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Political Succession in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Thomas W. Robinson
Thomas W. Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle
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Abstract

There are at least four approaches useful in predicting what will happen in China after Mao. The “environmental approach” stresses that the Chinese setting—physical, cultural, economic, and international—will govern the courses taken by political actors. The “personality approach” is the opposite, stressing that people, not their surroundings, will determine succession politics. The “societal approach” postulates that it is society (defined as the social environment, including influences from Chinese culture, history, and the structure and operation of Chinese social-political-familial-economic institutions) that is the operationally significant variable. Finally, the “politics approach” assumes that politics itself is the central concern of Chinese life, necessitating a search for general “rules” of politics in China to project the future. These approaches and their implications are each examined in detail, with the conclusion that none is adequate of itself to explain post-Mao politics in China. By combining them, however, it is possible to periodize developments after Mao. Four stages are envisaged. An initial stage would last about three months, during which a collective leadership would form. A second, transitional phase, possibly lasting several years, would be marked by the advent of major policy questions not solvable by Maoist precedent. A third phase would see the emergence of a new leadership, probably operating on a factionalist model. Finally, a fourth stage would be defined after China has returned to normal, “gotten over” Mao's death, and when events are no longer viewable in terms of “succession politics.”

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , October 1974 , pp. 1 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

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References

1 Just to mention a few studies over the years: Hinton, Harold C., “The Succession Problem in Communist China,” Current Scene, I (July 19, 1962)Google Scholar; Lewis, John W., “Chinese Communist Party Leadership and the Succession to Mao Tse-tung: An Appraisal of Tensions,” Department of State (Washington, D.C. 1964)Google Scholar; Dorrill, William F., “Leadership and Succession in Communist China,” Current History, IL (September 7, 1965), 129–355Google ScholarBarnett, A. Doak, China After Mao (Princeton 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ray, Dennis, “China After Mao,” International Affairs (London), XLVII (January 1971), 45–62Google Scholar.

2 The Mao vs. Lin controversy is by now well documented. See, inter alia, Baum, Richard, “Revolution and Reaction in the Chinese Countryside: The Socialist Education Movement in Cultural Revolutionary Perspective,” China Quarterly, No. 38 (April-June 1969), 92–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baum, Richard and Teiwes, Frederick C., “Liu Shao-ch'i and the Cadres Question,” Asian Survey, VIII (April 1968), 323–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baum, Richard and Teiwes, Frederick C., Ssu-Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966, Center for Chinese Studies, China Research Monograph No. 2 (Berkeley 1968)Google Scholar; Parris H. Chang, “Dispute Over Communes, 1959–1962,” unpub.; Cheng, Peter, “Liu Shao-ch'I and the Cultural Revolution,” Asian Survey, XI (October 1971), 943–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ssu-k'ai, Chin, “The Mao-Lin Struggle from Another Angle,” Tsu-kuo Yüeh-k'an, No. 68 (November 1, 1969)Google Scholar, transl. in Chinese Law and Government, in (Summer/Fall 1970), 189–205Google Scholar; Te-liang, Kung, “Maoist Attacks on Liu Shao-ch'i,” Issues and Studies, IV (July 1967), 8–17Google Scholar; Schram, Stuart R., “Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch'i, 1939–1969,” Asian Survey, XII (April 1972), 275–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, D. Gordon, “A Comparison of the Operational Codes of Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch'i,” Center for East Asian Studies (Stanford 1970)Google Scholar; the Editor, “The Conflict Between Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch'i Over Agricultural Mechanization in Communist China,” Current Scene, VI (October 1, 1968)Google Scholar; and the Editor, “The Mao-Liu Controversy Over Rural Public Health,” Current Scene, VII (June 15, 1969)Google Scholar.

3 On the “generational skip hypothesis,” see Scalapino, Robert A., “The Transition in Chinese Party Leadership: A Comparison of the Eighth and Ninth Central Committees,” in Scalapino, Robert A., ed., Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle 1972), 67–143Google Scholar; and Whitson, William W., “The Concept of Military Generation: The Chinese Communist Case,” Asian Survey, VIII (November 1968), 921–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Most studies of the Cultural Revolution assume all major initiatives to come from Mao. See, for instance, the series by Philip Bridgham, “Mao's ‘Cultural Revolution': Origins and Developments,” “Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1967: The Struggle to Seize Power,” and “Mao's Cultural Revolution: The Struggle to Consolidate Power,” China Quarterly, No. 29 (January-March 1967), 1–35Google Scholar; No. 34 (April-June 1968), 6–37; and No. 41 (January-March 1970), 1–25. Needless to say, this orientation, always open to question because of its exclusivism, has been presented with increasing problems by the trend of events and revelations since the Ninth Party Congress.

