The four most important leaders who were arrested in the purge of the Chinese Communist Party that was carried out in October, 1976, were:
Chiang Ching, wife of Chairman Mao for over 40 years until his death, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and Director of Literature and Art for the Central Committee,
Chang Chun-chiao, Senior Vice Premier of the State Council, First Secretary of the Shanghai Party Committee, Director of the General Political Department of the Peoples’ Liberation Army, and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the leading body of China,
Wang Hung-wen, Senior Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee, Third Secretary of the Shanghai Party Committee, and director of the peoples’ militias, and
Yao Wen-yuan, Director of Propaganda for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Second Secretary of the Shanghai Party Committee, and member of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee.
At the time of the purge, these leaders, now called the “gang of four,” were among the ten most important leaders in the Chinese Communist Party. The post-purge criticism is directed at them. However, hundreds or perhaps thousands of other leading cadre have been removed, arrested, or purged since then, including many of the ministers of the State Council, members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and local Party committee leaders around the country. The present government has promised to carry out an all-round “rectification” and reorganization of the CCP and the popular organizations in China during the course of this year (see Section 17).
The purge was not directed only at the “gang of four” but at a definite political line. Because of the importance of the four in the CCP, and because the criticisms brought forward by the present government center on them, we refer to the “gang of four” many times in this paper. Our purpose, however, is to clearly show the differences of the two political lines at conflict in the struggle.
To get background on the two-line struggle in China, we read various books that, from a pro-China perspective, analyze the history of China since it passed the New Democracy stage (roughly 1956) and particularly the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. (Some of these books are listed as resources at the end of this paper.)
We believe that, at the present time, the key to understanding the essence of the two-line struggle in China is the question of the campaign launched by Chairman Mao in late 1975 to criticize Teng Hsiao-ping and “beat back the Right deviationist wind to reverse the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution.” Our major source for understanding the campaign to criticize Teng has been the Peking Review of the last two years. It seems that the editorship of Peking Review changed with the 42nd issue of 1976 (the second week of Oct.) With that issue the “principles laid down” phrase associated with the “gang of four” line disappears; two issues later the campaign against the four begins. On the second day of purge, the head of Hsinhua News Agency, our main source of information from China, was removed. (N. Y. Times, Oct. 17, 1976) Most of the named authors who contributed to Peking Review during two years before the 42nd issue of 1976, including several who appeared regularly, have not written a single article since then. Most of the present named authors, including several new regular contributors, had not written articles before that issue. The two other Chinese magazines published in English, China Pictorial and China Reconstructs, did not appear in November and December, due to “various reasons”, according to an apology in the Peking Review. Yao Wen-yuan, one of the “gang of four”, as Director of Propaganda for the Central Committee of the Party, was responsible for the national news media. The Editor of Renmin Ribao (Peoples’ Daily, the official organ of the Central Committee of the CCP) was removed during the purge, as were the editors of Hongqi (Red Flag, the theoretical journal of the CCP) and Hsuehshi Yu Pipan (Study and Criticism, theoretical journal of Shanghai). (N.Y. Times, Jan. 10, 1977; Washington Post, March 6, 1977) We assume the same kind of change has occurred in all the other national magazines and newspapers that provide material for the Peking Review.
The present leaders now dismiss the political line put forward by the Chinese Communist Party in its official press (Red Flag, People’s Daily, Liberation Army Daily, Peking Review, etc. ) for several years before the purge as “revisionist fallacies” promoted by the “gang of four” to “usurp power”: “The gang, who had long controlled the mass media, tampered with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought and spread revisionist fallacies to confuse peoples’ thinking in order to shape counter-revolutionary opinion for their usurpation of Party and state power.”
The line put forward by the Chinese Communist Party and the Peking Review before the! purge and that put forward by the CCP and the Peking Review after the purge are completely different and opposite lines. Superficially they may appear similar because the new lead use many of the same words and slogans that were used before in order to facilitate the; changeover. But they have torn the heart out of the slogans, made them into hollow words and are exposing more clearly with every new issue the true nature of their line. Our analysis of the difference in the line put forward by the Peking Review is the basis of this paper.
The most important and obvious difference in the line of the Peking Review is a complete reversal in attitude towards the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist attempt.
Throughout last year (1976) until the death of Chairman Mao in September, the central emphasis of the Chinese press was the campaign to beat back the Right deviationist attempt and deepen the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping. The struggle was characterized like this in China Reconstructs #10, 1974:
The victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has not been easy. Intense struggle is equally inevitable in consolidating and developing its results. History proves that every great revolution is bound to be followed by a struggle between those who are for it and those who are against it. The same is true of the Cultural Revolution. Toward the end of summer last year, Teng Hsiao-ping, the arch unrepentant capitalist-roader in power in the Party, led a Right deviationist attempt to reverse the correct appraisal of the Cultural Revolution and settle accounts with it. This was a concentrated expression, under new circumstances, of the struggle between two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between two lines, Marxism and revisionism. The Party and the people have thrown themselves into a struggle to criticize Teng Hsiao-ping and counter-attack this Right deviationist attempt. The struggle was initiated and is being led by Chairman Mao himself. It is a continuing and deepening of the Cultural Revolution. (pp. 7-8)
On April 7th, 1976, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, led by Chairman Mao, agreed unanimously to remove Teng Hsiao-ping from all of his posts both inside and outside the Party (including that of Senior Vice Premier, Chief of Staff of the Peoples’ Liberation Army, and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau) and declared that:
Having discussed the counter-revolutionary incident that took place at Tien An Men Square [on April 5th, 1976][1] and Teng Hsiao-ping’s latest behavior, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China holds that the nature of the Teng Hsiao-ping problem has turned into one of antagonistic contradiction. (PR #15, 1976)
This resolution determined that the anti-revisionist struggle of 1975-1976 was one between the people and the enemy, one between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, one of antagonistic contradiction. Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers and peasants became involved in the struggle in agricultural communes, factories, and schools across the country. All work in China, the relief and reconstruction after the earthquakes, the scientific advances, industrial and agricultural production, and the continuing revolution in education, was linked to deepening of the criticism of the chief unrepentant capitalist-roader in the Party and of the Right deviationist wind to reverse the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution.
