Leadership roles in modern China: The kuomintang and communist experiences

ROBERT E. BEDESKI

Leadership Roles in Modern China: The Kuomintang and Communist Experiences

Personality and style do affect the nature of political leadership. The idiosyncrasies and the thinking of individuals such as Mao Tse-tung or Liu Shao-chq, holders of supreme positions of authority, pro- foundly affect their political environment. At the same time, leadership roles and behavior are strongly influenced by political structures and historical situations. Political leadership, to borrow from Robert Easton, is a closed loop similar to the political system--with inputs and demands going in, and outputs and policies coming out. More specifically, the leadership behavior of Mao and Liu occurred in a content responding to the necessities of the Chinese state, which is itself the product of a century of development.

The notion of political leadership in modem China is immersed in what was once called "statecraft" or state-building. To create a modem sovereign polity out of the regional and social fragments of post-imperial China has been the task of Conununist and non-Com- munist leaders. Thus, a full understanding of leadership structures and functions in modem China requires a perspective that includes not only the contemporary successes of Communist state-building, but also the past failures and quasi-successes of Mao's predecessors. In particu- lar, a balanced assessment of the structures and situations affecting

54 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

leadership needs to consider the Kuomintang (KMT) insofar as its state-building efforts may have smoothed the way for Communist rule. We will discover that Communist political structures have some striking similari.ties to preceding KMT counterparts, and furthermore that there are notable parallels in the leadership roles of the two regimes which indicate that evolution, as well as revolution, has been at work in state-formation.

State-building and Leadership Roles in Republican China

Analytically, we may speak of a Nationalist Chinese political system and a Communist Chinese political system as separate entities. But to discover continuities and evolutionary trends in modem China, we must examine the Chinese state--the historical, legal, and theoretical entity consisting of territory, people, and government united in sovereign power. Political scientists now rarely refer to " the state '" except in an offhand manner, but it may still be a useful concept in analyzing major patterns of authority in a polity.

The quest for ,the status of sovereign state has provided historical unity for the various movements and regimes of twentieth-century China. The nation-state in China has evolved, and continues to evolve, in response to two major sources of political disorder: the domestic dissolution that accompanied the decline and overthrow of the Ch'ing empire, and the foreign intrusion which found expansive opportunities as a result of that political dissolution within China. Political thinkers and actors in modem China have sought various solutions to that disorder. Some have supported a revived monarchy, while others have sought a constitutional system of the American type to reformulate the national polity. The KMT established a party dictatorship during a period of "political tutelage" as a variation of the Soviet proletarian dictatorship, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agitated for revolution against imperialism and feudalism.

All parties and movements desired the national sovereignty enjoyed by more industrialized nations, but strategies and programs to achieve this goal varied widely. The 1920s, for example--a period of intense political and intellectual fragmentation--heard debates from consti- tutionalists, Communists, monarchists, federalists, revolutionaries of all sorts, and even anarchists. But the objective reality was social disorder, aggravated by warlordship, banditry, famine, and foreign domination of territory and economic resources. It was a situation that led Sun Yat-sen to lament that China was even worse off than those societies which had succumbed to European colonial regimes.

LEADERSHIP ROLES IN MODERN CHINA 55

At least the colonial power could impose peace and order, and later provide a single target for revolutionary nationalism. Circumstances in China suggested to Sun that the situation was one of "hypo-colonial- ism "--all the injustice of foreign domination with none of the benefits, the onus without the bonus. Indeed, the foreign administra- tion of the Chinese Customs Service was an example of how the whole country might be run under a single, enlightened colonial regime-- firmly, honestly, objectively, and profitably.

China~the sick man of East Asia--was, of course, too large and populous to be run by a single power. Foreign rivalries, such as the Anglo-Russian one, precluded the peaceful annexation or partition o~ China. Foreign powers contented themselves with commercial and economic, rather than major territorial, advantages. It was a situation that gave China a formal semblance of sta~e sovereignty with little of the actual powers.

Japan was the only power to establish a protectorate over China. Had there actually been a Japanese colonial regime in China for an extended period, the evolu,tion of the Chinese nation-state would prob~bly have followed an entirely different course. China, as an imperial colony of Japan in the same relation as that of India to Great Britain, might have solved domestic disorder and other out- standing problems. The enlightened despotism of a colonial regime, even if harsh and exploitative, might have contributed to reducing or ending the internecine warfare and social dislocations Chat plagued China for nearly half a century.

