The Concept of Military Generation: The Chinese Communist Case

Abstract

Among fundamental criteria used to distinguish members of an elite, chronological age is probably most obvious and most manageable measuring device. It is frequently one of few reliable items of information available in biographies of more obscure elite members. However, social, political or professional significance of such information must be found in pertinent histories, including general social and political as well as more specialized professional historical events from which each member of elite made his way to top. At one extreme, most oversimplified effort to ascribe significance to age-groups because of key events in their social, political or professional backgrounds results in common usage of labels such as the Long Marchers, Yenan cadre, Sanwan cadre, etc. Examples of this tendency to burden certain age-groups with vaguely defined contemporaneous and historical political significance are available in abundance in all cultures, countries and professions. Communist China is no exception.' Such political stereotyping of age is obviously laden with hidden assumptions and debatable implications. For example, it was by no means clear that survival on Long March (October 1934-December 1936) would insure later political or professional ascendancy of either an officer or a soldier. Mutual recriminations following harsh experience of such a failure could become as strongly divisive as sharing of hardship might be cohesive. The point is that single experience alone may not explain later status of group who shared it. This difficulty has been footnoted by events in China after 1959, underscoring unreliability of past associations as a clue to contemporaneous political status. Mao Tse-tung has delighted in using his long memory to rewrite history in order to confound very men who could have sworn that their behavior in thirties and forties would have confirmed their political security in sixties. Political Crisis: Notwithstanding foregoing warning of pitfalls, it is