The PLA and Political Control in China's Provinces: A Structural Analysis

Abstract

The virtual destruction of the upper echelons of the Communist Party apparatus in the provinces of China during the convulsions of the Cultural Revolution (1966-68) resulted in the appointment of a significant number of PLA (People's Liberation Army) men to the ranks of provincial Party secretaries. Even though it was clearly not Mao's intent to create a military junta, it became evident during the Party rebuilding process launched at the conclusion of the violent phase of the Cultural Revolution that the PLA's influence in Chinese politics could become greater, or at least more direct, than at any time since 1954. The membership of the Ninth Central Committee, when combined with the dominance of PLA men in the Party and committee structures in the provinces, raised the image of a post-Cultural Revolution China led not by a select group of new Party members tempered in the fires of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, but by members of the military structure whose fervor would be molded by the presumably more conservative interests of Peking's military leadership. Lin Piao, Mao's designated successor, was a major figure in the Cultural Revolution; but it was the PLA which had maintained the essential infrastructure of Chinese society when the Red Guards were rampaging across China, and it was the PLA which had returned Mao's revolutionary successors to the schools and universities in the fall of 1968. Throughout the Cultural Revolution, the PLA had been used primarily as a force to maintain order in China when the chaos of Red Guard disorders threatened the stability of the system. The spillover from the Lin Piao affair in the fall of 1971 raised questions about the new status of the PLA in the Chinese political system. Results of the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of China in August 1973 indicated that