Viewing the academic style of the Left and its problem of logical method in
light of the rise and fall of the Lin Biao Group during the Cultural Revolution
(Translator’s preface. Within some
Maoist circles in China and internationally, there is a belief that Lin Biao
was a representative of the genuine left, particularly because of his
influential booklet Long Live the Victory of People’s War published in 1965.
However, Lao Tian believes that this view is misplaced and makes his case
below. There are bound to be some mistakes
in this translation, for which I take responsibility, and I have added footnotes
where I thought some extra explanation was needed.)
Lao Tian
The capitalist-roaders exposed by the
Cultural Revolution were said to be engaged in a bourgeois reactionary line,
but what was so bad about this line? It was that they created artificial cases
of injustice and wrongdoing, they engaged in struggle and dissent within the party, they mobilised ass-kissing followers, and they fabricated
non-existent incriminating evidence to frame classmates or colleagues.
As far as the logical method of
understanding is concerned, the harm of the anti-capitalist line is that in the
use of power, in order to achieve the party’s goal of unity in fighting against
differences, it does not hesitate to violate the most basic logical
requirements – capitalist-roaders and their dependent conservatives jointly
fabricate false evidence to create unjust cases - which is equivalent to using
"fabricated false materials" and "online pseudo-logic” to
presume that a good person is a bad person.
Many left-wing netizens, on the issue of
Lin Biao, are emotional and need to be in charge, subconsciously throwing away
the evidence and logical requirements, and specifically looking for some
trivial evidence or even false evidence that meets their needs, in order to
construct the desired conclusion. To be honest, this logical method of creating
unjust, false and wrong cases is not much different to the capitalist roaders'
implementation of the "capitalist line". Logic is the minimum
requirement that needs to be consciously and strictly adhered to. Otherwise,
before they are in power, they will already have been "corrupted" and
be very similar to the capitalist roaders.
I. Why the issue of study spirit is
important
In my personal opinion, the left wing needs
to take the issue of academic style seriously and get out of the emotions
instead of reality. The right wing, for anti-Mao and anti-communist purposes,
often "elevates Zhou and demeans Mao" or "elevates Lin and
opposes Mao" without any basis, and there are some people on the left wing
who want to affirm Lin Biao wholesale. Why do they have to do this without any
evidence? It is very puzzling.
On the issue of Lin Biao, the lack of
material is indeed a dilemma, but it is still possible to do a little serious
analysis. Chairman Mao said that there were two major events in his life - the
revolution and continuing the revolution - and the career of Lin Biao's
generation clearly needs to be analysed and judged in relation to these two
revolutions.
During the revolutionary years, that group
of people were by and large positive, leaders at different levels in the
revolutionary process, were people who were part of the tide that pushed
history forward, and even though individuals still had this and that
deficiency, the general trend and direction was always correct.
When the Communist Party came to power
after the triumph of the revolution, the "unqualifiedness" of many
people who were senior officials in the administration of the state came to
light. During the Cultural Revolution these people were targeted for mass
criticism in order to bring about a revolution in their world view, to remove
their "unqualifiedness" and develop more qualifiedness, but the vast
majority of these people instinctively resisted and opposed this.
II. The anti-Cultural Revolution
performance of the great generals of Lin Biao's group
At the beginning of the Cultural
Revolution, Lin Biao's group encountered pressure from two sides: the first was
the problem of sectarianism in the intra-party struggle, and the second was the
organised mass criticism. The former was more concentrated within the Air Force
and the Navy, which were criticised under the leadership of He Long[1]
(who had others behind him), and Wu Faxian[2]
and Li Zuopeng[3]
were in danger of being seized and ousted from power, a period when Ye Jianying[4]
was sitting on his buttocks supporting the Lin Biao group.
In addition, Qiu Huizhuo of the General
Administration, Wu Faxian of the Air Force and Li Zuopeng of the Navy all
encountered strong criticism from the masses, and, in the General
Administration and the Air Force, the rebellion was so strong that it was
almost one-sided. These people had a lot of grievances within their units, and
after the Cultural Revolution, the unit was almost universally hostile. It was
within the army, not at the local level, that the strongest anti-Cultural
Revolution sentiment was first aroused.
The performance of Lin Biao's group in the
Cultural Revolution can also be examined in two stages, the first being the
launching and stabilisation stages of the Cultural Revolution. During the
launching stage of the Cultural Revolution, it should be said that Lin Biao
himself was supportive, while Huang Yongsheng[5],
Wu Faxian, Qiu Huizuo[6]
and Li Zuopeng were on the opposite side of the mass criticism from the very
beginning. The rise in anti-Cultural Revolution sentiment among senior
officials within the military can be revealed more starkly: the usual high
level of accumulated grievances among cadres within the military, and the high
degree of conflict and confrontation created by mass discontent and protest
inspired by the policies of the Cultural Revolution.