We must continue to advance in the midst of victories already won and bring about a new upsurge in the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping by further repudiating his counter-revolutionary revisionist line ideologically and politically. We must be clear that the collapse of Teng Hsiao-ping does not mean the end of the struggle. Criticism of his revisionist line and eradication of its pernicious influence are of cardinal importance to the future and the destiny of our Party and state and are a great militant task in combating and preventing revisionism and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat. Much remains to be done in this respect and we must never slacken our fighting will. (PR #35, August. 1976, p. 5.
Declarations mourning the death of Mao Tse-tung vowed to:
. . .resolutely rally round the Party Central Committee and act in accordance to the principles laid down by Chairman Mao and the Party Central Committee, resolutely take class struggle as the key link, adhere to the Party’s basic line, persevere in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and uphold proletarian internationalism. We will diligently study the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and Chairman Mao’s works, deepen the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping and the struggle to repulse the Right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts, strive hard to grasp revolution, promote production and other work and preparedness against war. (PR #41, 1976, last before the purge)
In the first issues of Peking Review after the purge, the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist attempt and criticize Teng Hsiao-ping was mentioned but was not elaborated on or deepened, the emphasis being, rather, on the criticism of the “gang of four.” Within two months, all mention of the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist attempt was dropped and Teng Hsiao-ping was only mentioned in criticizing the “gang of four” or, more exactly, the “gang of four” were criticized for “twisting and overemphasizing the criticism of Teng. Before the purge, Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, and Teng Hsiao-ping were constantly referred to together in criticizing the capitalist road line. Now Teng Hsiao-ping’s name has been dropped and the “gang of four” added in his place. The emphasis of the Peking Review now is to ridicule the anti-Right campaign of last year, making Teng Hsiao-ping appear to be a victim of the “gang of four,” and label the struggle an attempt by the “gang of four” to “seize power. ”
Under the pretext of criticizing Teng Hsiao-ping and ferreting out his ’agents’, they tried to overthrow a large number of responsible Party, government, and army cadres in the central organs and various localities. . . Wherever they went, they unscrupulously charged people with ’relapsing into Right deviationist tendencies,’ ’putting profits in command’, and ’promoting material incentives’ in a vain attempt to confound right and wrong in peoples’ minds, split the workers’ ranks and cause confusion in the management of enterprises. (PR #50, 1976, p. 17)
At a conference discussing planning work called by the Party Central Committee last July, they instructed their henchmen to launch an attack, howling that the State Council was the ’source of the Right deviationist wind’ and assailing Comrade Hua Kuo-feng as a ’capitalist-roader still on the capitalist road.’ (PR #2, 1977, pp. 30-31)
They also shouted that it was necessary to prevent ’capitalist-readers like Teng Hsiao-ping’ from ’resorting again to their old counter-revolutionary tricks’, that ’if any chieftan of revisionism dares to tamper with the principles laid down by Chairman Mao, he will definitely come to no good end,’ and so on and so forth. Actually, they were playing the trick of a thief crying ’Stop Thief!’ (PR #52, 1976, p. 10)
The truth is that the real thieves are now using that trick, but what is revealing here is how Teng is put in the position of the poor victim being called a thief. The Peking Review now puts the criticism of Teng in opposition to last year’s earthquake relief:
The ’gang of four’, however, did all they could to put up obstacles. They clamoured, ’no matter where an earthquake takes place, whether in the east or the west, the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping must not be watered down.’ (PR #48, 1976, p. 17)
The present leaders would have preferred watering down the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping during the earthquake crisis, just as they have achieved since the death of Chairman Mao. In contrast, a Peking Review article of August, 1976, ’’Deepen Criticism of Teng in Anti-Quake Work” (PR #34), points out how Rightists many times use crisis situations to implement a Right wing “pragmatic” line such as Liu Shao-chi did after the draught years of 1959-1961.
Why has the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping been stopped and why are the present leaders of China back-handedly defending the arch unrepentant capitalist-roader in the Party?
The bourgeois press seems quite convinced that Teng Hsiao-ping is going to be re-instated for the second time (he was also removed as a capitalist-roader during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. They have also reported big character posters in Tien An Men Square in Peking calling for Teng to be Premier and going farther to defend the reactionary and counter-revolutionary incident planned by supporters of Teng Hsiao-ping last April 5th in the same square. Members of the China-U. S. Peoples’ Friendship Association also report that it is probable that Teng Hsiao-ping will be given important work in the Central Committee. This does not necessarily mean that the present leaders in China intend to bring Teng Hsiao-ping back into official power. But it does necessarily mean that they are not directing the state’s repressive forces at the Right who support Teng Hsiao-ping but instead at his critics.
In the face of the end of the campaign to beat back the Right deviationist attempt, and the end of the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping in the Chinese press, and in the face of the reports of Teng’s comeback, some Marxist-Leninists in the United States have begun to say, “Maybe Teng Hsiao-ping wasn’t so bad . . maybe the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist trend was misdirected . . ”
Was the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist attempt to reverse the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution incorrect? Is Teng Hsiao-ping a responsible communist revolutionary leader victimized by the “gang of four” or is he an unrepentant capitalist-roader determined to restore capitalism? These questions are essential for understanding the current two-line struggle in China.
[1] See page 85 for a description of this event.