as Mao's choice as his successor was indicated again on 1 July 1961, when Liu made the party's 40th anniversary address. Liu continued in this speech to identify himself as closely as possible with Mao's policies of recent years. Liu also continued the process of associating the party-machine figures with the current cautious principles for economic development, in effect pre- paring, with Mao, to turn against their opponents the charges which could be made against them. All of the party-machine figures at the politburo level except Tan Chen-lin--the most extreme of the "leap" exhorters--were prominent in the 40th anniversary celebrations. In the period July-October 1961, while the party con- tinued to reaffirm lightly the positions in dispute with Mos- cow and to behave conservatively in economic matters, the party-machine leaders continued to associate themselves with both attitudes. Like Mao, however, they made clear that they were not prepared to concede publicly that their earlier policies for economic development had been mistaken. Their continued high status was indicated clearly in the freedom given them to distort the record; e.g. as a part of the stratagem of carrying out a conservative program under cer- tain of the earlier radical slogans, it was shamelessly con- tended that the slogan of 'placing politics in command" had aimed precisely at ensuring "greater care" in economic work. Liu, Teng, Peng and other party-machine figures at the polit- buro level remained active and conspicuous, except for Tan Chen-lin, apparently in less favor, and Li Ching-chuan, prob- ably busy in the southwest; Peng made the National Day speech. Some of the provincial first secretaries who were demoted or replaced in this period were party-machine figures--those who had apparently failed to turn right sufficiently after tae leadership had given the signal. Throughout the period 1958-1961, the administrator- economist figures around Chou En-lai continued to seem much weaker as a group thaii the party-machine figures. Although they had been more nearly right, on domestic matters, than had the party-machine figures, they apparently derived no advantage from their acuity. Indeed, those with the best claim to having been right were the least rewarded. Sanitized - Approved For Rele G. ' cTA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - A oved For R QW: CIA-RDP79$00427A000600110001-1 As noted previously, tiie administrator-economists around Chou were displaced from leading roles during 1957, with the decisions to adopt a complex of radical policies in both ti domestic and foreign affairs. These relatively conservative leaders continued to play small roles during the first half of 1958, and were given back seats at the party congress in that period. No persons associated with them were added to the politburo; their only significant gain, the cooption of two of them--Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien-nien--into the policy- implementing secretariat, was somewhat compromised by the pressure on these leaders to adopt a new point of view closer to that of the party-machine leaders. In the summer and fall of 1958, the administrator-econom- ists continued to play secondary roles. They were not promin- ent in promoting either the rural or urban communes, and most of them, especially Chen Yun, probably opposed the ill-fated "backyard steel" campaign. In the Taiwan Strait venture of that period, Chou En-lai was given a role in the retreating phase of the venture and in explaining that Mao was not to blame for its failure. By the end of 1958, when it became necessary to announce substantial modifications in the "leap forward" and commune programs, it was obvious that Mao and the party-machine lead- ers, not the administrator-economists, bore the main responsi- bility for these embarrassments. However, most of the adminis- trator-economists had been publicly drawn into these programs sufficiently to be compromised. Even those whose hands seemed to bL clean, e.g. Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui, were not strong enough to press for a public vindication. The relative weakness of the administrator-economists in the structure of power continued to be illustrated in the early months of 1959. Although these leaders were permitted in their pronouncements to discuss practical problems and to introduce the concept (perhaps Chen Yun's) of the "chess- game," lines which constituted criticism of the party=machine record, party-machine figures were permitted to argue, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that the party machine had not been wrong. The position of the administrator-economists seemed stronger during the spring and early summer, when Mao was encouraging a rightist course, but developments in July and August reflected Mao's decision to continue to favor the party-machine leaders primarily. At the party meetings in Sanitized - Approved For ReIe PIA-RDP79SO0427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App&pved For ReleiiCTIA-RDP79427A000600110001-1 that period which debated the issues and halted the rightist trend, the leaders of the administrator-economist group clearly did not carry their criticism as far as did those who were purged, and were not suspected of taking their case out- side the party, as the purgees had; but some of the lesser figures of this group seem to have been included in the purge. During autumn 1959, when the anti-rightist campaign and the purge were underway and when party leaders of all groups were offering a display of solidarity against both domestic and foreign opponents, the administrator-economist leaders played roles in defending Mao's propositions on building Com- munism and on world Communist strategy. During Khrushchev's visit in October, however, their roles were clearly secondary to those of Mao and the party-machine figures; and Chen Yun, the leader probably most responsive to Soviet principles of economic development, was kept out of Peiping during the visit. Continuing the process begun in autumn 