5 There are several recent interesting studies of succession in China. See Chang, Parris H., “China: After Mao, Who and What,” unpub., 1973Google Scholar; Oksenberg, Michael C., “The Chinese Political Process and the Succession,” unpub., 1973Google Scholar; and Wang, Ting, “The Succession Problem,” Problems of Communism, XXII (May-June 1973), 13–24Google Scholar.

6 See, for instance, Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, Man-Milieu Relationships: Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics, Center of International Studies Research Monograph (Princeton 1956)Google Scholar, and The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs (Princeton 1956 and 1965)Google Scholar; Meadows, Donella H. and others, The Limits to Growth (New York 1972)Google Scholar; and Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass. 1960)Google Scholar.

7 Perhaps the writings of Erik Erikson and Alexander George are the best examples. See Erikson's, Young Man Luther and Gandhi's Truth (New York 1956 and 1969)Google Scholar, and George's, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York 1956)Google Scholar. The writings on personality and politics are, of course, extremely numerous.

8 Good examples are: Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston 1965)Google Scholar, and March, James and Simon, Herbert, Organization (New York 1958)Google Scholar. Most traditional writing on China, exemplified by the work of John Fairbank, is of this school.

9 Two classics of this approach are: Morgenthau, Hans J., Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Chicago 1946)Google Scholar, and Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles, A Strategy of Decision (New York 1963)Google Scholar. A convenient entrée to the behavioral literature taking this approach is Swingle, Paul, ed., The Structure of Conflict (New York 1970)Google Scholar.

10 It is true, of course, that the situation does not demand that we choose between these four approaches to settle upon the one most likely to predict policy outcomes accurately in the post-Mao period. The most desirable procedure would be to obtain some realistic and generally agreed-upon synthesis and, from that, to generate a series of alternative possible scenarios, each touching upon policy-relevant issues and each carrying some probability of occurrence. But the status of our understanding about, and our agreement upon, the nature of politics in China precludes the production of such a single model, and the lack of the detailed facts necessary for a full exposition of any of the approaches would prevent the use of such a model even if it did exist. Further, the fledgling nature of the field of forecasting renders it quite unlikely that such a synthetic model could find its central utility in a forecasting mode. Finally, there is some intrinsic merit to forbearing, at least for the present, from picking the four approaches apart and welding together, in some eclectic manner, what seem to be the strongest elements of each.

11 The term was first applied to Malenkov's Soviet domestic policies after Stalin and to Hungarian policy under Nagy, and has now been applied to China. See the excellent article by Domes, Jürgen, “New Course in Chinese Domestic Politics: The Anatomy of Readjustment,” Asian Survey, in (July 1973), 633–45Google Scholar.

12 See Ting Wang (fn. 5).

13 Greenstein, Fred, Politics and Personality (Chicago 1969), 14Google Scholar, feels that situation and role overpower personality factors in the end. In China, however, this conclusion has been far from evident, at least during the twentieth century.

14 Chang, Ch'en, Hsu, Han, and Li are discussed below. The last three are provincial military leaders who before January 1974 wore several hats in their respective provinces. Several otherwise noteworthy figures do not appear on this list, largely because they are too old, do not have the requisite personal following, or do not possess a regional base. Thy include K'ang Sheng, Liu po-ch'eng, Tung Pi-wu, Yeh Chien-ning and Teng Hsiao-p'ing.