After the end of 1966, when local party
officials opted for the "strike hard and soft resistance" strategy,
they had to rely on the army to stabilise order, and at this point the only
option was to stabilise the army and stabilise the localities through the army.
Therefore, to a certain extent, the support of Wu Liqiu in suppressing the
rebels in the army and the issuance of the Eight Orders of the Military Commission
to end the Cultural Revolution in the army was somewhat unavoidable. After the
May 13 Incident[7] in
1967, Wu Liqiu and the others received strong support from Lin Biao and began
to suppress the rebels within their own units in a comprehensive manner.
Judging from the sharpness of the mass criticism, and the fact that there were
usually many accumulated grievances among senior officials within the military,
the generals of Lin Biao's group were quite consistent in their opposition to
the mass movement of the Cultural Revolution from beginning to end.
Xu Xiangqian[8]
and Xiao Hua[9] of
the Cultural Revolution Group of the Military Commission supported the rebels
in the military. As a result, they were unable to work with the support of Wu
Liqiu and Ye Qun[10]
(Lin Biao). Xu Xiangqian wanted to resign as the leader of the Cultural
Revolution Group of the Military Commission. Chairman Mao did not agree. In his
memoirs, Qiu Huizuo did not hide this, saying openly that they had seized the
power of the Cultural Revolution Group of the Military Commission, and only
then did they set up the "Military Commission Guard Group" to replace
the Cultural Revolution Group of the Military Commission.
3. The rise to power of Lin Biao's group
and how they used it
After the March 24 incident in 1968, when
Yang, Yu and Fu[11]
fell, the Military Commission's Office Group was set up and Huang, Wu, Ye, Li
and Qiu entered the core of power, wielding the "power to support the left
in the army" and directing top-down support for the left at all levels.
These people did not act in accordance with rules and regulations, and gave
vent to their emotions at will. They also hated Xiao Hua (Director of the
General Political Department) for having supported the rebels, and in 1968 they
went so far as to raise the slogan of "smashing the Palace of Hell of the
General Political Department" and took control of the General Political
Department.
During the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao's
group gained power over the army in a process from low to high, starting with
He Long and others who tried to seize power and marginalise Wu Faxian and Li
Zuopeng, but after being thwarted He Long himself fell from power. He was then
subjected to intense public criticism, which led to his own extreme passivity,
and after May 13 he was given "freedom of action" and began to
suppress the rebels internally. In the summer of 1967, after the establishment
of the Military Commission's Caretaker Group and the marginalisation of the
Military Commission's Cultural Revolution Group, the group gained an
unassailable position as a de facto stabiliser of the whole country, and in
1968, after the fall of Yang Yu and Fu on March 24 and the establishment of the
Military Commission's Office Group, the group gained nationwide political power
through leftist officers in various parts of the country, and the power of Lin
Biao's group rose to its historical peak. But how did they find a group to use
this power?
In September 1968, after the "whole
country was red"[12],
military and labour propaganda teams were dispatched under the guidance of
Huang, Wu, Li and Qiu, to begin a period of brutal fascist dictatorship -
dismantling the grassroots revolutionary committees while vigorously
suppressing the rebels and "debut cadres". The dismantling of the local revolutionary
committees began with the composition of the committees, which gradually moved
towards a single military administration and military Bonapartism, and then led
to a nationwide campaign of "two purges in one batch"[13]
- a purge of May 16 counter-revolutionaries and criticism of factionalism,
creating tens of millions of unjust, false and wrong cases. This led to a
complete reorganisation of the composition of the Revolutionary Committee -
from a triple combination of military and cadres to a single combination of
almost pure military control.
In this regard, Qiu Huizuo and others did
not obscure matters in their memoirs, saying that they wanted to support people
everywhere, like Xu Shiyou[14],
who hated and suppressed the rebels. In 1968, after Chairman Mao's July 27th
meeting with the "Five Student Leaders"[15],
the Labour Propaganda Teams entered Tsinghua to stop the armed struggle, which
was then actively implemented by military officers all over the country. After
the military and labour propaganda teams were sent into the universities in
Wuhan, they were reorganized according to the military establishment,
"regiments, battalions, companies, platoons and squads", and the
Revolutionary Committee was hollowed out. Then, in conjunction with the
criticism of "bourgeois factionalism" in the newspapers, most of the
leaders of the rebels who were integrated into the Revolutionary Committee were
"isolated and censored". The majority of the leaders and backbone of
the rebels were then branded as May 16 counter-revolutionaries through a
campaign to purge them.
The completion of the disintegration of the
grassroots revolutionary committees was an important political background to
the Lushan Conference in 1970, and then the "purge of the ruler's
side"[16]
campaign began. Lin Biao's speech also followed this momentum and was
opportunistic. The so-called "creation of a state president" agenda[17],
even if not analysed from a conspiratorial and personal point of view, was an
attempt to fully legitimise a model of power that was illegally accomplished by
military rule, which had no legal basis and would not have had any positive
consequences - after all, the lesson of the Tang dynasty vassalage[18]
was before us.
