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Liu Shao-ch'i: A Political Profile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Howard L. Boorman
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Extract

On December 26, 1961, Mao Tse-tung, master and master-mind of the Communist Party of China for the past quarter century, reached the age of sixty-eight. While der Alte in Peking still appears reasonably durable, he has nevertheless reached the stage in his career where the succession problem may soon pass from the sphere of speculation to that of political reality. Well aware of the intra-party struggle in Moscow following Stalin's death, Mao Tse-tung has already taken steps to avoid internecine strife in China. Practically speaking, he has made his selection.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 10 , April 1962 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1962

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References

1 See Hinton, Harold C., “The Succession Problem in Communist China,” Current Scene (Hong Kong), Vol. I, No. 7 (07 19, 1961).Google Scholar

2 A reasonably accurate brief account of Liu appeared in the New York Times on 04 27, 1959Google Scholar, on the occasion of his election as Chairman of the government in Peking. See also the balanced feature article by Fu-lan, Liu, “Liu Shao-ch'i: Mao's Heir Apparent?” Christian Science Monitor, 10 13, 1961.Google Scholar

3 A leading Asian authority summarises the matter: “It was through the introduction of the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. Before the October Revolution the Chinese not only did not know Lenin and Stalin, but also did not know Marx and Engels. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism.” Tse-tung, Mao, “On the People's Democratic Dictatorship” (07 1, 1949)Google Scholar, in Mao, , Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), Vol. IV, p. 413.Google Scholar

4 See the massive study by Chow Tse-tsung, based on a thorough examination of contemporary materials, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolt in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

5 See Brandt, Conrad, Stalin's Failure in China, 1924–1927 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

6 Liu's birth date has been given variously as 1898, 1900 and 1905 in official sources. This paper arbitrarily uses 1900, a logical date which appears to fit the limited data available on Liu's early life. As in the case of other senior figures in the Chinese Communist movement, full information only becomes available with the publication of the man's official obituary. The outside world thus learned more about Liu's fellow-provincial Jen Pi-shih (1904–50) after his death than while he lived. See Current Background (CB) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 26, 11 12, 1950.Google Scholar

7 See Ch'ang-kung, Ho, Ch'in-kung chien-hsueh sheng-huo hui-i (Reminiscences of Work-and-Study Life) (Peking: Kung-jen Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), p. 10.Google Scholar

8 See Shao-ch, Liu'i's speech in Moscow, 12 7, 1960.Google ScholarNCNA, Moscow, 12 7, 1960Google Scholar, reproduced in Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 2398, 12 15, 1960, p. 29.Google Scholar

9 “It took us three months to go from Vladivostok to Moscow, and the train stopped frequently. At that time it used logs as fuel, and sometimes the passengers had to go to the mountains to bring back logs for the train.” Shao-ch'i, Liu, 12 7, 1960Google Scholar, speech in Moscow, , loc. cit., p. 29.Google Scholar

10 See Eudin, Xenia Joukoff and North, Robert C., Soviet Russia and the East, 1920–1927, A Documentary Survey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

11 The following year a more organised approach evolved. “Beginning with the autumn of 1922, a basic three-year tour of study was inaugurated at the KUTV, and about 800 persons began the course….” ibid., p. 86. A good contemporary account reports, however, that eleven students at the “university” in 1922 were illiterate. See Evans, Ernestine, “Looking East from Moscow,” Asia, XXII, 12 (12, 1922), pp. 972–976, 1011–12.Google Scholar

12 Chang Kuo-t'ao, who visited Russia in 1922, reports that Moscow then suffered from shortages of food and building materials and that the Chinese students there subsisted largely on black bread and potatoes, both in short supply, and lived in inadequate and unheated rooms. Liu Shao-ch'i himself alludes to this period in his December 7, 1960 speech in Moscow: “Your country was then in the most difficult period after the revolution, and we personally witnessed and went through these difficulties.” Loc. cit., p. 29.

