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Politics in Yunnan Province in the Decade of Disorder: Elite Factional Strategies and Central-local Relations, 1967–1980*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Dorothy J. Solinger
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Extract

In the wake of the watershed events of 1967, most of the analysis of Chinese domestic politics has focused on the fallen “four,” subsequent purges of Leftists and their replacement by “pragmatists,” and the no longer guarded “reassessment” of the old Chairman's role in the Chinese revolution. This discussion has usually been directed at the personnel in the capital. This article will take a look at what has been happening in one part of the hinterland of late, as it elaborates a framework for interpreting central-local elite behaviour. It will develop this framework on the basis of a close reading of the events in one province, Yunnan, over the decade or so of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 92 , December 1982 , pp. 628 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1982

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Footnotes

*

Much of this paper has benefited from discussions with William Abnett, Parris Chang, Harry Harding, Richard C. Kraus, Hong Yung Lee and Robert Suettinger. The comments of several anonymous readers were also extremely useful in stimulating my revision. An earlier version was presented at the 1981 meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, held in Toronto.

References

1. Robert Michael Field, Kathleen M. McGlynn and Abnett, William B., “Political conflict and industrial growth in China: 1965–1977,” Chinese Economy Post-Mao: A Compendium of Papers Submitted to the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States. Volume I: Policy and Performance (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 250.Google Scholar See also Pye, Lucian, The Dynamics of Factions and Consensus in Chinese Politics: A Model and Some Propositions, a Project Air Force report prepared for the United States Air Force (Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 1980), p. 193.Google Scholar Pye lists Yunnan, along with Sichuan, Liaoning, and Fujian, as provinces that “had great trouble” (meaning in recent years).

2. In particular, Pye, , op. citGoogle Scholar and Nathan, Andrew J., “A factional model for CCP politics,” The China Quarterly, No. 53 (1973), pp. 34–66.Google Scholar

3. Nathan, , op. cit. p. 35.Google Scholar

4. Pye, , op. cit. pp. 21, 171.Google Scholar

5. Ibid. p. vi, notes that there is an “intense attraction of mutual dependency in Chinese culture between superiors and subordinates, each of whom needs the other for his own protection and each of whom is vulnerable to the other.” This point is also elaborated on pp. 20 and 171–72.Google Scholar

6. Of course, one could assume that every move made by every local leader was made in response to orders from central-level figures. However, the sources show such evidence of complicated rivalries and jockeyings for power within the province that it is difficult to believe that the local scene itself is not an important factor influencing local elite behaviour.

7. U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (hereafter FBIS), 18 02 1977, pp. J9–10Google Scholar, speaks of a Liu-chang, Tuan, “former secret agent of the Chiang Kai-shek gang”Google Scholar who had just “crossed over to the motherland,” appearing in Yunnan province. According to the radio report, this man had been the head of the liaison centre of the Yunnan section of the “mainland work committee,” which was termed “Chiang's secret service beyond the Chinese border of Yunnan.”

8. Hsiao-hsien, Wang, “The turmoil in Yunnan: 1976–1977,” Issues and Studies (hereafter I & S), Vol. 13, No. 12 (1977), pp. 41–52.Google Scholar

9. Quoted in Falkenheim, Victor C., “The Cultural Revolution in Kwangsi, Yunnan and Fukien,” Asian Survey (hereafter AS), Vol. 9, No. 8 (1969), pp. 580–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. See FBIS, 24 10 1978, pp. J1–2Google Scholar and 9 February 1979, pp. J1–4, for example.

11. Zhongguo baike nianjian (China Encyclopedia Yearbook) (hereafter ZGBKNJ) (n.p.: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe, 1980), p. 112.