The historical alternative of a pure colonial regime was not pleasant, but neither was the harsh reality of the pre-Communist period. Under the treaty system with the major powers, China was a semi-sovereign state. Extraterritoriality, the absence of tariff autonomy, and other restrictions on China's formal equality within the international com- munity limited state sovereignty in external rel~.tions. Domestically, semi-sovereignty was also evident in the inability of the central government to enforce its laws or to produce policies that were binding on the provinces.

The task of Chinese nationalism, then, was to strengthen st&re sovereignty--not to seize it from a colonial regime, but to give force and substance to the notions of unity and autonomy Which sovereignty represented. Nationalism is commonly spoken of as " f o r c e " in the sense of being a major historical phenomenon which, once it has become embedded in the minds of a people, cannot be resisted for long. This force, however, is always relative to the concept of state sovereignty. Nationalism may seek to create a sovereign state out of a part of an existing state, or it may seek to transfer sovereignty from


a colonial power .to the national society. Or nationalism may use the claims of state sovereignty to expand beyond national boundaries.

Chinese nationalism was neither secessionist, liberationist, nor expansionist during Che 1911-1949 period. Instead, it aimed at giving substance to the form of state independence and unity. But as long as Chinese nationalism remained restricted to a few coastal cities and was led by patriotic intellectuals and ,foreign-educated revolutionaries, its fortunes were tied ~o the treaty ports and the fortunes of international politics. Moreover, with the base of revolutionary nationalism restricted to discussion groups and conspiratorial bands leading urban masses in sporadic demonstrations, it was less a concerted force and more an unpredictable provocation of those powers with economic and political interests in China. As an undisciplined force in a nominally sovereign state, Chinese nationalist outbursts provided the foreign powers with opportunities to intervene wi~ troops. Informal communication and coordination among nationalists were a beginning, but they were no substitute for the organization and discipline needed to weld nationalism into a force capable of seizing and controlling a governmental apparatus.

State Structure under the Nanking Regime

The dominant priority of the Nationalist revolution was to establish a fully sovereign state. It was a priority that took precedence over constitutional government, democratic representation, or domestic social justice. To accomplish its purpose, the KMT often used heavy- handed and authoritarian measures, relying on its military organization to neutralize and eliminate domestic opponents. In a sense, the KMT dictatorship became the historical equivalent of a colonial power in China. That is, the Nanking regime fulfilled some of the functions which, in many developing countries, were performed by colonial regimes in laying the foundations for modern state sovereignty and political unification.

We can identi~y at least five effects of the KMT state-building efforts which furthered political unification:

1. With military support, the Nationalist state became the matrix of poli1:ical order and discipline in a regionally fragmented society. Dissident warlords were defeated, absorbed, or eliminated. Roving bandit groups found it increasingly difficult to survive, as the Nanking pao-chia (mutual responsibility and registration) system was extended into rural areas. The Communist forces found their areas of maneuver severely limited by the pacification campaigns, while in the cities


Communists and other dissident groups were restricted and repressed by the Nanking secret police. Trade unions were domesticated and brought under KMT control.

2. The goals of state sovereignty were ernbodied in Nationalist ideology, which became orthodox doctrine in the Nanking state; Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the authoritative interpreter of this political belief system. The ideas of multi-class dictatorship under the KMT, leading to constitutional government with democracy, nationalism, and people's livelihood, were diffused throughout KMT-con- trolled areas by the propaganda apparatus, public media, and popular education. Even regional militarists who opposed Chiang's power had little quarrel with KMT ideology, often basing revolts against the center on claims to represent the true principles of Sun.

3. Under the Nationalist regime, national communications were advanced. Railways were repaired and built, and a system of motor roads was expanded. National markets were encouraged with a program to abolish the likin (internal transit taxes). The reorientation to internal markets helped to reduce the country's dependence on exports.

4. In foreign affairs, Nanking demanded that it be accorded sole diplomatic recognition by foreign powers--unlike the pre-1928 condi- tions when two delegations (one from north China, and another ~rom the south) were present at international conferences. The Nanking government insisted that China's national sovereignty be respected, that all foreign affairs be conducted through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that China speak with one voice in its diplomacy. Although these principles were often breached by secessionist movements seeking foreign support, or by regional warlords under foreign pressure, there was considerable progress under the KMT ~oward consolidating China's diplomacy.

