The Statistical Evidence for Yang Ch'eng-wu's Manipulation of the Military Elite

Abstract

William Parish in “Factions in Chinese Military Politics,” ( The China Quarterly, No. 56, p. 667) argues that military factions only assumed political importance during the Cultural Revolution. Part of this argument is based on the claim that Yang Ch'eng-wu, when acting chief of staff and secretary-general of the Central Committee's Military Affairs Committee, attempted to influence the appointment of PLA cadres to provincial revolutionary committees in favour of the 5th Field Army. This influence, he demonstrates, by considering the distribution of PLA cadres with known Field Army affiliations on two groups of provincial revolutionary committees: those formed before and those formed after 8 March 1968 – the date of Yang's last public appearance. Parish argues that a significantly greater proportion of military cadres with a 5th Field Army background were appointed to those Provincial Revolutionary Committees formed before 8 March 1968, than one would have expected given the distribution of such cadres in military posts in 1966. Since he had previously argued that military appointments before 1967 were made without reference to Field Army affiliations, he concludes that Yang was engaged in factional politics. However, Parish's account of Yang Ch'engwu's activities is very much open to question on the grounds that the available evidence suggests that most military appointments to the leading positions (i.e. chairman or vice-chairman) on Provincial-level Revolutionary Committees were determined well before the formal establishment of these institutions and before Yang's dismissal.