12. For a brief discussion of this, see Dorothy Solinger, J., “Minority nationalities in China's Yunnan province,” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1977), pp. 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. For reports of resistance by the minorities in mid–1955, spring 1956, and 1957 (religiously-motivated, against agricultural collectivization, and through escape, respectively), see Renmin ribao (People's Daily) (hereafter RMRB), 30 July 1955; China News Analysis (hereafter CNA), No. 159; and Moseley, George V. H., The Consolidation of the South China Frontier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 120.Google Scholar

14. Hsiao-hsien, Wang, op. cit.Google Scholar

15. Solinger, Dorothy J., Regional Government and Political Integration in Southwest China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

16. Ibid. p. 88.

17. Jin, Liu, Chuan Kong yishou chien hou (Before and After Sichuan and Xikang Changed Hands) (Hong Kong: Freedom Press, 1956).Google Scholar

18. (Republic of China), Office of Military History, Liu Po-ch'eng (Taipei: n.p., 1971).Google Scholar

19. See Table 1. The personnel information in it (and elsewhere below) is drawn from Solinger, Dorothy J., “Yunnan,” unpublished manuscript, 1977Google Scholar, prepared for Edwin A. Winckler (ed.), Provincial Handbook of China, forthcoming; and from various directories of Chinese communist officials, notably Klein, Donald W. and Clark, Anne B., Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism, 1921–1965 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Union Research Institute (ed.), Who's Who in Communist China, rev. edition (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1969).Google Scholar

20. Peking Review, No. 52 (1978), p. 13Google Scholar, notes that Deng was entrusted by Mao in 1975 with the responsibility of presiding over the work of the Central Committee.

21. Falkenheim, , op. cit. p. 591.Google Scholar

22. FBIS, 24 11 1978, pp. J3–6.Google Scholar

23. I have found no evidence to indicate that Xie and Zhou's work at the top echelons of the same ministry at roughly the same, but not at coterminous, periods meant they had personal connections with each other. However, they must have shared colleagues and subordinates, and worked through the same network below them, all of which could certainly have laid the foundation for a co-operative tie between them in later years.

24. See Falkenheim, , op. cit.Google Scholar Probably Xie was chosen to lead the team precisely because he knew Yunnan so well.

25. Quoted ibid. p. 589.

26. See Current Scene (hereafter CS), Vol. 9, No. 12, on Chen and Zhou. Some sources claim that Yan, having undergone heavy criticism, committed suicide once his plot to wage guerrilla warfare in the mountains was foiled. See Tokyo Radio, 21 January 1967; China Record, 03 1977, p. 4.Google Scholar

27. See Lee, Hong Yung, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar, for background on these politics.

28. Yunnan ribao (Yunnan Daily), 14 10 1978Google Scholar, in FBIS, 17 10 1978, pp. J1–3.Google Scholar

29. CS, Vol. 6, No. 21.Google Scholar

30. China Record, 03 1977, p. 4.Google Scholar

31. See FBIS, 14 11 1978, pp. J2–3Google Scholar, and 12 September 1979, p. Q7; and Hsiao-hsien, Wang, op. cit. p. 50Google Scholar for discussion of the disorder caused by minorities. Also, see Israeli, Raphael, “The Muslim minority in the People's Republic of China,” AS, Vol. 21, No. 8 (1981), pp. 910–11.Google Scholar In the Shadian uprising of the mid–1970s (placed in mid–1975 by the PRC sources and in September 1976 by the Taiwan source), the Hui rose in rebellion, in an effort to establish an independent Moslem country of their own, but were finally quelled under heavy artillery fire, after a desperate battle of several weeks' duration that caused heavy losses to PLA troops.

32. For a comparison of Chen and Zhou's positions, see text, supra. Wang became commander of the KMR in 1973, after acting as first deputy commander from 1970. He was also the vice-chairman of the provincial revolutionary committee. Wang, an officer of the 3 FA, had served under Hsu Shiyu in East China for nearly 20 years.

