Liu Shao-Ch'i and the Cadre Question

Abstract

One of the most significant charges raised in the ongoing campaign of vilification against Liu Shao-ch'i concerns his alleged reactionary line on During the past year Liu has repeatedly been accused of having propagated this line, known in Party jargon as hitting hard at the in order to protect the few, both during the rural Socialist Education Movement of 1962-1966 (also known as the Four Cleans campaign) and during the early stages of the cultural revolution in June and July of 1966. Moreover, the lingering influence of Liu's erroneous cadre policy has also been blamed for of the difficulties faced by the regime in attempting to consolidate its shaken cadre ranks in the period after Liu's demotion and effective removal from power at the August 1966 Central Committee Plenum. Hitting hard at the many refers to the practice of excessively criticizing, punishing and dismissing basic level cadres1 for such relatively minor, nonantagonistic deviations as petty corruption, bureaucratism and bourgeois living styles. By underwriting this practice, Liu allegedly sought to divert the revolutionary wrath of the masses away from its proper target, a small number of powerholders, thereby protecting the few and leaving the latter free to sabotage socialism and subvert the correct policies of Mao Tse-tung. While the language used by the Maoists to frame these charges and allegations against Liu has generally been cloaked in considerable obscurity and ambiguity, it is nevertheless evident that a very substantial problem is involved-one which concerns not only the existence (or nonexistence) of ideological heresy at the highest levels of power, but also involves the question of the morale, effectiveness and reliability of China's thirty-odd million basic level cadres.