15 Hsü Shih-yu and Ch'en Hsi-lien, two powerful regional military figures who are also members of the Politburo, may have enhanced their usefulness to Mao by their support in the Lin Piao crisis of 1971. Hsu seems to be in the better position, being in command of the Nanking Military Region until late 1973 and the Shenyang Military Region after that, and historically associated with the Third Field Army system. He also holds a central military appointment, which Ch'en does not (so far as we know). Ch'en's weakness may stem from his association with Lin Piao's Fourth Field Army system. He lost his provincial base in the reshuffle late in 1973, but gained a voice at the center and moved to Peking, evidently becoming a supporter of Chou En-lai. The status of Wang Hung-wen is interesting. A former youthful Shanghai textile worker who apparently studied to be an engineer, he was active in organizing the “revolutionary rebels” in that city in 1967. He then became a Vice-Chairman of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee and a member of the Ninth Central Committee and its Presidium. Now he is a Vice-Chairman of the Tenth Central Committee Politburo and thus the first figure produced by the Cultural Revolution to achieve long-term national status. It is difficult to tell whether his position is merely honorary (there are other such representatives on the Politburo: a peasant leader, a woman Red Guard, and two national minorities figures) or whether it is a genuine reflection of his power. In the absence of more firm information, it is probably wise to take his prominence seriously, since it is otherwise difficult to explain why a Vice-Chairmanship, for which there is much competition, was “expended” on him.

16 See Nathan, Andrew, “A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics,” China Quarterly, No. 53 (January-March 1973), 34–66; quote from p. 49Google Scholar.

17 Despite recent official Chinese pronouncements on the Lin affair, it is not clear, at least to this observer, that things were as simple as Mao would have it. It is quite possible that Lin was being pressured by important military leaders to press Mao, in turn, to revise—if not reverse—central features of Chinese domestic and foreign policies. Lin may have felt that he had to bend to these pressures, lest he be denied support in the critical days after Mao's demise. On the other hand, Lin's power, as long as Mao was alive, would still derive principally from the Party Chairman. Lin therefore had to waffle between his military colleagues and his mentor, which led him into the same fatal trap Liu Shao-ch'i had encountered before him. Mao, perceiving Lin tergiversate, began to suspect him of double-dealing, and a vicious cycle began that ended in Lin's death.

18 Solomon, Richard, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley 1971)Google Scholar, has become the standard work. See also Pye's, LucianThe Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development (Cambridge, Mass. 1968)Google Scholar.

19 There are many studies of ideologies in China and of Mao's “thought.” Still the best on Mao is Stuart Schram, The Political Philosophy of Mao Tse-tung (New York 1963)Google Scholar, supplemented by compendia of Mao's post-Collected Works pronouncements. The best recent work on ideology in China is Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Ideology and Politics in Contemporary China (Seattle 1973)Google Scholar. Schurmann's, FranzIdeology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley 1966)Google Scholar is by no means out of date.

20 Ibid., chap. I, “Ideology.”

21 Perhaps the best recent treatment of Party history is Guillermaz, Jacques, A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–1949, 1949–1972, 2 vols. (New York 1972 and forthcoming)Google Scholar. Albert Feuerwerker has persuasively argued that, for current policy purposes, one need consider the Chinese communist perspective on Chinese history only as far back as 1840. See, for example, his “Chinese History and the Foreign Relations of Contemporary China,” in Richard Lambert, ed., China in the World Today, in The Annals, CDII (July 1972), 1–14Google Scholar.

22 Should we consider the list of recently rehabilitated leaders purged during the Cultural Revolution, which is now rather lengthy, as constituting candidates for succession? Probably not, for three reasons. First, those on the list fail to measure up to several of our eight criteria of succession. Second, they probably will not be able to make the necessary psychological adjustments to compete for power effectively once more. Third, there will always be a residue of suspicion around them, no matter how “clean” they now appear.

23 Scalapino (fn. 3).

24 Whitson, William W., The Chinese High Command (New York 1973), especially chap. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whitson's methodology, and hence his conclusions, have been subject to challenge by Parrish, William, “Factions in Chinese Military Politics,” China Quarterly, No. 56 (October/December 1973), 667–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Moreover, Whitson seems to have changed his mind as to the evolving center of military career loyalties, from the field army to the military region.

25 See Sung, George C. S., “China's Provincial Politics in 1971Google Scholar: A Biographic Approach,” The Rand Corporation, P-4998, April 1973; and Whitson, William W., “Chinese Military and Political Leaders and the Distribution of Power in China, 1956–1971,” The Rand Corporation, R-1091, 1973Google Scholar.