33. Several explanations have been given to account for the fact that urban youths from the eastern parts of China were sent to the border provinces in the rustification campaign of 1968 to 1976. Among them is that the motherland may have the greatest need for these educated young people in the poorest, most backward regions of the country; that the population in such areas is sparser than elsewhere and so that labour, as well as technical knowledge, is in demand there; and, that since many of the border areas are peopled by minority groups, sending the high school graduates there to work among the non-Han may serve as a modern version of the centuries-old practice of colonizing areas poorly integrated into the Chinese state. See Bernstein, Thomas P., Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 63, 67, 69, 70.Google Scholar

For whatever reason, as of the mid–1970s, Yunnan, with its 800,000 reported urban youth settlers, was surpassed in numbers of sent-down youth only by five other provinces-Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hubei and Sichuan. And of these five, only Heilongjiang had more settlers from outside the province than Yunnan did (ibid. pp. 26–27, 29) Yunnan had 300,000 youths from Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Chongqing, while Heilongjiang had some 500,000 from cities outside that province. Unfortunately, there are no data available for three other provinces which also have large numbers of minority peoples residing within them-Ningxia, Qinghai and Guizhou. Also, it is not known how many of Jilin's 800,000 youths were from outside the province, if any. Still, the evidence at hand does indicate that Yunnan clearly had a disproportionate number of outside urban youth. Most of these youths had been Red Guards in the early Cultural Revolution, and many of these had been adherents of radical ideology.

34. Zhu's career is traced in ibid. p. 176.

35. FBIS, 4 05 1976, p. J2.Google Scholar

36. Shanghai sources. (The individual who learned this from gossip while in Shanghai requested that the citation be written in this way.)

37. Dong Xiang (Trend), No. 17 (1980), p. 47, lists Peng Guiho as a principal “gang” element and as the head of the Yunnan provincial trade union federation. See also FBIS, 3 01 1977, pp. J1–2Google Scholar; 4 January 1977, pp. J2–5; 6 June 1977, pp. J5–6; 15 April 1977, P.J3.

38. FBIS, 30 03 1977, p. J1Google Scholar; 16 June 1977, pp. J1–3; and 7 December 1977, p. J2.

39. These two layers of conflict may parallel the waning of infighting among Leftists in Beijing as the heyday of the Cultural Revolution ebbed in the early 1970s. It was followed in the capital by a prominence of Left-Right conflict, as rehabilitations of Rightists began then.

40. Kunming Radio (hereafter KR), 7 May 1971.

41. KR, 25 03 and 9 04 1972.Google Scholar

42. FBIS, 15 12 1976, p. J3.Google Scholar Some concrete manifestations of the effects on policy of this factionalism can be found in CNA, No. 1023 (1975), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

43. CNA, No. 1023 (1975), p. 5.Google Scholar

44. FBIS, 25 03 1975, pp. J1–3.Google Scholar

45. FBIS, 10 04 1975, J1–3Google Scholar versus 10 April 1975, pp. J3–5 and 21 July 1975, pp. J4–5 versus 6 August 1975, pp. J2–4. The three documents (on the economy as a whole, industrial development and science policy, respectively) by Deng, termed “poisonous weeds” by the Leftists, presented “pragmatic” approaches to modernizing industry and science.

46. See “Some problems in speeding up industrial development,” I & S, Vol. 13, No. 7 (1977), pp. 90–113Google Scholar, for its emphasis on “rules and regulations.”

47. See note 20, supra.

48. CNA, No. 1023 (1975).Google Scholar

49. FBIS, 10 10 1975, pp. J3–5.Google Scholar

50. RMRB, 23 07 1978, p. 1Google Scholar, states that the “former provincial committee's principal responsible person [that is, Jia Qiyun] bartered away his honour to the ‘gang of four’ to obtain its patronage.” See Pye, , op. cit. pp. 186–87Google Scholar, for a recounting of the similar behaviour of Anhui's first Party secretary Song Peizhang at the same time.