After the "July 20 incident" in
Wuhan[19],
the Wuhan Military Region was reorganized. According to Yang Chengwu's
recollection, when he met with Chairman Mao at East Lake in late September
1967, he mentioned that it was inappropriate for Zeng[20]
and Liu to ask the military commission to continue to transfer people to the
Wuhan Military Region. Chairman Mao went on to say that he wanted to unite the
old comrades in Wuhan. This was tantamount to breaking the plot of Lin's group
to take full control of the Wuhan Military Region. A few days after this
conversation, the Chairman returned to Beijing, and almost simultaneously,
Premier Zhou instructed Li Yingxi[21]
and Zhang Guangcai[22]
to return to work in Wuhan. However, Li and Zhang’s work was not recognized by
Zeng and Liu, and was actually boycotted, and Li's subsequent appointments with
Zeng's office were repeatedly put off. Li phoned Yang Chengwu in early 1968 to report
the problem. Within two days Zeng asked Li to come to the office to talk. He
was very annoyed that Li called Yang directly. Zeng said: the problem of work
is the problem for the leadership. We must have Vice-Chairman Lin’s instructions,
without them no one was allowed to do anything. Two months later, Yang Chengwu
was knocked down, and then two months after that, Li Yingxi was knocked down.
After the Ninth National Congress, the full
implementation of various policies began, in which the left-supporting officers
in various places were in an executive position to implement the policies, but
Vice-Chairman Lin was nowhere to be seen in these places where he should have
played a positive role. When Huang, Wu, Ye, Li and Qiu were suppressing the
masses and cadres through the military commission's subordinate group and
comprehensively transforming the grassroots revolutionary committees, they were
also not seen to play a positive role.
Whether it’s Lin Biao or the generals of
the Military Commission’s work team, after two years in power, on the eve of
the Lushan Conference in 1970, not only had the backbone of the rebels been
wiped out, but the early cadres who participated in the revolutionary committee
were mostly marginalized or even arrested. For example, Li Zaihan in Guizhou,
Wang Xiuyu in Shandong, Liu Jieting and Zhang Xitian in Sichuan, Ren Aisheng in
Hubei, and Liu Geping in Shanxi. In 1967-1968, the Revolutionary Committees at
all levels and their composition, which had been formed at the expense of
Premier Zhou and the Cultural Revolution Group's "efforts to move
mountains", were completely destroyed - the representatives of the masses
and many cadres were swept out of office, so much so that the committees at all
levels came close to being under "separate military control".
A more serious problem was that after this
group took control of the Military Affairs Commission, they used the
hierarchical relationship within the army to manipulate national politics through
leftist officers at all levels, and a large number of political matters were
not discussed and approved by the Politburo, but directly issued by military
orders from the Military Affairs Commission, effectively hollowing out the
Politburo. After the Lin Biao incident, Chairman Mao commented that "the
Politburo does not discuss politics and the Military Commission does not
discuss the military"; after the establishment of the local party
committees, major issues could not be finalised and had to be discussed within
the army before being carried out by the local party committees, to which
Chairman Mao commented: "Isn't that upside down?" "These two
comments of Chairman Mao are both criticisms of the "military-led
politics", specifically referring to the "non-procedural
governance" of the Military Commission during this period, when the
military affairs group seriously overstepped its authority.
4. The historical and political logic of
Lin Biao's group's over-expansion and self-destruction
In the “Zuo Zhuan”[23],
it is said that "if you do more than one thing, you will kill
yourself", and it is impossible for a person to do more than one bad deed
and not bring about his own destruction. The expansion of the power of Lin
Biao's group during the Cultural Revolution process was not uncommon, but the
group almost never used the power they had in their hands properly, and today
it is safe to say that during the period when this group held the office of the
Military Commission, they never made the stabilisation of the achievements of
the Cultural Revolution their ruling philosophy. So, today it is possible to
ask the question in turn: what was the purpose of using the Lin Biao group? Was
it for them to play a positive role in stabilising the situation and
consolidating the gains of the Cultural Revolution, or was it, conversely, for
them to act more thoroughly as negative instructors in order to educate the
masses and cadres?
According to the materials known so far,
Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou should have looked at the problem from the
opposite point of view. The basis for this is as follows: the representative
figures who clashed extremely strongly with the masses within the army at the
beginning of the Cultural Revolution, such as Qiu Huizuo and Wu Faxian, were
appointed not because they had managed to treat the masses correctly and the
Cultural Revolution correctly, but because they had done the opposite; after
May 13 there was a comprehensive crackdown on the rebels within the army. It
was also this group of people who opposed Premier Zhou's demand for a
"union of the two factions" after May 13.