13 Liu, , 12 7, 1960Google Scholar, speech in Moscow, , loc. cit., p. 30.Google Scholar

14 The Anyuan colliery was a constituent unit of the Han-yeh-p'ing iron and steel complex, consisting of the steel works at Han-yang (Han), the iron mine at Ta-yeh (yeh), and the Anyuan coal mines at P'ing-hsiang (p'ing). As principal fuel source for the Hanyang steel mill, the Anyuan mines were thus of economic as well as political importance.

15 See Ho, Kan-chih, A History of the Modern Chinese Revolution (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), pp. 55–59Google Scholar, for Peking's official version of the Anyuan strike and Communist policy toward the labour movement in this area during 1922–23.

16 See Chung-hsia, Teng, Chung-kuo chih-kung yun-tung chien-shih (Short History of the Chinese Labour Movement) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1949), p. 170.Google Scholar

17 See The Peoples Tribune (Hankow), Vol. II, 285 (Saturday, 04 2, 1927), pp. 1, 4Google Scholar for report of this meeting. Other references to Lin appear in The Peoples Tribune, Vol. II, 289 (Friday, 04 8, 1927) and Vol. II, 351 (Friday, 06 24, 1927), p. 1.Google Scholar With Su Chao-cheng and Li Li-san, Liu Shao-ch'i was one of the most prominent Chinese Communist labour leaders at Wuhan in 1927.

18 Peking's biographical note states, “After the defeat of the great revolution in 1927 Liu Shao-ch'i went underground and continued to direct the trade union movement.” Hu Ch'iao-mu's official history, Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China (1951)Google Scholar, likewise offers only scattered references to Liu's activities between 1927 and 1937.

19 Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China cites Liu for following the correct line in directing underground work in Shanghai in these years, “utilising legal forms and accumulating revolutionary strength” while avoiding “leftist adventurist” policies which would isolate the party from “the majority of the masses.”

20 The important “Resolution on Some Questions in the History of Our Party,” adopted by the 7th plenum of the 6th Central Committee on April 20, 1945 (on the eve of the 7th National Congress at Yenan), lauds Liu for his correct policies in urban work in the Kuomintang areas. See Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1956), Vol. IV, pp. 194, 199Google Scholaret seq. Footnotes appended to this document (ibid., p. 342) give the source of quotations used by Mao from two of Liu's unpublished reports: “Eliminate Closed Door Sectarianism and Adventurism” and “Letter to the Central Committee on the Work in the White Area.” Dates of these reports are not given, but they fall in the 1927–35 period.

21 The name Hu Fu was a term used in ancient China to refer to the garb of the northern barbarians.

22 See Liu's later speech, “Unite with the Broad Masses of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers,” given at a youth rally at Yenan on December 9, 1944, to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the 12–9 movement of 1935. This speech was reprinted in the Peking People's Daily (Jen-min Jih-pao) on 12 9, 1950Google Scholar and translated in SCMP, No. 36, 12 22–24, 1950, pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

23 Hu Ch'iao-mu's Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China thus lauds Liu's “correct leadership” in the Kuomintang-controlled areas in 1936, stating that he directed the “national salvation movement against Japan carried out by people of all strata.”

24 See Compton, Boyd, Mao's China: Party Reform Documents, 1942–44 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1952).Google Scholar Compton provides a 37-page introduction, followed by translation of 22 documents used in “study” and discussion groups during the cheng-feng campaign. Michael Lindsay (Lord Lindsay of Birker), who was in Yenan during the war years, describes the documents as the best possible evidence concerning what might be termed the super-ego of the Chinese Communists, “the way in which they like to think that they think.” Pacific Affairs, XXV, No. 4 (12, 1952), pp. 410–411.Google ScholarBrandt, Conrad, Schwartz, Benjamin, and Fairbank, John K., A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also contains a section on the movement, pp. 318–344, commenting that the cheng-feng documentation demonstrates that “at the very height of the Yenan period the CCP was determined to maintain its basic Leninist principles of organisation in all their pristine vigour within the Party, at the same time that it stood for the national united front in Chinese politics and impressed foreign observers as being more gradualistic than revolutionary in its day-to-day programme” (p. 321). See also pp. 353–419.

25 Peking's official biographical note states, “From 1936 to 1942, Liu Shao-chi served successively as secretary of the North China Bureau, Central Plains Bureau, and Central China Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.”

