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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
1 Reacting to unexpectedly virulent criticisms of the Party and socialism during “blooming and contending,” Mao lashed out at dissidents who, like their counterparts in Poland and Hungary of 1956, had called for “great democracy” and an end to the one-party system. See Mao's January 1957 talks in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tsung, Vol. 5 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 355Google Scholar.
2 Mao Tse-tsung, “Wen Hei Pao's Bourgeois Orientation Should Be Criticized,” (July 1, 1957), ibid., 454.
3 These criteria were set out in Mao Tse-tung, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” (February 27, 1957), ibid., 412. While the Party has a well established tradition of criticism and self-criticism, which the leadership has viewed as essential to organizational health and the mass-line struggle against “bureaucratism” (kuan-liao chu-i), criticism must be judged constructive in conformity with the following criteria: helps to unite China's various nationalities; benefits socialist transformation and socialist construction; helps to consolidate people's democratic dictatorship (now proletarian dictatorship); reinforces the principle of democratic centralism; strengthens party leadership; contributes to the international solidarity of the socialist movement and the solidarity of the peace-loving peoples of the world. Criticism which inhibits or negates the purposes explicit in these criteria is regarded as subversive. In order to insure against “bureaucratism,” leaders should in theory welcome criticism, but such criticism should not, as it is currently emphasized, constitute a personal attack on individual leaders. The recent closing of the Hsi-tan Democracy Wall would seem to indicate that in the opinion of the party leadership the criticisms, posted, did not conform to these “six political criteria.”
4 This reference to party leadership, which is found in Article Two of both the 1975 and 1978 constitutions was not in the original constitution of 1954. The text of the 1975 state constitution was published along with Chang Ch'ün-ch'iao's report on constitutional revisions by the People's Press, Peking, January 1975. An English translation is readily available in Peking Review (now entitled Beijing Review), January 24, 1975, 12–20. The Chinese text of the March 5, 1978, constitution is in Hung ch'i (Red Flag), March 1978, 31–41. Refer to Peking Review, March 17, 1978, 5–14 for a translation.
5 For a complete translation of the new law of criminal procedure refer to the U.S. Foreign Broadcasts Information Service (FBIS), July 30, 1979, Vol. 1, No. 147, Supplement 020, 1–30. For a complete translation of the new criminal law refer to FBIS, July 27, 1979, Vol. 1, No. 147, Supplement 019, 33–61.
6 See “Notes on the Human Rights Question,” Beijing Review, November 9, 1979, 17–20Google Scholar.
7 The transcript of the May 9, 1979, discussions with Wu Ta-ying, deputy director of the Institute of Law, Academy of Social Sciences, and Chang Chung-lin, deputy director of the Institute's research department on criminal laws was scheduled to be published together with a short introduction in the March 1980 issue of The China Quarterly, London.
8 Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily), February 15, 1979.
9 Kuo-feng, Hua, “Political Report,” The Eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 52Google Scholar.
10 Hua authoritatively commented on Mao's thinking on this point in the following way: “When he said that the bourgeoisie was right inside the Communist Party, Chairman Mao was referring to the capitalist-readers within the Party, and in no way did he mean there was a bourgeois class inside our Party,” ibid., 37–38.
11 At the time of its first publication in Hung-ch'i, “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship over the Bourgeoisie” was hailed as a very significant political event. The theme of the article was very appropriate to a renewed emphasis on the class-struggle content of the Cultural Revolution. Presently, Chang's theory is seen as a corruption of Mao's theory, for Chang is said to have failed to distinguish contradictions between the people and class enemies, and contradictions among the people, themselves. For a sample of this argument refer to “China's Socialist Legal System,” Beijing Review, January 12, 1979, 28.
12 Refer to Hua's speech, Peking Review, March 10, 1978, 30 and then refer to Mao Tse-tung, “On the Ten Major Relationships,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 5, 301.
13 Hua Kuo-feng, “Political Report,” Eleventh Congress of the Communist Party of China, 44.
14 Refer to footnote 3 above.
15 Amnesty International, Political Imprisonment in the People's Republic of China (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1978), 57Google Scholar.
16 In the transcript of the May 9 discussions, there is reference to the fact that just prior to the Cultural Revolution only four university law departments and four specialized institutes of legal and political research were involved in enrolling law students. The former dean of the Peking Institute of Political Science and Law has remarked that the high-water mark in terms of the availability of lawyers was 1954 when there were 2,500 full-time and 350 part-time lawyers in China. FBIS, July 9, 1979, L8.
17 Hua Kuo-feng, “Political Report,” The Eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party, 52.
18 Undoubtedly, Lo thought in 1958 that he was advocating the greater need for vigilance against class enemies, but the Red Guards alleged that on the contrary he promoted the “ten-no movement,” namely, “no counterrevolutionaries, no thieves, no teddy boys, no fire disasters, no traffic accidents, etc.,” in order to spread Liu Shao-chi's “absurd theory of the dying of class struggle.” For Lo on mass campaigns and the legal system see Hsüeh-hsi (Study), January 3, 1958, 13. For the Red Guard denunciation of Lo refer to “Hold Aloft the Great Banner of Mao Tse-tung's Thought and Make a Clean Sweep of the Poison Spread by Lo Jui-ch'ing,” U.S., Hong Kong Consulate General, Survey of China Mainland Magazines, No. 641, January 20, 1969, 13.