1959, during the new offensives in the early months of 1960 the distance between Mao and the party-machine leaders on one hand and the adminis- trator-economists on the other seemed to be diminishing. This was particularly true of Li Fu-chun and Li Hsien-nien, the economic specialists who had been added to the secretariat in 1958. Li Fu-chun began the year with a 1 January article de- fending the party machine and its principles of operation, and thereafter Li and other administrator-economist figures played the leading roles in publicizing Mao's thought on domestic matters. The good standing of most of the administrator-eco- nomist figures, especially the two Li's, was illustrated at the National People's Congress in the spring, when these two gave two of the three main reports, criticizing the "right opportunists" and associating themselves with unreasonable production goals for 1960 and with the urban commune program. The administrator-economists did not, however, play significant roles in the Chinese party's comprehensive indictment of So- viet strategy in that period. During summer 1960, when the Chinese party was principally concerned with standing firm against the Soviet party, ad- ministrator-economist leaders played supporting roles for Mao and the party-machine leaders. Chou En-lai took part in lobby- ing against Soviet positions at the WFTU meeting in June; and Li Fu-chun in August, after the withdrawal of the technicians, made the most systematic statement of the Chinese intention Sanitized - Approved For Relea?26&~A-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - App ved For Release :'CIA-RDP799#i0427A000600110001-1 to rely on Chinese resources to whatever degree necessary, appropriately reducing the development program. It was Li again who was chosen, in September, to reaffirm Chinese in- transigence in a clash with a Soviet politburo member at the North Vietnamese party congress. Some of the administrator- economist leaders probably contributed to the Chinese party letter of 21 September. In autumn 1960, a period of intransigence in the Sino- Soviet dispute but further retreats in domestic programs, the administrator-economist leaders continued to play supporting roles for the party-machine leaders entrusted with the conduct (in Moscow) of the dispute. The administrator-economists un- doubtedly took part in the meetings (in China) which made further modifications in the commune program. They apparently did not benefit from the re-establishment of the party's regional bureaus at that time, as no administrator-economist figure was known or believed to head any of them. By early 1961 it was apparent that the "leap forward" psychology again fostered in 1960 had again failed to get the anticipated results, but the administrator-economists were still not strong enough to claim a triumph over the party-machine leaders. This was in part their own fault: following the purge of autumn 1959 and through most of 1960, the administrator-economists had contributed to the "leap" psychology appreciably more than they had in the two years from mid-1957 to mid-1959. In any case, although they were given the leading roles assigned to individuals in discussing privately (Li Fu-chun) and publicly (Po I-po) the conserva- tive policies which were to prevail in 1961, they were forced to do this in a context of defense of the past programs. The administrator-economist leaders, like Mao and the party-machine leaders, were comparatively quiet during spring 1961, a period in which Mao's propositions on world Communist strategy and the party's conservative thinking on domestic policies were stated in minor pronouncements. Although these domestic policies vindicated the earlier reservations of the administrator-economists, the new concept of "undulatory" development of the economy was presented as a vindication primarily of the past positions of the party-machine exhorters; indeed, the 'bad' concept of U-shaped development was said to reflect conservatism and lack of enthusiasm, imputing to the conservatives a favor for great sags in development rather Sanitized - Approved For ReIgg fi1CIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 SECRET Sanitized - Appr 'ed For Release : CIA-RDP79SU 27A000600110001-1 than, as was the case, steady development on the Soviet model. The "undulatory" concept also implied, of course, a return of the party-machine leaders to leadership of mass campaigns when conditions were seen as favorable for another "leap." Most of the administrator-economists apparently remained in good favor during spring 1961, but their relative weakness in the structure of power was evident in the manipulation of these concepts. In the 40th anniversary celebrations (1 July 1961), the administrator-economists were shut out, as party-machine leader Liu gave the only speech, and the speech itself was a glorification of Mao, a defense of the past policies of Mao and the party-machine figures, and a further effort to as- sociate these persons with the current conservative policies in such terms as to permit them (if necessary) to turn the charges of the conservatives. Most of the administrator- economists, however, were on view on the occasion. In the period July-October 1961, the position of the administrator-economist leaders seemed much the same, as the pattern of the party's behavior was much the same: the light reaffirmation of Chinese positions in the dispute with Moscow, reaffirmation and explication of conservative domestic policies, and further distortion of history to make Mao and the party-machine leaders appear to have been right all along. In this period, the public contention that the slo- gans of the exhorters had in fact been aimed at ensuring more careful planning was the equivalent of the earlier appropria- tion by the party machine of the concept of "undulatory" development. However, the administrator-economist leaders almost certainly took part in the high-level party meetings of the summer, and no proteges of these leaders were $nown to have been involved in the