51. FBIS, 22 04 1976, pp. J4–6.Google Scholar This incident, put simply, involved the routing by Leftists of a show of support for Zhou Enlai and Zhou's moderate positions.

52. The attack is in FBIS, 18 05 1976, p. J10.Google Scholar See also FBIS, 16 04 p. J16Google Scholar; 23 April pp. J10; and 4 May pp. J1–3.

53. Hsiao-hsien, Wang, op. cit. p. 47.Google Scholar

54. For information on this theme, see FBIS, 2 03 1977, pp. J2–6Google Scholar; 4 March 1977, pp. J4–5; 30 March 1977, pp. J1–3; 6 April 1977, pp. J1–3; 18 April 1977, pp. J4–7; 27 January 1978, pp. J3–5; and 18 July 1978, p. J2. The 1975 purges are discussed in CNA, No. 1023 (1975).Google Scholar

55. There is no direct evidence that Deng himself tried to direct events in Yunnan. But the rise with Deng in the late 1970s of men of the 2 FA who had served in the civil war with him, worked in the South-west in the early 1950s with him, and fallen with him in the late 1960s certainly suggests some sort of linkage between their careers and his.

56. The other two were Chen Pixian, who was given the post of Party secretary, but mysteriously departed for service in Hubei within only a few months, never to return, and Zhang Xitang, who had also come to Yunnan in 1975 to serve as a member of the Party standing committee, and was named commander of the Yunnan military district, having held a military district commandship in Liaoning just previous to his Yunnan assignment. See China Record, 03 1977, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar The broadcast on the reorganization is FBIS, 14 02 1977, pp. J1–8.Google Scholar

57. New York Times, 7 03 1977.Google Scholar See also Pye, , op. cit. p. 112.Google Scholar According to Pye, wallposters in Beijing denounced Wei and Xu for seeking to advance the South over the North.

58. China News Summary, No. 597 (1976), p. 1.Google Scholar

59. FBIS, 26 07 1977, pp. J3–5.Google Scholar

60. FBIS, 27 07 1977, pp. J6–8.Google Scholar

61. FBIS, 15 09 1977, pp. J1–4.Google Scholar Zhao's speech is in FBIS, 09 1977, p.J2.Google Scholar

62. FBIS, 4 08 1978, pp. J2–6.Google Scholar

63. FBIS, 25 08 1979, pp. Q4–6.Google Scholar

64. FBIS, 19 09, pp. Q2–4.Google Scholar

65. See, for example, FBIS, 30 11 1977, pp. J9–11Google Scholar; 11 January 1978, pp. J1–2; 3 February 1978, pp. J2–3; 16 March 1978, p. J1.

66. An appeared 59 times in 1977, 45 in 1978 and 39 in 1979. In 1977 he appeared far more than any other provincial leader, but in 1978 he appeared less than at least one other. Comparative data are not available for 1979.

Source:

U.S. CIA, Appearances and Activities of Leading Officials of the PRC for 1977 and 1978.Google Scholar The volume for 1979 lists only the first Party secretary. Fontana, Dorothy, in her Ph.D. dissertation, “Background to the fall of Hua Guofeng: a study of factional struggle in contemporary People's Republic of China” (M.I.T., 1981)Google Scholar, has traced a falling out between Deng on the one hand and Xu and Wei on the other to early 1979. This too, besides An's lack of enthusiasm for Deng, could account for any slippage in An's position that may have occurred with time.

