Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question

234 Pages·1975·6.977 MB·English

by  Richard Baum

RICHARD BAUM
Prelude
to
Revolution
MAO,
THE PARTY,
AND THE
PEASANT QUESTION
1962-66
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
r975
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Baum, Richard, 1940-
Preludc to revolution.
“Outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation in
itiated in Taiwan and Hong Kong in
1967-68.”
Includes bibliographical references and
index.
1. China—Politics and
government—1949-
I. Title.
DS777.55.B348 32o.9'5i'o5 74-23894
ISBN 0-231-03900—X
© 1975 Columbia University Press
Printed in the United States of America
To My Parents—
For Bearing Forbearance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the outgrowth of a doctoral dissertation ini­
tiated in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1967-68. A primary debt of
gratitude is owed to Frederick Teiwes, whose close collaboration
provided a constant source of fresh ideas and critical insights dur­
ing the formative stages of research. Without him, this book would
never have been written. Special thanks are also due the scholars
and staff of the Universities Service Centre, Hong Kong, and the
Institute of International Relations, Taipei, for their assistance in
the collection of documentary materials.
My research assistants, Wong Yuk-lam, Teng Hua, Wong Chai-
sang (Hai Feng), and Louise Bennett, provided invaluable service
in the collection and analysis of data used in this study. Gordon
Bennett and Ezra Vogel were extremely generous in sharing with
111c their refugee interview materials. Ting Wang provided a great
deal of first-hand information about the Socialist Education Move­
ment as well as sharing with me his unique newspaper clipping
files. David Denny, Frederic Surls, Janet Salaff and Parris Chang
were a constant source of intellectual stimulation throughout my
sojourn in Taiwan and Hong Kong. John S. Service expertly
edited many of the documentary translations utilized in this study.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii
For financial assistance I would like to thank the Foreign Area
Fellowship Program, whose grant made this research possible, and
the Center for Chinese Studies and the Institute for International
Studies of the University of California, Berkeley. I am particularly
indebted to Robert A. Scalapino and Chalmers Johnson for pa­
tiently encouraging and supporting my research efforts.
The following institutions have given me permission to reprint
material:
1. The RAND Corporation, for permission to quote from “The
Cultural Revolution in the Countryside: Anatomy of a Limited
Rebellion,” in Thomas W. Robinson, ed., The Cultural Revolution
in China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1971), pp. 367-476.
2. The Far Eastern Economic Review, Ltd., for permission to
quote from “Peach Garden Pestilence,” Far Eastern Economic Re­
view, 58, no. 7 (November 16, 1967): 323-26.
3. The Regents of the University of California, for permission to
quote from Ssu-Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of
1962-1966 (University of California, Center for Chinese Studies
Research Monographs, 1968).
4. The Regents of the University of California, for permission to
quote from “Liu Shao-ch’i and the Cadre Question,” Asian Sur­
vey, 8, no. 4 (April 1968): 323-5.
5. The Contemporary China Institute, School of Oriental and
African Studies, for permission to quote from “Revolution and
Reaction in the Chinese Countryside: The Socialist Education
Movement in Cultural Revolutionary Perspective,” The China
Quarterly, no. 38 (April-June 1969): 92-119.
6. The United States Information Agency, for permission to
quote from “Ideology Redivivus,” Problems of Communism, 16, no.
3 (May—June 1967), pp. 1—n.
And finally, to my wife, Carolyn, and our children, Matthew
and Kristen, I owe more than I can possibly acknowledge in this
space.
RICHARD BAUM
CONTENTS
I ast of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
i. The Socialist Education Movement:
Origins and Early Development 11
The First Ten Points 21
1'rial and Error: Summer 1963 28
Koutinization and the Search for Stability 39
Summing Up the Experiment:
I lie “Second Ten Points” 43
The Second Ten Points 44
“struggle between two roads,” 48;
PARTY REFORM, 52; ORGANIZING THE POOR
AND LOWER-MIDDLE PEASANTS, 53;
THE FOUR CLEANUPS, 55
"Red” or "Revisionist”? 31
1. f rom Spot-Testing to Keypoints:
I he Small Four Cleanups 61
The Point and the Plane 67
The (lathering Storm 76
CONTENTS x
4. Liu Shao-ch’i, Wang Kuang-mei, and
the “T’aoyuan Experience” 83
The T'aoyuau Experience 84
Liu Shao-cEi and the Cadre Question 89
The Revised Second Ten Points 93
The New Hard Line: An Assess),tent 99
5. The Big Four Cleanups 103
Cleaning Up the Cadres 106
The Shengshih Affair 112
The Tachai Affair 111
Mao Takes Command 122
The Twenty-Three Points 123
Liu, Mao, and the Twenty-Three
Points: An Assessment 131
6. Transition: The Road Divides, 1965-1966 135
Mao Counterattacks 142
Unmasking the Bourgeois Powerholders 143
7. Reversing the Verdicts:
The January Revolution 151
Retrospective 156
8. Conclusion 159
The Collapse of the Great Leap 163
1964: The Few and the Many 166
The Work Team Debacle of 1966 163
The "Two-Road Struggle": A Postscript 169
Notes 133
Bibliography 209
Index 215
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CB: Current Background
CKCN: Chung-kuo Ch'ing-nien
CNP: Chung-kuo Ch'ing-men Pao
JMJP: Jen-min Jih-pao
JPRS: Joint Publications Research Service
NCNA: New China News Agency
NFJP: Nan-fang Jih-pao
SCMM: Selections from China Mainland Magazines
SCMP: Survey of the China Mainland Press
URS: Union Research Service