By the end of the Cultural Revolution mass
movement in 1968, two other negative manifestations of Huang Yongsheng are also
worth mentioning: according to Lao Tian's interview with Yao Keqiang, a
reporter from a Cultural Revolution journalism station in 2013, the Central
Cultural Revolution Group sent staff to the Guangzhou reporter station in early
1968 to carry out evacuation work - to collate information to bring back to Beijing
- and three evacuated reporters were even seriously detained by Huang Yongsheng
in a hotel for half a month. This was a much more serious matter than the
"arrest of Wang Li by impersonating the masses" in the middle of the
Wuhan July 20 incident - this was a direct order from the army chief and was
carried out directly by the soldiers. Secondly, Li Bida, Huang Yongsheng's
secretary, reported to Jiang Qing many of the group's private comments cursing
Jiang Qing and the Cultural Revolution.
In other words, at every important stage of
the Cultural Revolution, the performance of this group of people was always
negative. To borrow a contemporary expression, the group of Huang, Wu, Li and
Qiu were recycled, which is a typical "promotion with illness."[24]
Of course, with this group of people it was one thing to gain the trust of Ye
Qun and Lin Biao, but why did Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou insist on giving
these people a high platform to perform on to the fullest? There is no
reasonable explanation for this other than that they were seen as
"hammers" to accomplish the business of refining the cadres and
masses.
In his Letter to Jiang Qing in 1966,
Chairman Mao said, "From great chaos under heaven arises order under
heaven. Every seven or eight years it happens again. The monsters and demons
jump out on their own. Their actions are determined by their own class nature,
it is impossible for them not to jump out. Our friend's [Lin Biao’s] speech—the
center is urging to publish it. And I plan to agree to publish it. He speaks
specifically on the subject of coups. On this question, there has been no such
talk in the past. The way he brings certain things up makes me feel unsettled
overall." In the two years after 1968, when the leftist officers under the
guidance of the Military Commission's Office Group swept the backbone of the
rebellion to the ground, did Huang, Wu, Li and Qiu's group count as those who
"had to jump according to their own class nature"?
Lin Biao's "May 18 coup” speech, which
was devoted to the coup issue, was also based on the fact that the relentless
criticism of Wu Faxian and Li Zuopeng within the Air Force and Navy in early
1966 was certainly an "unorganised act", and the real inside story
and the big names involved have never been fully disclosed, and I don't think
that He Long alone would have been so high-profile and arrogant as to dare to
reach out so indiscriminately. The fact that only limited disclosure was made
of the inside story of many of the big events during the Cultural Revolution
shows that the group of Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou saw the Communist Party
as their own cause, and chose to hide the inside story that disgraced the
Communist Party excessively - an inherent implementation of the goal of the
individual serving the organisation, in contrast to the later writing of
history out of nothing. Those whose desire for disclosure far outweighed the
stock of facts were viewing the Communist organisation as a subordinate
existence below the needs of personal capital accumulation - it was now the
organisation that served the needs of the individual. By contrast, Lin Biao's
openly loud, if well-founded, speech was a departure from Mao and Zhou's choice;
it was clearly a choice to beat people to death on the one hand and show less
concern for the face of the Communist Party on the other.
According to Wang Li's recollection, after
the July 20 incident in 1967, Lin Biao once commented that there were not many
good people in the major military regions as seen from the south to the north
and from the east to the west, and to see if there were any good people at the
military level below the military regions. In other words, after the Cultural
Revolution entered 1967, it was inevitable that the army would function as a
pillar of stability and order due to the strike strategy of the party and
government system. At the same time, it had become difficult to select a truly
pro-Cultural Revolution team to govern, as senior officers within the military
were brutal and usually had a lot of accumulated grievances, becoming the most
fiercely anti-Cultural Revolution groups to come under the criticism of the
Cultural Revolution mass movement. Therefore, it was the most realistic choice
of "realist politics" to set up a high platform for those officers
who were most vehemently opposed to the Cultural Revolution to express
themselves and to educate the cadres and the masses accordingly. Lin Biao's
group, Huang, Wu, Ye, Li and Qiu, gained the closest share of absolute power
after March 24, 1968, and it was on that high platform that their group
infinitely inflated itself and chose to commit political suicide.
The inclusion of Lin Biao as a successor in
the Party Constitution of the Ninth Congress in 1969 can be seen both as a
manifestation of the Cultural Revolution Group's unity and recognition of the
strength of the pillars of the army - a high degree of political recognition of
the symbolic representation of that wave of power - and, based on a
structural-functional analysis reading, as an act to help "build a
platform". After all, the anti-Cultural Revolution manifestations of Lin
Biao's group were all too clear to the members of the Cultural Revolution
Group. Even Qiu Huizuo himself found the composition of the post-1968 Military
Commission's office group bizarre, saying that Chairman Mao had always employed
people from the "five lakes and four seas", but only this time he had
narrowly appointed the "Double-One" group (senior officials from the
First Army and the First Army Corps, mostly from Lin Biao's old army). However,
if one looks at the level of the platform and the share of absolute power
needed to fully express one's "class nature" - the uncontrolled
expansion of a certain sectarian group - surely this must be a favourable condition.
