The "Two Whatevers" policy and the end of the Cultural Revolution

[el_chavista]

The "Gang of Four" (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan) were allies to Mao in the Cultural Revolution. However, shortly after Mao's death Hua Guofeng assumed the posts of Chairman of the CPC Central Committee and the Military Affairs Commission.
Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers" policy stated "We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave." However, less than a month after Mao's death, anti-Gang of Four leaders with Hua at its core executed the arrest of Jiang Qing and her followers.
Deng Xiaoping and other party leaders advocating market reform did a manoeuvre (1978) to gain control of economic policy in China, and led eventually to Hua being demoted from the party leadership in 1980.


Has any of you, guys, solved this puzzle? Whose fault is it for the betrayal to the Cultural Revolution?

[Kiev Communard]

The "Gang of Four" (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan) were allies to Mao in the Cultural Revolution. However, shortly after Mao's death Hua Guofeng assumed the posts of Chairman of the CPC Central Committee and the Military Affairs Commission.
Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers" policy stated "We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave." However, less than a month after Mao's death, anti-Gang of Four leaders with Hua at its core executed the arrest of Jiang Qing and her followers.
Deng Xiaoping and other party leaders advocating market reform did a manoeuvre (1978) to gain control of economic policy in China, and led eventually to Hua being demoted from the party leadership in 1980.


Has any of you, guys, solved this puzzle? Whose fault is it for the betrayal to the Cultural Revolution?

There is no puzzle here. It was Mao who betrayed Cultural Revolution by leading it into the mess of factionalist policies. This was unsurprising, though, as, if the Red Guards had not been so naive and indoctrinated, they would have seen that it was Mao himself who was a supreme leader of the bureaucracy they aspired to fight.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

The first few years of the Cultural Revolution was all about mass movements and power seizures and after the "Wuhan incident" there was also talk of extending this into the PLA, which had big right-wing problems. This phase was supported by people like Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Jiang Qing and initially Mao. Mao however underestimated the problems the party had and from 1967 onward started heading toward a more centrist and consolidationist position, a position that was supported by Zhang Chunqiao. The emergence of Soviet social-imperialism in 1968 pushed Mao towards centrism and consolidation even more and by 1969 the Cultural Revolution was over for all intents and purposes. Lin, Chen and Jiang obviously saw which way the wind was blowing and jumped ship to Mao's position, sacrificing the guys below them who all ended up being purged as "ultra-leftists". From then on, Lin and Chen were the ones pushing for the most left-wing consolidation there could be with their "Flying Leap" proposals of a return to the Maoist economic policies of the Great Leap Forward.

After the Ninth Congress of the CCP in 1969 however Mao continued to move even further toward the right, away from the position of Zhang and towards the position of Zhou Enlai. In 1971 Lin Biao and Chen Boda just basically disappeared from the limelight (Zhou Enlai would later come out with his big conspiracy theory of Lin Biao attempting a coup against Mao) and promptly the Flying Leap economic policies were replaced with "Liu Shaoqi-ism without Liu Shaoqi", all manner of rightists and revisionists who were rightly deposed during the GPCR, including the "No. 2 capitalist roader" Deng Xiaoping, were restored to significant positions of power by Zhou, and China started pursuing the foreign policy that Hoxhaists so often criticise.

By the time Mao died the Gang of Four were the only remaining Maoists in positions of power, and their power was mostly just symbolic as evidenced by how easily they fell after Mao died. Hua Guofeng basically shared the politics of Zhou, which was why he brought about the arrest of the Gang of Four, but Deng was even more right-wing, which was why Hua was himself demoted from leadership of the party soon afterwards.

So in answer to your question, Mao himself was actually partly responsible for the failure of the GPCR and the restoration of capitalism in China. He was in his late 70s by that point and just wasn't capable of waging the anti-revisionist struggle consistently anymore.

[caramelpence]

It was Mao who betrayed Cultural Revolution by leading it into the mess of factionalist policies. This was unsurprising, though, as, if the Red Guards had not been so naive and indoctrinated

Whatever else you think about the Cultural Revolution, it's grossly simplistic to say that factionalism involving the Red Guards and other kinds of organizations was solely the result of "indoctrination" or Mao's personal leadership. The dominant scholarly consensus is that the extent of factionalism was rooted in the number and intensity of social and political cleavages that existed in China before the start of the Cultural Revolution, such as the division between "activists" and "backward elements" in individual workplaces, the division between the "five red categories" and the "five black categories" in educational bodies like middle schools, and differences that cut across the Chinese workforce as a whole such as household registration status. These cleavages determined access to different kinds of privileges and structured interests in ways that facilitated the emergence of factions when the opportunity arose. Mao's dominant role in the Cultural Revolution was to try and limit factionalism, as can be seen from his call for "grand alliances" in early 1967 and the subsequent role of the PLA in eliminating factional organization when it came to the selection of members for the revolutionary committees.


The first few years of the Cultural Revolution was all about mass movements and power seizures and after the "Wuhan incident" there was also talk of extending this into the PLA, which had big right-wing problems

It's worth pointing out, in connection with the issue of periodization, that at the time there was a universal assumption throughout Chinese society that the Cultural Revolution was brought to an end in 1968 or 1969, with the 9th Party Congress sometimes being selected as the end-point. This was naturally because the activist or mass mobilization phase that you describe was brought to an end from mid-1968 onwards. It was only later on when Mao made certain comments in the mid-1970s and when the 1981 resolution characterized the Cultural Revolution as a ten-year event that this earlier assumption was undermined in favour of how the Cultural Revolution is generally understood today, which is as a movement that lasted over an entire decade from 1966 to 1976, hence expressions like "ten years of chaos" and the like. It's interesting to think about why the party, even though the 1981 resolution was mainly concerned with rejecting the Cultural Revolution as an unprecedented disaster and attributing overall responsibility to Mao, sought to shift historical periodization in this way.