5. Modernization had taken place in pre-KMT China, but largely in an unorganized fashion that created vast differences between city and country, and between one region and another. Coastal cities and the valley of the Yang~tze were more industrialized than interior cities such as Chengchow or Chungking. Agriculture remained a backward sector of file economy. The Nanking government planned to distribute industries in all provinces, but k was very cautious in promoting agrarian reform, perhaps for political reasons. Outside the cities the army was the major concentration of modem technology. Large sums were spent on building an air force and on acquiring new military equipment, but Chiang fel~ it would be many years before China


could face the Japanese army. 1 Chiang's ambitions of military strength were limited to defeating domestic enemies--including regional militarists and the Communists.

In the pre-war decade of the KMT/Chiang dictatorship, the Nationalists built the framework of a modern state in the sense of weakening centrifugal forces and centralizing political, military, communication, and administrative structures. The policies of the government were rarely popular, and dissident opposition forces could still mount rebellions against the Nanking regime. Moreover, the KMT envisioned its role as elitist domination and tutelage, somewhat after the fashion of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and was slow in developing a mass basis. Although the regime was eminently Chinese, it began to resemble a demoralized colonial overlord during the war against Japan. As the Communists emerged from their seeming subordination to Soviet n~tional interests in China, they provided a patriotic and competent civilian alternative to the decaying military dictatorship of the KMT. In 1949, the KMT gave up its mandate to the CCP.

The KMT state-building efforts in the pre-war decade may have failed to produce the fully sovereign polity envisioned by Sun, but the foundations of modern institutions were established. Nationalist leadership had functioned within a triad of army-party-government rule, with the army exerting dominance. This was due to a combination of the persistent threats to national order and survival in the 1930s and to the strong-willed leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. Although his position as Tsungtsai, or Supreme Leader, of the KMT was not made formal until 1938, Chiang had been the effective head of army, party, and government ~or several years. It was a fusion of leadership roles that Mao himself has come close to representing.

In sum, the quasi-colonial nature of the KMT tutelary state was based on a concentration of political power Which ultimately was dispensed by one man--Chiang Kai-shek. Whether by fate 2 or by cynical maneuvering, supreme state power was once again centralized as it had been during the imperial dynasties, and it was inherited by the Communists when they assumed control in 1949.

I. On Chiang's pessimism toward army-building efforts, see his address "Resistance to Aggression and Renaissance of the Nation " (July 1934) in Collected Wartime Messages of General~ssbno Chiang Kai-shek, 1937-1945 (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969), pp. 1-20.

2. Concerning Chiang's two major rivals, Hu Han-min died in 1936, and Wang Ching-wei was put out of action by an assassination atteanpt and illness in the same crucial year.


Leadership and Authority in the People's Republic

The concentration of power at the center may 'have been a necessary step to consolidate the Chinese state, but for the Communists a con- tinuation of supreme personal power would contradict the democratic claims of the regime. The so-called "cult of personality" refers not only to Stalin's failings, but also to Chinese precedents of past emperors, the militarist Yuan Shih-k'ai, and Chiang Kai-shek--if we examine Chinese political history for structural equivalents. Despite warnings against the cult, however, collective leadersttip has yet to become a permanent feature of state institutions in China.

Meanwhile, the tensions between collective and personalist leadership are imposed on the organizational structures of the state. One struggle was the Mao-Liu falling out, and more recent years have seen the posthumous purge of Lin Piao and his followers. Both of .these leadership struggles pitted collectivist against personalist in the sense that they consisted of Mao and his coterie against one sector of either the Party or the army apparatus. It is in the latter struggle, however, that the roots of institutional conflict go deepest, matching the ideological visions and actions of a supreme leader against the army--an organization of coercive and defensive state power which, in one form or another, has played a decisive role in the development of the modern Chinese polity.

Liberation under Communism has brought China's national sovereignty almost to completion. While orthodox history depicts events up to 1949 as a struggle of the masses led by the CC~, it was in fact the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which played the major role in overthrowing the KMT regime. But such recognition of the army's role in liberation has been muted. One of the accusations against Kao Kang in 1955 was that he claimed that the army had created the Party, a heresy which the Party vigorously denied. Nevertheless, there has been an intimate symbiosis between Party and army in the nearly quarter century of the People's Republic of China, a relationship vital to the evolution of state sovereignty as well as one laden with a potential for military intervention in politics.