V. A sympathetic understanding of the
flaws in the left-wing netizens' approach
Like Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou and
their choices, left-wingers have an inner need to save the face of the
Communist Party, and there is always an urge to prove "greatness" -
at least to prove that it is "white and flawed "[25].
If they encounter an overall or majority manifestation of darkness, it is
somewhat impossible to say or instinctively want to cover it up or deny it.
Behind this is a methodological stubbornness - if the majority is bad, how can
it still prove positive value? This is an attempt to complete justification in
terms of tactics and short periods of concrete performance.
The extent to which the rules and laws of
class division are accepted is important in this context, and it is a fact that
the Communist Party failed to avoid the erosion of the laws of class division.
Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou had a practical consideration at the time: the
legitimacy of the Communist regime needed to be preserved, and so much was not
suitable for disclosure. The tactical problems encountered here were
inconsistent with strategic objectives, and tactical considerations sometimes
prevailed.
For the left today, the need for a face in
terms of legitimacy, if it still exists, is relatively much reduced, and the
recognition of the role of the laws of class differentiation is the starting
point for understanding history and politics. The Cultural Revolution was,
after all, about the politicisation of the masses at a high enough level to
inhibit or counter the role of the law of class division, and only then would
there be a final victory for the real socialist cause. In the case of the
Cultural Revolution, the aim of the class struggle or communist movement in a
socialist society was to cultivate and stimulate critical forces from among the
masses and to block the action of the law of class differentiation.
In the case of the left, emancipation meant
acknowledging that the problems had not been solved and that the depth of
practice was still insufficient. The Communist Party's performance during the
revolutionary and construction years could often only be described as
"correct in the general direction". Chairman Mao's emphasis on
looking at the mainstream and tributaries is not a test of the performance of
the ruling team as individuals, but only in relative terms of the existence of
class interests, which, in contrast to the Guomindang, did not develop the
narrow interests of particular groups, nor clashed head-on with the interests
of the people. But in terms of the individual performance of the ruling team,
the majority has manifested itself in the pursuit of narrow interests and the
alienation of power, which is a tributary that needs to be curbed by
explorations like the Cultural Revolution.
The deficiencies displayed by most senior
officials can be interpreted as "inadequate training" or "poor
quality", and need to be gradually addressed through learning and
education, by increasing the per capita cost of learning. At the same time,
there is also a tendency towards alienation, with senior officials particularly
willing to follow various trends of degeneration and to promote their own
interests rather than the other way around, which is a political aspect that
needs to be checked from the outside by the development of a mass critical
force. Whether in terms of quality or politics, this can be understood as a
specific problem of "lack of commitment", which is common in any
team, even in the revolutionary era, and is reflected in the various "lack
of commitment" of the cadres, although in the revolutionary era the lack
of learning in the cadre groups dominates, while the lack of politics dominates
in the ruling conditions, which requires learning to think like Chairman Mao:
how to maintain and improve the team despite the lack of input? Pure and
simple, designing short-term programmes are impractical.
Here the poor performance of most senior
officials can be interpreted as a tactical performance brought about by a lack
of historical and practical depth, and in the long run the need to maintain and
organise the masses to counter this trend, which is strategic. The Cultural
Revolution failed, it was still a tactical failure, but in terms of the
strategic goal of the whole cause of human liberation, it was still only a
small step in the struggle against a system that had been exploitative for
thousands of years, and a small step of the most progressive value at that, a
step of particular strategic importance.
If Lin Biao had really been qualified in
his role as trustee of the proletarian cause, even if he had continued Chairman
Mao's line, that victory would have been only accidental rather than inevitable.
It was not a qualified successor, but a mass organised critical force, that would
eventually grow strong enough. Rule for the purpose of restraining class
differentiation is the only reasonable support point for the continuous
advancement of the communist cause.
VI. Why there is still a very long way
to go from barbarism to civilisation
In terms of the results of the Cultural
Revolution's examination of the group of high-ranking officials, the
pre-Cultural Revolution Liu and Deng clique had already gone into extreme
depravity, and this were heavily disclosed in mass publications during the
Cultural Revolution, whereas official disclosure under the control of Chairman
Mao and Premier Zhou was very limited. The reason was nothing else than that
they wanted not to overly discredit the Communist Party so as not to unduly
undermine the legitimacy of the ruling party, which, after all, was still the
team most certain of the people's interests as far as China's recent history
was concerned.
From the famous
"listening device incident" before the Cultural Revolution, we can
partly see that the pursuit of political interests among high-ranking officials
had reached the point of unscrupulous means. After the incident of the
installation of a wiretap in Chairman Mao’s residence was revealed, Chairman
Mao left the matter to Liu and Deng to deal with it and left the matter alone
for more than a year. As a result, Yang **[26]
refused to take full personal responsibility in order to cover his
behind-the-scenes supporters. Those behind-the-scenes supporters could not
handle it if they did not get Yang's promise to voluntarily assume
responsibility. The consequence was that the entire gang was completely
exposed. Master Zhu[27],
who drove Chairman Mao, commented: Now even I understand it. It turns out that
you are all in the same group.
