Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-04T09:28:39.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on China's Economic Elite*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Richard K. Diao
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

China's economic leadership was profoundly affected by the Cultural Revolution. As members of the governing bureaucracy and, all but a tiny group, members also of the Communist Party, economic officials were among the prime targets of Mao Tse-tung's drive to de-bureau-cratize the Party and the entire Chinese administrative system. Almost half of them were attacked during the three years the revolution raged. Some of these men retained their positions, but most appear to have been purged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 42 , June 1970 , pp. 65 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sun, Chih-yuan, Minister of the 3rd Ministry of Machine-building, in 10 1966;Google ScholarChao, Erh-lu,deputy director of the Staff Office of National Defence Industry and director of the Party Political Department of the same field, in 02 1967;Google ScholarYeh, Chi-chuang, Minister of Foreign Trade and deputy director of the Staff Office of Finance and Trade, in 06 1967;Google ScholarandChiang, Kuang-nai, Minister of the Textile Industry, in 06 1967M.Google Scholar

2 Ch'en Yun is the only member of the elite who did not hold a specific job in 1966; he is included because of his presumed involvement in top-level planning. The actual total of major economic organs is 52 but the leading personnel in three—the Staff Office of National Defence Industry, the Party Political Department for National Defence Industry and the Party Political Department for Capital Construction—have never been made public.Google Scholar

3 The most problematic member of this group, Ch'en Po-ta has been deputy director of the State Planning Commission since October 1962 and was deputy director of the Party Rural Work Department in the mid-1950s. Although he is not an economic specialist, his influence on economic decisions may have been much stronger than most of the full-time economic planners and administratorsGoogle Scholar. For example, it was Ch'en, who helped Mao push forward the agricultural collectivization movement in 1955. Although he was not yet a Politburo member, he delivered a Politburo report explaining the. “Decision on the Question of Agricultural Collectivization”; to the enlarged Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee. He may well have acted in such an ad hoc capacity at other times and may do so again in his higher position as a member of the Politburo standing committee.Google Scholar

4 Collected Works of Liu Shao-ch'i, 1958–1967 (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1968), p. 361.Google Scholar

5 All posts are cited as of January 1966. Neither those who had headed an economic organ before that date nor those who serve as acting heads, such as Lin Hai-yun in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Hu Li-ch'iao in the People's Bank, are counted as chief executives.Google Scholar

6 Chao Erh-lu was also criticized by Red Guards after his death in 1967.Google Scholar

7 A number of leading officials who had formerly been credited with favourable class backgrounds were suddenly labelled bourgeois. Liu Shao-chi, for example, had been classed as a middle peasant and T'an Chen-lin, whose father worked as a clerk in a mine, as a poor worker; after being attacked as revisionists, both were reclassified as landlords. It seems that the most easily interchangeable backgrounds for Chinese officials are middle and rich peasants, and rich peasants and landlords, since the definition of these “classes” is largely a matter of the Party's interpretation.Google Scholar

8 While I have no hard evidence to support the argument that Shansi people fell because of Po Yi-po, my experience in the Ministry of Finance supports this assumption. The Shansi people in the Ministry were a group with a strong sense of provincial identity and close ties to Po Yi-po, who was Minister of Finance before 1954. Even after Po was transferred to the State Council's Economic Commission, these ties continued. I know that Po maintained good relations with some of the Shansi people in other government agencies including the five purge victims listed above.Google Scholar