Lin Piao's own career illustrates the close relation between Party and army, and how the PLA came close to overshadowing the C-L-'P in a manner reminiscent of prewar Nanking politics. Like Chiang Kai- shek, Lin had joined the Chinese revolution at a youthful age. In the post-1945 civil war against the KMT, Lin led the offensives that won several important cities, including Mukden, Peking, and Tientsin. In October 1949, he was appointed commander of the Central Military


Region. When the Korean war erupted, his units were sent to the Chinese border, and later into Korea itself?

A member of the Central Committee since 1945, Lin was among the ten marshals named in 1955. In 1958, he was appointed Vice-Chair- man of the Central Committee---a Party rank higher than that of his nominal superior, Minister of Defense P'eng Te-huai. P'eng's challenge to Mao at the Lushan Plenum (August 1959) came on the heels of the Defense Minister's visit to Moscow. He had underestimated his own strength and was replaced by Lin as Minister. In the following two years, Lin reindoctrinated the army with the same loyalty and thoroughness that had characterized his earlier career in the revolution. The fall of P'eng signaled the end to a highly professionalized army and a reversion to the Maoist spirit of revolution. The goal of the program was to re-establish Party supremacy over the military, but the major result was to transform the PLA into a major pillar of support for Mao at a time when Liu Shao-ch'i was easing the aging leader into the background. During the Socialist Education Campaign of 1962, the PLA was propagated as a model to be emulated by the masses of China.

Under Lin Piao's command, the PLA was used to combat "revision- ists" at home and to prepare defenses against aggressors from abroad. China's international situation was deteriorating. Border clashes with India in 1962 and the widening rift with the Soviet Union indicated that the revolution might 'have to rely on military force to preserve its gains. Lin Piao's speech "Long Live the People's War" (September 3, 1965) divided the world into urban and rural areas, and put forth his ideas on world strategy in a situation where China was seemingly on the defensive. The military coup against the Communist Party in Indonesia deprived Peking of a strong potential ally in Southeast Asia, and the escalation of American involvement in Indo-China raised the specters of further weakening China's international power and of a possible confrontation with the United States. In a manner parallel to prewar KMT China, an international environment hostile to national sovereignty, combined with perceived threats to internal unity, raised the influence of the army in the state to a dominant role.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that a Chiang-type military dictatorship was almost repeated under Lin Piao, it has become apparent that the Mao/Chou En-lai complex is taking no chances. The PLA proved indispensable in maintaining order and national defense during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and ~or his

3. Martin Ebon, Lin Piao: The Life and Writings o~ China's New Ruler (New York: Stein and Day, 1970), p. 20.


loyalty and service Lin was named Mao's second-in-command at the Ninth Party Congress (April 1969). It appeared that the PLA was to overshadow the Party within the state. Lin's leverage apparently declined as order was restored and as the diplomatic offensive won back many foreign friends. Din attempted to get himself appointed head of state ~t the Lushan Plenum (August 1970); but he was thwarted by Mao, who insisted that the state chairmanship (formerly held by Liu Shao-ch'i) be abolished. After that, Lin's own career was in jeopardy. The next twelve months of internal maneuverings culminated in the abortive plot by Lin Piao in which he apparently was killed. ~

Subsequently, Lin's appointees have been removed from power, and the international situation 'has become more stable than in the period prior to the Cultural Revolution when the Lin Piao star was rising. The major domestic and international crises appear to have passed for the moment, and China's survival as a sovereign state is not the issue that it was during the 1930s or, to a lesser extent, during the Cultural Revolution.

Conclusion

From 1927 through the present, the Chinese state system of authority has been dominated by the interplay of three forces: a charismatic leader and his doctrines, a revolutionary Party, and a politicized army. If we search for the locus of sovereign and legitimate power, it is to be found in this complex--one which has defied regularization and institutionalization thus far, and which has responded to a dialectic consisting of a dominant ideology of state and nation-building and of unpredictable stimuli of domestic and foreign events.

External circumstances, as well as personality and institutional arrangements, have affected the leadership roles in the modern Chinese state. The start of the Cultural Revolution saw the Chinese state in circumstances roughly analogous to those in the early 1930s. Then the army became a major vehicle of .ideological orthodoxy as its commander (Chiang Kai-shek) emerged as de [acto successor to the party founder, Sun Yat-sen. Foreign threats to China were leading to a shift toward military preparations for war and the recognition ~hat survival in a hostile world depended upon a strong army. Wang Ching-wei, once the successor to Sun's mantle of leadership, found himsel~ outside the center of power and at-tempted to gain party support for his own claims.