67. One example of such a broadcast is in FBIS, 14 02 1978, p. J4.Google Scholar But there are numerous similar ones.

68. FBIS, 14 11 1977, pp. J2–3.Google Scholar

69. FBIS, 22 03 1978, pp. J6–8.Google Scholar

70. FBIS, 22 11 1977, pp. J3–4Google Scholar; 16 March 1978, pp. J1–3; and 24 May 1978, pp. J2–3.

71. FBIS, 23 02 1978, pp. J5–8.Google Scholar

72. FBIS, 19 09 1979, pp. Q2–4.Google Scholar Also see 29 August 1979, pp. Q6–8.

73. See I & S, Vol. 13, No. 7 (1977), pp. 90–113.Google Scholar

74. FBIS, 22 08 1978, p. J4.Google Scholar See also 31 August 1978, pp. J4–5; 12 September 1978, p. J3; 17 October 1978, pp. J1–3.

75. FBIS, 12 09 1978, p. J6, for example.Google Scholar

76. FBIS, 2 11 1978, p. J2.Google Scholar Apparently, forcing all soldiers to focus hatred on the dead Lin would, it was hoped, create the unity lacking in the ranks.

77. FBIS, 16 02 1979, p. J2.Google Scholar

78. See note 66, supra, for an indication of the decline in Wang's power in 1978.

79. FBIS, 21 04 1976, pp. J7–8Google Scholar, and 18 May 1976, p. J11. At the time of the Tiananmen incident in April 1976, Wang may have been resenting Deng for the latter's late 1975 placement of Liu Zhijian, the 2 FA man criticized in the Cultural Revolution, as Wang's political commissar.

80. FBIS, 6 02 1980, p. Q1.Google Scholar

81. FBIS, 29 12 1977, p. J1.Google Scholar

82. FBIS, 12 09 1978, pp. J1–2.Google Scholar

83. See appearance data, note 66, supra.

84. For instance, it was Liu who warned of the threat of Soviet revisionism on the eve of the Vietnam war as the shift in the Yunnan military command took place (FBIS, 29 09 1978, pp. J3–4)Google Scholar; and he was the one to announce the instructions of the Party Central Committee on the conviction and the handling of the “gang's” principal followers in Yunnan, Zhu Kejia and Huang Zhaoqi, at a broadcast rally to dispose of their cases and of the cases of eight other “backbone elements” who had participated in the conspiratorial activities of the “gang” in Yunnan, (FBIS, 23 02 1979, pp. J2–5).Google Scholar

85. FBIS, 3 05 1979, p. Q2.Google Scholar

86. See note 64, supra.

87. RMRB, 28 09 1979, p. 1.Google Scholar

88. FBIS, 8 01 1980, pp. Q3–4.Google Scholar

89. See ibid. and ZGBKNJ, pp. 112, 113Google Scholar for the namelists of these powerholders.

90. For example, Gao Zhiguo headed a provincial education conference (FBIS, 4 04 1980, p. Q2–3)Google Scholar; Sun Yuting spoke at a forum on personnel work (FBIS, 14 04 1980, p. Q2)Google Scholar; Sun presided over the third session of the Fifth People's Congress (FBIS, 28 05 1980, pp. Q6–7)Google Scholar; Gao spoke at an education conference (FBIS, 8 08 1980, p. Q5)Google Scholar; and Sun presided over the full session of the fifth session of the Fifth People's Congress Standing Committee meeting (FBIS, 13 11 1980, pp. Q6–7).Google Scholar

91. See supra, text stating that Liu had been accused of protecting Deng during the Cultural Revolution. I have come across nothing that indicates that he (unlike Jia Qiyun) ever criticized or otherwise betrayed Deng. The same holds true for Liu Minghui.

92. FBIS, 7 02, 1980, p. Q1.Google Scholar

93. Liu had been deputy political commissar and concurrently director of the political department of the Fourth Army Group in the 2 FA under Deng before 1949. He also acted as the deputy for the PLA Kunming forces to the Third National People's Congress in September 1964.

94. Nathan, , op. cit.Google Scholar states on p. 46 that: “For any given faction, the most important and usually most immediate concern is to protect its own base of power while opposing accretions of power to rival factions, while initiatives to increase its own power and position are of secondary importance. Defensive political strategies therefore predominate over political initiatives in frequency and importance.”