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The Structural Evolution of ‘Criticism and Self-Criticism’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Lowell Dittmer
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Extract

“ Criticism and self-criticism,” or inner-Party struggle as it is sometimes called, has always been a major mechanism of inner-Party decision making and discipline among Chinese political elites, but during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution it emerged as a form of mass mobilization and education as well. I shall argue here that this came about as a result of political decisions made in the context of a series of non-reversible structural changes in the Chinese system of communications

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 56 , December 1973 , pp. 708 - 729
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

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21. According to Chang Kuo-t'ao's account, this is the way the 1937 dispute between himself and Mao was resolved. When a stalemate developed with Mao in control of the Politburo and Chang in control of the 2nd Provisional Central Authority, Chang simply stopped attending Politburo meetings for three months. When Mao sent Tung Pi-wu to ask him to stop “sulking,” he replied: “I don't want to attend Politburo meetings, or to receive comrades to discuss Party affairs. Furthermore, I wish to withdraw from the Central leadership of the Party. I'm now teaching economics with you at the North Shensi Public School; isn't this just fine?” Chang's Introduction in Collected Works of Liu Shao-ch'i, p. vii. For a more detailed account of this episode, see Kuo-t'ao, Chang, “Wo-ti hui-i,” Mingpao yüeh-k'an VI: 2 (1971), pp. 85–90Google Scholar .

22. Newspaper circulation increased from 3·4 million in 1951 to 15 million in 1958; magazine circulation jumped from 900,000 to 17 million over the same period: Yu, Frederick T. C., Mass Persuasion in Communist China (New York and London: Praeger, 1964), p. 90Google Scholar . China claims that her radio transmitting power is now almost five times greater than the total transmitting power under the KMT in the 20 years 1928–47. The Great Leap Forward of 1958 produced more than a million radios; 10 years before, there were scarcely more than a million sets throughout the whole of China: Howse, Hugh, “The use of radio in China,” CQ 2 (1960), pp. 59–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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26. I owe these points to a personal communication from Alan Liu. Two other scholars have also noted that efforts to increase the flow of information between elites and masses through multiplicative media have tended to be combined with an increase in political control, making the communicative process increasingly one-way. Houn, F. W., To Change a Nation (New York: Free Press, 1961), pp. 230–37Google Scholar , and Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1967Google Scholar ), last chapter .

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34. That Mao reserved his opinions is revealed by a passage in Liu's first self-criticism: “As Mao was not in Peking then [1962], I went to him and delivered a report. Afterwards I learned that Chairman Mao was not at all in agreement with my appraisal of the situation.” Collected Works of Liu Shao-ch'i, III, 361 (emphasis added). Mao also permitted Chiang Ch'ing to prepare the original attack on Wu Han in secret, as she revealed in a speech in 1967: “I asked the Chairman if I could reserve my opinion. He said I could…Because he promised me to reserve my opinion on it it gave me courage to proceed with writing that article and to keep it secret. The secret was kept for seven to eight months during which the article was revised countless times.” See above, n. 31. Nor did Mao reveal the existence of this article to Feng Cheng when he asked the latter, on 10 October 1965, to carry out a rectification campaign against Wu Han.

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36. There were 19 central work conferences in 1960–66: one in 1960, three in 1961, four in 1962, three in 1963, four in 1964–65, and four in 1966, according to Chang (ibid.). In addition to work conferences there were a number of other meetings, some with institutional labels, such as “enlarged Politburo meetings,” others known only by the place and time they were held.

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38. As has also been noted in a 1 July 1971 People's Daily editorial which observed that some people have asked, “Since Liu Shao-ch'i…usurped part of the power…it needs only an order from Chairman Mao to dismiss them from office, why should the present method [of the Cultural Revolution] be adopted?” Quoted in Parris Chang, , Radicals and radical ideology in China's Cultural Revolution (Columbia University) (Research Institute on Communist Affairs, 1973)Google Scholar .

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55. In Liu's formulation of the pre-Cultural Revolution pattern, “Leaders in the Party and higher-level organizations should pay more attention to democracy, and subordinates in the Party and lower-level organizations … to obedience.” Collected Works, I, 397. The post-Cultural Revolution pattern follows Mao's prescription, “Concentrate the great authority, diffuse the small authority.” Quoted in Schurmann, , “Organizational contrasts between Communist China and the Soviet Union,” (unpublished paper, Hong Kong, 03 1961), pp. 29–30Google Scholar .

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