(Zhou Enlai would later come out with his big conspiracy theory of Lin Biao attempting a coup against Mao)

This is also a bit dismissive, as there is good evidence to suggest that Lin Biao's son was plotting a coup of some kind, even if Lin himself was not a ringleader, and even if the coup never got beyond the early planning stages.


China started pursuing the foreign policy that Hoxhaists so often criticise.

Putting aside what happened before the Cultural Revolution, Mao's moves to align with the US actually emerged before Lin Biao's death. Most notably, the People's Daily published Nixon's inauguration speech in full when he was elected President in 1969, apparently because the speech raised the possibility of cooperation between the US and countries like China.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

This is also a bit dismissive, as there is good evidence to suggest that Lin Biao's son was plotting a coup of some kind, even if Lin himself was not a ringleader, and even if the coup never got beyond the early planning stages.



Putting aside what happened before the Cultural Revolution, Mao's moves to align with the US actually emerged before Lin Biao's death. Most notably, the People's Daily published Nixon's inauguration speech in full when he was elected President in 1969, apparently because the speech raised the possibility of cooperation between the US and countries like China.

The whole case basically rests on the document "Outline for Project 571". It's possible that Lin's son might've had some half-assed plan for a coup, it's also possible that they just forged the document. It can't really be a coincidence that it was only after Lin's supposed coup was "gloriously defeated" that Nixon actually visited China and that they started making friends with guys like Mobutu and Pinochet? Enver Hoxha wondered if that was the case at the time as well.

[Red_Struggle]

Well, it was Mao who rehabilitated Deng on more than one occassion after he was attacked by Red Guards. I think that says something about Mao's revisionism.

He was also the one to blame for supposedly organizing the day of mourning commemorating Zhou Enlai's death, leading to the first Tiananment incident in 1976: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Incident

I feel that this is something that is easily overlooked.

[caramelpence]

t can't really be a coincidence that it was only after Lin's supposed coup was "gloriously defeated" that Nixon actually visited China and that they started making friends with guys like Mobutu and Pinochet? Enver Hoxha wondered if that was the case at the time as well.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Mao became seriously committed to rapprochement with the US after Lin Biao's death (or after the establishment of the revolutionary committees throughout China in 1968/9) because easing tensions on the international stage and making an attack on the PRC less likely was arguably one of the ways that Mao and his civilian supporters could reduce the influence of the PLA (and particularly the ex-Fourth Field Army generals closely associated with Lin) in Chinese politics and society. However, it's too much to say that the PRC turning to the US was the result solely of Lin being removed from the political scene. If we look back to before the Cultural Revolution, there are definite signs that Mao was interested in better relations with the US. During the War of Liberation, in June of 1949, Mao actually tried to contact the US ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart, through one of Stuart's former pupils at Yenching University, Huang Hua, as Huang (later to become Foreign Minister after the Cultural Revolution) was then serving as director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the CPC Military Control Commission, in order to discuss opening up negotiations with the US and eventually securing diplomatic recognition.

As we know, Huang did not succeed, because the PRC did not gain US recognition until much later, and they also informed the Soviet Union that they were trying to communicate with the US, but the fact that this mission was organized and that the CPC also insisted on not harming foreign residents and embassy staff during its takeover of the cities can be interpreted as evidence that the CPC was interested in having a good relationship with the US and other Western countries from the creation of the PRC onwards - and as you probably know they were given diplomatic recognition by Britain in 1950.

As for the Cultural Revolution itself, I've already pointed to the publication of Nixon's inauguration speech in early 1969 but even before that the PRC was moving towards a better relationship with the US under Mao's leadership - they had agreed to resume the Warsaw Talks after the 1968 elections, these talks having begun in 1958 during the second Taiwan Straits Crisis, even though they did not actually resume until 1970 due to tensions relating to Taiwan and the PRC's territorial sovereignty. During 1969, broadcasts from the PRC also dropped the demand that the US withdraw its forces from Taiwan, even though Taiwan continued to launch raids - which they must have done with the tacit consent of the US, because there was a secret agreement between Dulles and the Taiwanese that Taiwan would not launch any military action without US agreement. Nixon's famous visit in 1971 was preceded by secret visits by Kissinger, and, of course, the advent of Ping-Pong diplomacy. In light of these facts, it doesn't seem right to see rapprochement with the US as a policy that Mao pursued only after Lin had died. It was a fairly consistent objective, even if it became more necessary from 1969 onwards, due to the Soviet threat and the dangerously enhanced role of the PLA in Chinese politics.

Whether Mao was justified in doing this is another matter. But I don't agree that Lin's death involved a sudden change of strategy. Nor do I think it would be right to see the turn to leaders like Mobutu as a novelty - the ideas of the "intermediate zone" and Third World solidarity were part of Chinese international strategy and discourse during the 1950s, when they participated in the Bandung Conference in 1955, and in the 1954 Geneva Talks, the PRC had also shown its willingness to take a moderate line on revolutionary change within underdeveloped countries, especially when subject to Soviet pressure. This isn't intended to be some kind of attack on the PRC or Mao - there were good reasons behind their international positions.

[milk]

Thomas W. Robinson's paper The Wuhan Incident: Local Strife and Provincial Rebellion During the Cultural Revolution, can be found here (http://hongweibing.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/the-wuhan-incident.pdf).