26 Allison, Graham, Essence of Decision (Boston 1971)Google Scholar; Lindblom, Charles E., The Policy-Making Process (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1968)Google Scholar; and Bauer, Raymond A. and Gergen, Kenneth J., eds., The Study of Policy Formation (New York 1968)Google Scholar.

27 See Joseph L. Bower, “Descriptive Decision Theory from the ‘Administrative’ Viewpoint,” and Enid C. B. Schoette, “The State of the Art in Policy Studies,” in Bauer and Gergen, ibid., chaps. 3 and 4 respectively. The study of political succession in communist states need not be isolated from succession in other entities, political or otherwise. For some suggestive parallels, see Carlson, Richard, School Superintendents: Careers and Performance (Columbus, Ohio 1972)Google Scholar; Berle, Adolf A. and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York 1969)Google Scholar; and Chandler, Alfred D., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of American Industrialist Enterprises (Cambridge, Mass. 1969)Google Scholar.

28 Nathan (fn. 16).

29 Daniels, Robert Vincent, The Conscience of the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass. 1960)Google Scholar, gives an account that can be read with profit by every student of Chinese politics.

30 A comparison of Nathan's list of characteristics of factional politics with the attributes of a balance-of-power system presented by Morton Kaplan reveals striking similarities. It would seem that factional politics is really a special case of balance-of-power politics. See Kaplan's, System and Process in International Politics (New York 1957)Google Scholar, as updated by his “The Systems Approach to International Politics,” in Kaplan, Morton, ed., New Approaches to International Politics (New York 1968), 381–404Google Scholar. The balance of power, of course, is much broader as a means of preservation of independence and advancing interests among autonomous political units. See Robinson, Thomas W., Hans J. Morgenthau's Theory of International Relations, Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University 1969)Google Scholar, for an elaboration.

31 Riker, William, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven 1962)Google Scholar; and Sven Groennings, and others, eds., The Study of Coalition Behavior (New York 1970)Google Scholar.

32 Caplow, Theodore, Two Against One: Coalitions in Triad (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1968)Google Scholar, considers coalition type (dependent upon relative power), coalition level, coalition status, and type of situation of the system as a whole. All reflect complex political-sociological variables.

33 Chou's presence and role will be critical in determining the length of this phase and in making certain that the increasingly intense factional struggle that will follow does not result in harm to China's foreign position or domestic strength. If Chou were to leave the scene at this point, either through death, election to retire (not an unlikely option), or being forced out of office, factional differences could come to dominate policy issues. If Chou were to remain in power, he might well be able to modulate those differences and, possibly, transform them into institutional disagreements, which are inherently safer to handle.

The possibility that Chou En-lai came under political attack in late 1973 and might be forced to retire is supported by the esoteric literature stemming from the campaign to criticize Confucius and Lin Piao. One article speaks of Fan Sui, a former Prime Minister of the state of Chin from 266–256 B.C., who, after meritorious service to Prince Chao in supporting centralization of rule against the Confucionist policy of installing autonomous local rulers, “asked to return the seal of prime minister because of illness.” Actually, according to the article, he resigned because “he was sitting on top of a volcano that could erupt at any time” and because he was fearful of his life and that of his family. The parallel with the dispute in contemporary China over the autonomy of the military regions and the provincial Party secretaries, and with Chou's role in transferring the regional military commanders in late 1973 is obvious, as is Chou's later statement that he was old, ill, and progressively handing his duties over to others such as Teng Hsiao-p'ing. See Lo Ssu-ting, “Struggle Between Restoration and Counter-Restoration in the Course of Founding the Chin Dynasty,” Hung Ch'i [Red Flag], No. 11 (November 1973), 30–40, and translated in Peking Review, Nos. 17 and 18 (1974), 7–10 and 19–22 respectively; quotation from pp. 9 and 10. The very fact that the article was reprinted in China's foreign-language information journal seven months after its publication in the chief Chinese-language journal indicates that Chou's status was becoming increasingly precarious and that he might indeed elect to retire rather than be forced from office.

34 Still the best study of charisma is Willner, Ann Ruth, Charismatic Political Leadership: A Theory, Center of International Studies Research Monograph No. 32 (Princeton 1968)Google Scholar.