26 In How to be a Good Communist, Liu strikes a distinctly Confucian note in enjoining Party neophytes to be diligent in their pursuit of “self-cultivation” and stresses that each cadre must “watch himself when alone.”

27 Describing Liu Shao-ch'i's inspection tour in Kiangsu during September 1958, a folksy feature article in the Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien poo of 10 9, 1958Google Scholar alludes to his earlier career in this area. “Seventeen years ago,” the article relates, “when the anti-Japanese war in northern Kiangsu behind the enemy lines reached the most difficult and furious stage, Comrade Liu Shao-ch'i, working under the name of Hu Fu, led the people of central China successfully on behalf of the party.” The article places him at Hsu-yi, on the Kiangsu-Anhwei border in 1941, states that Liu then suffered from gastroenteric trouble, could not eat well, and was often ill. See SCMP, No. 1911, 12 10, 1958, esp. pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

28 Three of Liu's reports—How to Be a Good Communist, On Inner-Party Struggle, and Liquidate the Menshevist Ideology within the Party—are included with the revised group of cheng-feng documents. See Cheng-feng wen-hsien (Peking: Hsin-hua shutien, 05 1950).Google Scholar The article on Menshevist ideology was, of course, not written until July 1, 1943, over a year after the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee first announced the movement (April 1942).

29 See article, “Escorting Comrade Liu Shao-ch'i to Shansi-Suiyuan,” translated in SCMP, No. 2529, 07 3, 1961.Google Scholar

30 “Liquidate the Menshevist Ideology within the Party,” included as appendix in Liu Shaoch'i, On Inner-Party Struggle (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, n.d.), pp. 73–90.Google Scholar Liu's allegedly pro-Soviet instincts are not manifest in the following quotations from this July 1943 article:

“It may be said that within these twenty-two years our Party has witnessed more important changes and accumulated more experience of the revolutionary struggle in various complicated forms (whether it be armed struggle or mass struggle, civil war or international war, legal struggle or illegal struggle, economic struggle or political struggle, struggles inside the Party or outside the Party) than any other Communist Party in the world.” Ibid., pp. 74–75 (emphasis supplied). And, “The Chinese Communists are not inferior to the Communists in any other country in their spirit of hard struggle, heroic sacrifice, and their ability in propaganda and organisation.” Ibid., p. 77.

31 Shao-ch'i, Liu, On the Party (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, second edition, 08 1950).Google Scholar See the review article on this volume by Steiner, H. Arthur, Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. XI, No. 1 (11 1951), pp. 79–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Commemorating the 29th anniversary of the Party, the lead article in Hsueh-hsi (Peking) on 07 1, 1950Google Scholar, ascribed international significance to Liu's 1945 report. “It provides beneficial experiences for the cause of liberation of the peoples of all countries, particularly the nations of the East. Both Communist and non-communist revolutionaries in such countries will derive from this document correct conclusions on how they should carry on their own work.”

32 The new Party constitution based upon Liu's report was adopted by the 7th National Party Congress on June 11, 1945, replacing the earlier constitution framed in Moscow in 1928. For text see Liu, , On the Party, pp. 155–204.Google Scholar

33 Mao reportedly “rested” for a few months after his return from Chungking. See dispatch by Tillman Durdin (datelined Yenan, December 1, 1945) describing his interview with Shao-ch'i, Liu. New York Times, 12 5, 1945.Google Scholar

34 See Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), Vol. IV, p. 132, n. 3.Google Scholar

35 The germs of Peking's polycentric approach to the organisation of the international Communist system were apparent late in 1948, a year before the Chinese Communists established a national government. See Hinton, Harold C., “China,” in Kahin, George McTurnan (ed,), Major Governments of Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958), pp. 107–108.Google Scholar Beneath the jargon, Peking during the years since 1948 has juggled two primary objectives: first, avoidance of political subservience to the Soviet Union, and, second, maintenance and development of an integrated and disciplined international Communist bloc. The general Chinese line may thus be characterised as including the following elements: (a) national diversity is inevitable, (b) “great-nation chauvinism,” especially Russian chauvinism, is dangerous, and (c) “nationalism” in the smaller Communist states must never become so “bourgeois” that it leads to anti-Communist backsliding. No nonsense is to be tolerated.