That group had
degenerated to that level, so what was the realistic alternative? The rise and
self-expression of the Lin Biao group was a powerful illustration of this.
Liu-Deng's group and Lin Biao's group, the two main ruling groups tested by the
Cultural Revolution, in reality did not have a third alternative, and it should
be said that no real successor to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat
could be found between these two groups, the only ruling groups within the
Communist Party. This is why the correctness of the Cultural Revolution as a
serious exercise was finally confirmed: there was no other dynamic of
historical progress than the rise of consciousness and organisational power of
the mass of the people.
The combined
performance of Lin Biao's group shows that in the early stages they were
instinctively anti-Cultural Revolution, in the middle they were reappointed due
to the need to stabilise the situation, and in the later stages they were
consciously suppressing the masses and the forces of the Cultural Revolution
and, from the grassroots level, subverting the achievements and political
practices of the Cultural Revolution. By the Lushan Conference in 1970, in
fact, their group wanted to consolidate the political interests of suppressing
and subverting the grassroots revolutionary committees by raising them to the
level of a national system - by perpetuating and elevating the military regime
to the level of a national system and fixing it. The experience of the Cultural
Revolution proved in reverse that Lin Biao's group was no better than Liu-Deng's
group, no better at offending the masses and building public resentment, and no
better at supporting the advance of the communist cause than Liu-Deng's group.
After the
baptism of the Cultural Revolution, many of the officials of the Liu-Deng line
gradually established the precept of using power carefully. The first item in
Wang Renzhong's[28]
review was his memory of being criticised by the masses at the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution, which taught him not to abuse his power. In contrast,
senior officials in the Lin Biao lineage had always been involved in the
manipulation of others, and had not yet been taught to use their power
carefully.
In terms of
continuing the revolutionary period, Lin Biao himself supported the cause of
mass criticism of capitalist-roaders in the pre-Cultural Revolution period, but
after the May 13 incident in 1967, he began to support the suppression of the
rebels in the army on one side, and after 1968 he was not seen to be making any
corrective statements in the dismantling of the grassroots revolutionary
committees by the military commission's office group, and spoke at the Lushan
Conference on the side of the military heads and official circles against the
Cultural Revolution. His own performance at these major stages in history
should be used as a basis for judging him personally - how a person actually
behaves in the face of great right and wrong.
Whether it was
the implementation of policies in terms of personnel arrangements in the latter
part of the Cultural Revolution, or the implementation of policies in terms of
the general policy and the consolidation of the Cultural Revolution's
achievements, there is not any shadow of Lin Biao playing a positive role. Many
left-wingers have a soft spot for Lin Biao and take it for granted that Lin
Biao was the pillar of the Maoist Cultural Revolution policy, and even describe
the Lin Biao explosion as the root cause of the left's failure, without knowing
whether there is any actual basis for this.
The style of
learning that enables one to analyse and evaluate a person, even in the absence
of archival material, from how he behaves in the face of great right and wrong,
rather than from emotions and assumptions, and going to characterise him first
and find the evidence later, is totally undesirable.
First draft on
25 September 2018
Revised on 28
September 2018
[1] He Long (March 22,
1896 – June 9, 1969) was a PLA Marshal. He did not support Mao Zedong's
attempts to purge Peng Dehuai in 1959 and attempted to rehabilitate Peng. After
the Cultural Revolution was declared in 1966, he was one of the first leaders
of the PLA to be purged.
[2] Wu Faxian (1915–2004)
joined the Red Army in 1930. In 1955 he was granted the military rank of lieutenant
general. Wu was a subordinate of Lin Biao, in 1965 he became the commander of
People's Liberation Army Air Force. In 1981 he was declared guilty as a member
of the Lin Biao group and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
[3] Li Zuopeng (April 24,
1914 – January 3, 2009) joined the Red Army in 1930. In the Cultural
Revolution, Li was elected as the member of the 9th Politburo of the Communist
Party of China in 1969. As an ally of Lin Biao, he lost his position after Lin
Biao's fall. He was put on trial and given a seventeen-year prison sentence in
1981.
[4] Ye Jianying (28 April
1897 – 22 October 1986) joined the CCP in 1927. During the Long March, he sided
with Mao against Zhang Guotao and was made a Marshal of the PLA in 1955. After
Lin Biao was overthrown and died in 1971, Ye's influence grew, and in 1975 he
was appointed Defense Minister, taking Lin Biao's post. From 1973, he was also
a Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He
led the group that arrested the gang of Four.
[5] Huang Yongsheng
(1910-1983) became Lin Biao's Chief-of-staff during the Cultural Revolution.
Because of Huang's close associations with Lin Biao, Huang was purged following
Lin's death in 1971.