removals and demotions at the provincial level. Most of the administrator-economist leaders were conspicuous in small affairs throughout the period; Chen Yun and Teng Tzu-hui, apparently still not fully forgiven for having been nearest right, were out of the news for months, but appeared with the others in the display of unity on National Day. Sanitized - Approved For ReleasL ,--RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReleasaEiCIA-RDP79SO0,427AO006001 10001 -1 New The Military In the period 1958-1961, the military group around Peng Te-huai conjectured in 1957 was broken up. By late 1961, for several reasons, the military leaders did not seem to constitute a group in the sense in which it was still possible to speak meaningfully of party-machine figures or administra- tor-economist figures in terms of groups. The main public role of the military leaders in the latter half of 1957--the period of adoption of a complex of radical policies--had been in Mao's trip to Moscow in November. Peng Te-huai and others participated in the apparent effort (un- successful) to get a Soviet promise of nuclear weapons for China. An important divisive factor was introduced into the military leadership in spring 1958, with the addition to the politburo standing committee of Lin Piao, Mao's longtime favorite, who was not on good terms with the then most im- portant military figure, Minister of Defense Peng Te-huai. The professional military leaders around Peng were struck several other blows during 1958. One of these was the emphatic reassertion of the party's authority over the military, which softened up the military for other blows: the imposition of "Mao's thought" from guerrilla days as the strategic doctrine of the regime, in light of the failure to obtain nuclear wea- pons; the assignment of the military to large roles in non- military projects related to the "leap forward" and commune programs; and the venture in the Taiwan Strait, in which the military (especially the air force) was not properly prepared for the role it had to play, and the failure of which cast some discredit on the military despite the party's explanation that it was really Moscow which was to blame. Throughout the rest of 1958 and the early months of 1959, the military establishment seemed simply the object of the manipulation of Mao and the party-machine leaders. Although Peng Te-huai had publicly expressed his acquiescence--indeed, his delight--in the blows given the military noted above, his private views were very different. He took his case to the USSR in spring 1959, and disappeared from view shortly after returning to Peiping in June. He is believed to have taken part in the party meetings in July 1959 and to have stated Sanitized - Approved For ReI@?IEDFITCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Approved For ReleaseRE IA-RDP790427A000600110001-1 strongly his opposition to the policies of the dominant lead- ers, after which he became an "anti-party element." The military was the main object of the purge of autumn 1959. Peng Te-huai and his chief-of-staff, Huang Ko-cheng, were replaced by the two military leaders regarded as most responsive to Mao personally, Lin Piao and Lo Jui-ching. Per- haps as many as eight or ten of the regime's senior military men, most of them members of the central committee, were brought down in Peng's fall. During the purge, the new military leaders, supported by some of those who had survived, were on stage to proclaim the necessity of the military's subordination to the party, with all which that principle implied in the way of specific poli- cies--a point which had been made clearly by the purge itself. In Lin Piao's October 1959 article on this theme, he went so far as to pledge the allegiance of the armed forces to Mao personally. Following the purge, as part of the effort to put the military in its place and keep it there, individual military leaders got very little publicity. This remained true through most of 1960. However, Lin Piao appeared during the polemic of spring 1960 with a defense of some of Mao's propositions on world strategy, including the contention that China could wage a successful "people's war" against an American nuclear attack. Some of the military might have contributed to the pronouncements on military matters in other Chinese state- ments of the period and in the party letters (one of which denounced Khrushchev's expressed support of Peng Te-huai), but these discussions could just as well have been written by the theorists and party-machine figures, and, indeed, sometimes seemed not to have the benefit of a professional military view. Lin Piao and some other leaders emerged again in autumn 1960, playing supporting roles (in Peiping) for the party-machine leaders engaged in the confrontations in Moscow. The military establishment under Lin and Lo appeared to be in moderately good favor during 1961, as the party held the line against the Soviet party while retreating further in its domestic programs. There was no evidence that further purges of the military had been found necessary or desirable. However, Chinese press attacks on the "purely military point- of-view" were still going on in the autumn. Moreover, the Sanitized - Approved For Relea;k;&16-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1 Sanitized - Apbved For Refease TCIA-RDP79 0427A000600110001-1 principal military leader, Lin Piao, was sick, and the second- in-command, Lo Jui-ching, was more of a security type than a professional military man. Both were believed still responsive primarily to Mao rather than to their military comrades. Finally, the military establishment itself seemed sick, suffering from the blows given it by the party and by the withdrawal or diminu- tion of most types of Soviet aid. For all of these reasons, the military figures did not seem to constitute a strong group, although individual leaders may have been in positions to give important assistance to others in any struggle for power. Sanitized - Approved For ReIff%;jCIA-RDP79S00427A000600110001-1