36 For communiqué on the Kao-Jao matter, see CB No. 324, 04 5, 1954.Google Scholar See also Tang, Peter S. H., “Power Struggle in the Chinese CP: the Kao-Jao Purge,” Problems of Communism, Vol. IV, No. 6 (11–12 1955), pp. 18–25.Google Scholar

37 “Our Party now has more than 17,000,000 members. 80 per cent, of them have joined the Party since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and 70 per cent, have joined since 1953.” Liu Shao-ch'i's speech at the meeting to celebrate the Party's 40th anniversary, NCNA-English, Peking, June 30, 1961, reproduced in CB No. 655, 07 12, 1961. Quote on p. 7.Google Scholar

38 See Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), 3 volumesGoogle Scholar, for Peking's official translations of major speeches and documents. A convenient summary of Party organisation is provided in Hinton, , loc. cit., pp. 65–74.Google Scholar Analytic comment on the 1956 congress is given by Hinton, , “The Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,” Far Eastern Survey, 01 1957Google Scholar; Houn, Franklin W., “The Eighth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,” American Political Science Review, Vol. LI (06 1957), pp. 392–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and , J. F. A. W., “The September 1956 Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,” The World Today, 11 1956, pp. 469–478.Google Scholar See also Kuo-chun, Chao, “Leadership in the Chinese Communist Party,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 321 (01 1959), pp. 40–50.Google Scholar

39 Chu Teh succeeded Liu as chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

40 See Boorman, , “The Sino-Soviet Alliance: the Political Impact,” in Moscow-Peking Axis: Strengths and Strains (New York: Harper for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1957), pp. 42–43Google Scholar, and Barnett, A. Doak, Communist China and Asia (New York: Harper for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1960), pp. 89–91 and 153–157.Google Scholar Liu's November 1949 speech was published in the Cominform journal, For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy, on 01 27, 1950.Google Scholar See Barnett, , op. cit., p. 514, n. 9.Google Scholar

41 Two facts are noteworthy. Since 1949, Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch'i have never been out of China at the same time. To date, neither Mao nor Liu has visited any foreign country except Russia.

42 See Boorman, , op. cit., pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

43 Like the original 1950 Sino-Soyiet treaty, Liu's February 1953 speech stressed the potential danger from a remilitarised Japan allied with “American imperialism.” See Barnett, , op. cit., p. 80Google Scholar, on Peking's view of Japan as the key nation hi regional strategy in East Asia.

44 See Survey of China Mainland Press, No. 751, 02 19, 1954, pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

45 See Barnett, , op. cit., pp. 73–75.Google Scholar

46 See Eckstein, Alexander, “The Strategy of Economic Development in Communist China,” The American Economic Review, Vol. LI, No. 2 (05 1961), pp. 508–517.Google Scholar

47 In addition to Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, both members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the delegation included two other Politburo members (P'eng Chen and Li Ching-ch'uan), two alternate members of the Politburo (Lu Ting-yi and K'ang Sheng), and four Central Committee members (Liu Ning-yi, Liao Ch'eng-chih, Yang Shang-k'un, and Hu Ch'iao-mu). The Chinese ambassador at Moscow, Liu Hsiao, another Central Committee member, was also a member of the delegation. See “Liu Shao-ch'i in Moscow,” China News Analysis (Hong Kong), No. 349, 11 18, 1960.Google Scholar

48 It is clear at least that, following the meetings, Liu continued to be treated as a special guest during the remainder of his stay in the USSR. President Brezhnev accompanied him on a brief visit to Leningrad and Minsk in early December, after which he was accorded an elaborate welcome on his return to Moscow on December 6th, feted at a gala performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, and honoured at a rally in Lenin Stadium in Moscow on the 7th. Liu departed Moscow on a TU-104 jet airliner on December 8 and arrived home, presumably exhausted, in Peking the following day.

49 Text of the Moscow statement appears in the New York Times, 12 7, 1960Google Scholar, and in The China Quarterly, No. 5, 01–03 1961, pp. 25–52.Google Scholar