[6] Qiu Huizuo (April 16,
1914 – July 18, 2002) joined the CCP in 1932 and took part in the Long March. Violently
struggled against during thee early stages of the Cultural revolution, he was
rescued by Lin Biao and became one of his guardians, violently persecuting
Lin’s opponents. After Lin's flight and death in 1971, Qiu was purged and
sentenced to 16 years in prison.
[7] The refers to the armed struggle that took place in Beijing on 13
May 1967 between two factions of the civilian and sports units of the Beijing
army, and members of the authorities and cadets of the military academy. During
the Cultural Revolution, the major headquarters of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA) and the organs of all military branches, as well as the cultural and
sports units and military academies in Beijing, were divided into two factions:
the "Revolutionary Rebel Faction of the Three Armies in the Capital",
which was supported by the Central Cultural Revolution Group, and the
"Proletarian Revolutionary Faction of the Three Armies in the
Capital", which was regarded as a conservative faction. May 1967, both factions prepared to stage a
literary performance to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Chairman Mao's
"Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" to express their
loyalty to Chairman Mao. 13 May, the two sides were at odds with each other
over the stage performance, resulting in a big fight. "The "Capital
Three Armies Revolutionary Rebel Faction" lost its power after this.
[8] Xu Xiangqian (November 8, 1901 – September 21, 1990) joined Zhang
Guotao’s army, but sided with Mao against Zhang. Xu suffered political
persecution by Red Guards in 1967, when he was accused of opposing the
leadership of Lin Biao and attempting to moderate some of the more radical
effects of the Cultural Revolution. He survived politically, and later that
year was allowed to join both the Politburo and the Cultural Revolution Group.
In 1969 he joined the Central Committee. Xu protected Deng Xiaoping when Deng
was purged from the government in 1976. Later in 1976 he was one of the
military supporters of Hua Guofeng's coup against the Gang of Four, which
eventually brought Deng back to power and formally ended the Cultural
Revolution.
[9] Xiao Hua (January 21,
1916 – August 12, 1985) joined the CCP in 1928 and the Red Army in 1929. In
1959, he was appointed as a member of the Central Military Commission of the
Communist Party of China and Deputy Secretary-General of the Military
Commission. On July 25, 1967, Xiao Hua was attacked during the Cultural
Revolution and was imprisoned for up to seven years. In 1975, he was appointed to
the Second Political Committee of the Academy of Military Sciences, and in 1977
he was the First Political Committee of Lanzhou Military Region, a member of
the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, and the
Secretary of the Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
[10] Ye Qun (2 December
1917[1] – 13 September 1971) was the wife of Lin Biao. She was in control of
his office affairs and is said to have proposed to her son Lin Liguo that he
assassinate Chairman Mao. She died with Lin Biao and Lin Liguo in a plane crash
over Mongolia on September 13, 1971.
[11] Yang,
Yu and Fu refers to Yang Chengwu (Acting Chief of General Staff, Standing
Committee of the Military Commission), Yu Lijin (Political Committee of the Air
Force), and Fu Chongbi (Commander of Beijing Weiwei District, Deputy Director
of the Beijing Municipal Revolutionary Committee). On March 22, 1968, the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, the
Central Military Commission and the Central Cultural Revolution Group ordered
the removal of these three people accused of a "conspiracy to seize power
in the Air Force". On March 25, the central military commission of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) was reshuffled, and Mao Zedong appointed Huang
Yongsheng and Wu Faxian as vice-chairs.
[12] The Chinese expression is
“全国山河一片红”(literally “the mountains and rivers
of the whole country are red”. An interesting phenomenon occurred in philatelic
circles when a stamp was issued on November 25, 1968. The stamp’s designer had
the revolutionary workers, peasants and soldiers celebrating the phrase which
was inscribed above them on a map of China. However, the map was found to be
faulty, having wrong alignments of the borders with Mongolia, Myanmar and
Bhutan and failing to show the border around the South China Seas. It was
withdrawn from sale but quickly became a collector’s item. On October 31, 2009,
a stamp sold for HK$3.68 million at an auction in Hong Kong.
[13] The “two batches”
were an ultra-leftist
group called the May 16 Red Guards in Beijing in 1967, which used the May 16
notice to distribute leaflets against Zhou Enlai., and a group that arose in
Wuhan comprising followers of the "Beidou Star Society ", "
" Duel " (a proletarian revolutionary faction determined to carry out
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end) and the "Yangzijiang Review ", a rebel paper
.
[14] Xu Shiyou (1905–1985) was a PLA General who joined the CCP in 1927.
During the Cultural Revolution, when the armed forces were called in to restore
administrative control, he became Chairman of the Jiangsu Province
Revolutionary Committee (1968–74) and CCP First Secretary (1970–74). In the
long-delayed military region reshuffle initiated under Deng Xiaoping, Xu was
rotated to command the Guangzhou Military Regon (1974–80). Xu and political
commissar Wei Guoqing provided protection for Deng Xiaoping in 1976, when the
future paramount leader was purged by the Gang of Four following the death of
Zhou Enlai. Xu was also commander in chief for the Chinese forces in the
Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979.