4. See Philip Bridgham, "The Fall of Lin Piao," The China Quarterly, No. 55 (July/September 1973), pp. 427--449.


While specific issues and personalities differ, there are some broad similarities between the Mao/Liu/Lin and Sun/Wang/Chiang tri- angles. The most important difference, of course, is that Mao per- sisted in leading his revolution long after it came to power, and could name and remove his own successors. Sun, on the other hand, did not live to see his own revolution achieve state power. The Communist revolution has had a living symbol and source of legitimacy who insists on wielding power and intervening when he believes that " h i s " revolution is moving in the wrong direction. For the KMT, political legitimacy was reduced to the written doctrines of Sun, with no possi- bility of new pronouncements on issues unforeseen by the founding father.

The Sun/Wang and Mao/Liu relations also bear a structural similarity. Both Wang Ching-wei and Liu Shao-ch'i were party leaders who were strong contenders for succession to supreme power but were displaced by military leaders who had achieved power through a combination of military skill and unquestioned loyalty to the party leader. Wang, after the 1927 collapse of the Wuhan government, followed a circuitous career of collaboration with Nanking, association with secessionist movements, and finally governing under the aegis of the Japanese occupation--but always maintaining that he represented the true spirit of Sun's ideological and organizational legacy. Liu Shao-ch'i's power was based on a Party organization far more cohesive and effective than that of the KMT, but he also was deprived of his "inheritance."

There is the further similarity between Chiang Kai-shek and Lin Piao--two professional soldiers of unquestioned loyalty to their supreme leaders who eventually spoke with the voice of ultimate or near-ultimate authority. Both achieved power after the Party faltered and underwent eclipse within the state. Militarism, either the Bona- partist strain represented by Chiang or the warlord variety of Feng Yti-hsiang, Li Tsung-jen, and Yen Hsi-shan, continues to cast its shadow over Chinese politics. The dangerous indispensability of the PLA will continue to influence state development for many more years in China.

Finally, there are striking parallels between the cases of Lin Piao and Liu Shao-ch'i: the phenomenon of a long-loyal comrade of Mao threatening to displace him, an independent power base (the Party for Liu, the army for Lin), and the subsequent purges and denuncia- tions. But while personality, outlook, and work styles may explain some of the conflict between Mao and Liu, the authority structures of China may further explain the falling out between Mao and his anointed


successor Lin Piao. The rise and fall of Lin and subsequent events in the affair touch upon some of the fundamental principles of the modem nation-state in China. To grasp the full importance of these events, we would have to inquire into the nature of political authority in modem China and ask why the military has played such an important role in the state. Such an inquiry would demonstrate that the intrusion of the PLA into politics during the Cultural Revolution, as represented by Lin Piao's rise to power, was not an aberration caused by a crisis of confidence in existing institutions and structures. Rather, the military establishment of China is an intrinsic part of the authority structure. As such, it is politicized to such an extent that it probably would not remain dormant for long in extended future crises, nor would it quietly acquiesce in disputes over policy decisions vital to its interests.

In summary, supreme leadership roles in Communist China seem to be conditioned by several factors. Not only are they embedded in the experiences and character of the Communist revolution itself, but they respond to the requirements of building a modem Chinese state. This process of state-building has been going on since the closing years of the Ch'ing dynasty, and it is not yet completed. For the Chinese, the sovereign nation-state is hardly an anachronism in the modem world, despite increasing interdependence in the international order. 5 Rather, a powerful, prosperous, and well-ordered state is seen as the necessary requisite to effective participation in international politics. It is toward that end, as much as toward a just and peaceful society, that the Communist leadership aspires. And it is these goals which have molded the institutional relations of the national leadership over several decades in China.

5. Contrast this comment with Henry Kissinger's observation: " T h e gre~t revolution of our time is the breakdown of the self-sufficient nation-State. Not even the most powerful country is capable by itself of maintaining security o r of realizing the aspirations of its people. One of the paradoxes of our day is that more and more nations are coming into being at the precise moment when the nation-State is becoming incapable of dealing with many of its problems and the interdependence of States is ever more obvious" (The Reporter, February 2, 1961, p. 16 if).

Leadership roles in modern China: The kuomintang and communist experiences

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