Mr. President:
It may be that, looking back, the crisis inside Communist China will be
viewed by historians as the most significant event now taking place on the
world scene. Obviously it is extremely hard to follow in detail.
The attached intelligence cable presents the crisis as a final stand of
Mao and the Old Guard seeking to
suppress forces for change inside the Communist party. It implies that these
forces will, in time, assert themselves.
Something like this analysis would be accepted by most of those who have
followed the evolution of mainland China since 1949. What no one knows—and
experts argue over—is how long it will take for this strong, pragmatic
opposition to assert itself and what will happen in the meantime.
The latter is what matters most to us from day to day. Nevertheless, I
thought you might like to read this interesting assessment.
Attachment
TEXT OF CIA INTELLIGENCE
INFORMATION CABLE
(TDCS 314/09256–66)2
SUBJECT
SOURCE
- Staff officers of this Organization
This is [less than 1 line of source text not
declassified] appraisal of the current situation. It is not an
official judgment by this Agency or any
[Page 362]
component. It represents the observations and
interpretations of staff officers and is based on information available
to them at the time of its preparation. Prepared for internal use as a
guide to the operational environment, this commentary is disseminated in
the belief that it may be useful to other agencies in assessing the
situation for their own purposes.
Summary: Mao’s opposition is widespread and continuing. It is
characterized by the Party as “more insidious and cunning” than any
previous anti-party clique. The opposition is found in artists of all
types, Politburo members, Party senior propagandists, military personnel
and university presidents. However, functional non-political offices,
such as Party Economic and Foreign Affairs Departments seem to be
outside the purge. As Mao again attempts to force his Party and his
people to accept the discipline of Maoism, the effort may be too much
for both and the Chinese may quietly walk away from his leadership.
As the purge widens throughout China there is need to examine just who
has been caught opposing today’s Roi Soleil. It is certainly a mixed
bag—historians, playwrights, movie directors, Politburo members,
virtually all of the Party’s senior propagandists, military
personalities and university presidents. Mao and Lin have
recognized the universality of the opposition, indeed, have perhaps
created it in part. So many are involved that one wonders at first just
who remains loyal and who is pressing the attack against the bourgeois
royalists, the revisionists, and all the members of the black gang of
the three-family village and the four-family store.
Certain vital Communist Party entities have as yet been above reproach:
the public security apparatus, the Communist Party staff offices of
Agriculture and Forestry, Finance and Trade, Industry and
Communications, as well as Foreign Affairs—all appear to have escaped
open criticism. It almost seems that the functional non-political
offices are outside the purge and that those under censure are the
offices which are involved in the ideology of Communism and the
extension of Communist Party control.
The party now characterizes its opposition as “more insidious and cunning
than the two previous anti-party cliques which have been crushed.” These
are the men who “reached out to grab at power in the party, the Army,
and the government to usurp the leadership so as to restore capitalism.”
These charges are extremely serious; the problem lies in whether they
are genuine or false. In the past the Communists have been pretty
literal and we would guess that these charges should be taken seriously
as a clear reflection of the intentions of the opposition.
Assuming these charges are in earnest we must answer another question: To
whom do they specifically apply?
There has been an opposition faction in China since the Communist
assumption of power in 1949. After Mao embarked on the communes
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and the Great Leap Forward and these two efforts
failed badly, criticism grew to a high point in 1962. From 1959 to 1962,
by Mao’s own admission, the
“heavy national calamities and the sabotage of the Soviet revision-ists”
so weakened China that a major purge to contain this criticism was not
possible. Actually this is partly an excuse, since Mao forced the demarche with the
Soviets leading to the removal of the technicians; still, there can be
no doubt that the Soviet departure hurt China. The intellectuals now
under heavy attack did use this period of party weakness to advance
ideas which, when read, literally refuted Maoism. This is why Wu Han and
Teng T’o were able to print their satires and why the party did not act
against them.
In late 1962 Mao felt strong
enough to begin the rectification he knew was necessary—the socialist
education campaign. This developed throughout 1963 and led to the direct
attack on Yang Hsien Chen, the leading theoretician of the higher party
school, whose dialectic arguments directly opposed those of Mao and were applied by the opposition
to buttress agreements for private plots, free markets, and increase in
small enterprises. All of this was anathema to Mao, but not necessarily to a number
of party leaders who were beginning to move away from Mao’s leadership and his theories. As
senior party members defied Mao,
many lesser individuals used this shelter to produce anti-Maoist novels,
essays and motion pictures.
By 1965 the rectification movement was faltering badly. The socialist
education movement was by then being carried forward in the nationwide
four clearances effort. Probably no disciplinary movement of the party
was so thoroughly honored in the breach as the four clearances. By the
fall of 1965 the party was no longer in direct control of the people.
The opposition within the party had continued to mature and Mao found it necessary to begin a
broad attack on his critics in November 1965. The first battle of the
socialist cultural revolution took place in Shanghai when the municipal
committee denounced the historian Wu Han and the fight with the Peking
Municipal Committee began.
Therefore, we can answer our question. The opposition lay in the
leadership of the Peking Municipal Committee, P’eng Chen and his
subordinates, the propaganda department of the party, which allowed the
development of the intellectual opposition, and the many party members
who felt that the relaxation of Maoist Doctrine presaged a more
adaptable Communism. This opposition is not dead despite the three
months socialist cultural revolution purge. Mao is attempting a cleansing of the entire country of
such anti-Maoist thought. He has not abandoned his intent to lead world
Communism, but he realizes he must fully re-establish Maoism in China
and regain control of the drifting party apparatus.
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It is doubtful that a dynasty built on the sand of Maoist philosophy will
take a century to fall; once begun, a decade would seem too long. The
great socialist cultural revolution now unmasks “freaks and monsters”
each week. As the list of purges grows, it is a reasonable speculation
that there will be more. Mao is
worried about his revolution for it is clearly failing. If there is,
medically, a disease definable as political paranoia it has settled on
the sometimes resident of the small but now unlovely quarters
overlooking Nan Hai, Peking’s most exquisite lake. “Who knows whither
the golden crane went, leaving but a shrine for pilgrims?” If there is
any answer for the old man, it is also found in Chinese poetry—“A cup of
wine under the trees; I drink alone for no friend is near.”