[15] The five university student leaders were in the early stage of the
Cultural Revolution were Kuai Dafu, who bore the main responsibility for the
"Tsinghua 100-day armed struggle"; Beijing University’s Nie Yuanzi
who was elected an alternate member of the 9th Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China and placed under house arrest in 1971, then jailed in
1978 for “counter-revolutionary crimes”; Tan Houlan of the Beijing Normal
University, famous for her leadership of the destruction of the Confucian
Temple in Shandong Province; Wang Dabin of the Beijing Institute of Geology;
and Han Aijing of the Beijing Aviation Academy. All were sentenced to various
terms of imprisonment after the smashing of the gang of Four. For a transcript
of the meeting, see Selected Works Vol IX pp.352-384 (FLP, Paris edition).
[16] The Chinese expression
is 清君侧 (qīngjūncè) which is
an historical reference to ridding the emperor of “evil ministers”, but as a
pretext for staging a coup d’etat or armed rebellion.
[17] This was Lin Biao’s
proposal to create the position of State President, to be filled by Mao, but
with Lin as his successor, next in line. Mao opposed the idea.
[18] This refers to the situation in the middle and late Tang dynasty
when the generals of the feudal towns of Youzhou and Wei Bo had their own
troops and were not fully under the control of the central government in terms
of military, financial and personnel matters.
[19] This was an
incident in Wuhan, Hubei Province, during the Cultural Revolution. On July 20,
1967 rebel groups seized Wang Li , a member of the Central Cultural Revolution
Group and took him to the Wuhan Military District Compound for
questioning. Mao and Zhou Enlai were in
Wuhan at this time, convening meetings of military leaders. To ensure Mao’s
safety, Zhou arranged for Mao to leave Wuhan by plane.
[20] Possibly Zhen Xisheng, (October 11, 1904 –
July 15, 1968). He was Governor of Anhui Province and denounced as a
capitalist-roader during the Cultural Revolution. In the autumn of 1965, Zeng
Xisheng was transferred to Chengdu as Secretary of the Southwest Bureau of the
CPC Central Committee.
[21] Gen. Li Yingxi (1902-May 22, 1981) joined the CPC in 1928. In May 1955, he was appointed Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of Wuhan Military Region. In February 1967, he was suspended from work for making a "mistake", but restored to office in 1974.
[22] Zhang Guangcai (1900-April 8, 1970), joined the CPC in 1928. After
the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as deputy chief of the political committee of the Wuhan
Military Region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
[23] The Zuo Zhuan is an ancient Chinese chronicle and is a
representative of pre-Qin prose writings. It is one of the important classics
of Confucianism.
[24] The Chinese expression is “带病提拔” (“dài bìng tíbá”), also known as "sickness
on the job", which is an agreed term used by the masses for the phenomenon
of some corrupt party and government cadres being promoted and reappointed
while they are corrupt.
[25] A Chinese idiom 白璧微瑕 (bái bì wēi xiá) refers to white
jade with some small spots on it; it is a metaphor for a person or thing that,
although very good, has small flaws or deficiencies.
[26] This refers to Yang Shangkun (3 August 1907 – 14 September 1998).
It is not clear why the author uses the “xx” to avoid naming him openly. Yang
started his military career in the Chinese Red Army, serving as Director of the
Political Department in the 1st Red Army and moving around different battle
areas under the command of Zhu De and Zhou Enlai. In 1941, Yang returned to
Yan'an and worked as personal aide to Mao. In 1945, he became the Director of
the General Office of the Party, as well as Secretary–General of the Central
Military Commission, that was chaired by Mao himself. In these capacities, he
was responsible for much of the day-to-day administration of the Party's
military and political work. After the founding of the PRC in October 1949 and
until the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Yang Shangkun was one of
very few CCP leaders who worked closely with Mao Zedong at Zhongnanhai on a
daily basis. As the Director of the General Office and Secretary–General of the
CMC, he oversaw much of the actual day-to-day work of most party activities and
military affairs.[3] On the eve of the Cultural Revolution Yang was identified
as a supporter of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and was purged as a
counter-revolutionary. After being ejected from the Communist Party and removed
from all positions, Yang was accused by Red Guards of planting a covert
listening device to spy on Mao. He remained in prison until 1978 when Deng
appointed him Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. In 1988, Yang
was appointed President of the People's Republic of China.
[27] Chauffeurs were
addressed as “shifu” or “master”.
[28] Wang Renzhong (January
15, 1917 – March 16, 1992) joined the CCP in 1933. In 1954 he became First
Secretary (Party Chief) of the Hubei Communist Party Committee, the top leader of
the province. He was very active in the Great Leap Forward period, but was
purged during the Cultural Revolution, and imprisoned for eight years until
1975. In 1978 he became the vice-premier of the State Council, and from 1980 to
1982 he served as the head of Propaganda Department.
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