19 Lu Chien-kuang, “On Understanding the Theory of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Incorrect Views Left Over From Old Concepts of Law,” Cheng-fa yen-chiu (Political-legal Research), February 1959, No. 1, 39–43, in Joint Publications Research Service, No. 1, 861-N, August 24, 1959, 52.
20 Lo P'ing, “Wo-kuo hsing-fa ti liang-hsing yüan-tse” (Principles of Kind and Degree of Criminality in China's Criminal Law), Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), No. 9, 1979, 74.
21 Yeh Chien-ying, “Report on the Revision of the Constitution,” Peking Review, March 17, 1978, 27.
22 For Liu Shao-ch'i's original remarks refer to Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party of China, Vol. 1 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), 116–17. Refer to Peking Review, December 29, 1978, 11 for the wording of the Central Committee's communiqué. The reference to Mao here relates to a pre-Cultural Revolution statement made in Mao's February 1957 speech, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 5, 395. Much of the current policy related to intellectual dissent originates with this speech and Mao's earlier speech, “On the Ten Major Relationships,” which is also in the fifth volume of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 284–307Google Scholar.
23 Hua Kuo-feng, “Report on the Work of Government,” Beijing Review, July 6, 1979, 10.
24 Chiang Hua's speech at the three-province conference of judicial personnel, Jen-min jih-pao, November 21, 1979.
25 Lo P'ing, Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), No. 9, 1979, 75.
26 “Hua-chih fu-chua ch'ün-chung shen-kao an-chien,” (“Firmly promote a review of the appeal cases of the masses”), Jen-min jih-pao, July 13, 1978.
27 Amnesty International has detailed a number of cases largely based on the accounts of foreign travellers in China. See Political Imprisonment in the People's Republic of China (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1978), 65Google Scholar. The reader may wish to refer to Randle Edwards' article, “Reflections on Crime and Punishment in China with Appended Documents,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 16 (1977), 75–103 for the details of the sentencing of 29 individuals by the Intermediate Court of Tientsin. These details suggest that crimes of political subversion and counterrevolution normally carry a 15 to 20-year prison sentence. Recently, the dissident writer, Wei Ching-sheng was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for having violated the 1951 Provisional Regulations Concerning the Safeguarding of State Secrets by informing foreigners of details concerning China's military activities in Vietnam. Wei was also accused of having disputed the legality of the appointments of Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-p'ing as premier and vice-premier of the state. For the Chinese allegations refer to Beijing Review, November 16, 1979, 15–16Google Scholar.
28 For Mao's cryptic allusions to the weather refer to Vol. 5 of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 428, 462, 479 and 485.
29 “Prospect and Retrospect: China's Legal System,” Peking Review, January 12, 1979, 35.
30 Lu Chien-kuang, Cheng-fa yen-chiu, Peking, February 1959, No. 1, 39–43 in Joint Publications Research Service, No. 1, 1, 861-N, August 24, 1959, 43–56.
31 T'an Cheng-wu, “Consolidate the Victory in the Struggle Between the Two Lines in Procuratorial Work…,” Cheng-fa yen-chiu (Political-legal Research), No. 6, December 3, 1958, in Joint Publications Research Service, No. 813-D, July 20, 1959, 7.
32 Refer to Cohen, Jerome, “The Chinese Communist Party and ‘Judicial Independence,’ 1949–59,” Harvard Law Review 82 (1969), 973–75Google Scholar.
33 Ch'iao Wei, “Tu-li shen-p'an, chih-fu ts'ung fa-lü,” (“Independent judicial proceedings subject only to the law”), Jen-min jih-pao, January 5, 1979, 3. For the original wording of Article 78 refer to Chung-hua jen-min kung-ho-kuo hsien fa, (“Constitution of the People's Republic of China”) (Peking: Jen-min ch'u-pan she, 1954), 22Google Scholar.
34 For discussion of the concept, “unified Party leadership,” refer to Keith, Ronald C., “The Relevance of Border-Region Experience to Nation Building in China, 1949–52,” The China Quarterly 78 (1979), 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 See Professor Schram's discussion of Mao, 's “interdeterminacy” in Wilson, Dick (ed.), Mao Tse-tung in the Scales of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 4–65Google Scholar. Also refer to Stuart R. Schram, “Mao Tse-tung and the Theory of Permanent Revolution,” The China Quarterly (1971), 223–44.
36 For the details refer to the transcript of the May 9, 1979, discussions in the March 1980 issue of The China Quarterly and also refer to “The New Criminal Law and Law of Criminal Procedure,” in Beijing Review, August 17, 1979, 16.
37 The “7,000 Cadres Speech” has recently been published in Peking Review, July 27, 1978, 21.