The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Military Politics, 1927–71

To what extent and in what ways has a military elite influenced Chinese Communist domestic and foreign policy since 1927? It was partly in pursuit of answers to these questions that research on this book began while I was attending the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy during 1953-54. That period of study provided a theoretical foundation for later research. Although the major studies by Vilfredo Pareto 1 and Gaetano Mosca 2 had already been written and translated into English by the 1930's, the 1950's provided further theoretical studies by Joseph A. Schumpeter, 3 Harold D. Lasswell, 4 Morris Janowitz, 5 Donald Matthews, 6 and others, as well as pioneering studies of Chinese military elites by Ithiel de Sola Pool, 7 Robert Rigg, 8 and Robert North. 9 However, in spite of a growing library of studies thereafter on either elite theory or the role of Western military elites, further studies of Chinese Communist military leaders were notably absent from the English-language library on modern China. It was not until the late 1960's that four book-length studies on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) emerged in partial answer to increasing scholarly and public interest in Chinese Communist militarJ' affairs and the increasingly evident political power of China's military leaders. 1 xvii xviii ## Preface In concept, this book differs from the excellent studies by Bradbury, Griffith, Gittings, and George in that biography has been the fundamental focus of my research. However, owing to the dearth of reliable biographical materials in English, it was not until my 1963 assignment to the Far East that I could assemble the necessary primary and secondary sources, principally in Chinese, to give flesh to a skeleton of elite theory. In addition, an interest in the values, attitudes, and goals of China's military leaders led me to interview approximately 300 senior Nationalist and some former Communist officers and to investigate a large library of memoirs, documents, and published histories. These materials, which are listed in the Bibliography, both generated and answered questions about Chinese Communist military history, military biography, military psychology and sociology, military politics, and the more professional issues of strategy and tactics. While serving in Taiwan and Hong Kong from the autumn of 1963 until the autumn of 1969, I was privileged to associate with many American and Chinese officials, scholars, and private citizens who share my interest in questions on which this book focusesquestions applicable to the study of any group of decision-makers: 11 Who are they? In what arenas do they function? What basic values are at their disposal? What are their perspectives? Under what conditions have they exhibited a discernible pattern of composition, perspectives, and basic values? What strategies have they used? How successful have they been in influencing outcomes and effects? At the outset, the most compelling problem was to identify the probable military elite of the People's Republic of China. It was initially assumed that the 1966-68 incumbents of some 450 to~ military positions constituted China's military elitethe high command. 1 These positions included the Military Affairs Committee, the Ministry of National Defense, the general staff, and major service headquarters at the national level (about 100 positions); the commander, commissar, and first three deputy commanders and deputy commissars at the military regional level ( 104 positions); the commander, commissar, and first two deputy commanders and deputy commissars at the military district level (138 positions); corps commanders and commissars and the corps deputy commanders (102 positions). Recognizing that such an arbitrary listing might exclude many influential military figures, and accepting the notion that formal position is not necessarily a true index of power, I nevertheless completed detailed biographical analyses of some 700 leaders, in the conviction that such a group would provide a representative sampling and set the perimeters of experience, roles, attitudes, values, and goals. Whether or not that initial identification of the high command would prove to reflect the experience, values, and perspectives of a much larger elite remained to be established through research of unit and campaign histories. The sheer volume of source material became a second major problem. In order to define key issues and outline probable attitudes of China's military elite, interviews were conducted on Taiwan and in Hong Kong with many active and retired senior military leaders, whose age and experience approximated those of mainland officers. Several former Communist officers, who had endured the hardships of the Red Army from its origins to the Sino-Japanese War, were included. These interviews, coupled with research among Chinese psychologists and an examination of countless battles, led to a set of premises about three XX Preface Revolution, when the bitter exchange of accusations and counteraccusations among Party, military, and government officials echoed behavior and decisions of twenty, thirty, and even forty years before. This is a reminder that the high command's cognition of reality-of the world that they think they live in-has been and will remain profoundly influenced by their interpretations of their past a past that is exceptionally lon~, for Chinese military leaders have resolutely refused to retire from public life. 1 A second reason for stressing the details of high-command past experience is the relative abundance of evidence about their behavior under stress from 19 27 to 1953. Conversely, the fourteen-year period between 1953 and 1967 provided only limited evidence of high-command attitudes. After 1966, the outpouring of Red Guard invective revealed many aspects of the high command that could only be surmised previously. Fortunately, these stories and accusations from the Red Guard press tended to confirm conclusions that could already have been drawn from pre-1953 Communist and Nationalist memoirs, novels, semi-official histories, and official accounts. Details of behavior during the long, combat-filled period from 1928 to 19 53 provide a sense of depth and continuity that help us assess the credibility of Chinese Communist claims since 1953 about their generals' unique combination of professional and political perspectives, that is, their allegedly unanimous support for the Maoist military ethic. That illusion of a monolithic military philosophy was clearly shattered between 1959 and 1967between the removal of P'eng Te-huai, the Minister of National Defense, and the removal of Hsiao Hua, the Director of the General Political Department, who symbolized opposite poles of military ethic and style. The third reason for stressing the history of the PLA is the need to examine cases that test various hypotheses about the origins, mutual relationships, perspectives, patterns of behavior, and evolving power status of the military elite. In the search for validation of those hypotheses, exceptions have been just as important as examples of hypotheses in action. Indeed, the effort to explain exceptions generated new questions about the complexity of conflicting motivations, values, and goals which characterizes the military leadership of China, just as it does any other human institution. These three reasons for stressing the history of the Chinese high command have been expressed succinctly by Harold D. Lasswell, a veteran and respected analyst of political elites: Elite perspectives can be accounted for, in significant measure, by exploring the perspectives that were incorporated on the road toward active power .... All political responses can be explained in terms of current environmental factors acting on predispositional factors. 15 The introduction and Part I of this book provide the reader with a set of definitions and a body of facts, from which he may draw his own conclusions if he does not trust the oversimplified judgments about Communist China's high command that Chinese propagandists, as well as many non-Chinese analysts, by 1969, had blended into a curiously unbalanced conventional wisdom about Chinese military predispositions from 1927 to 1969. Preface xxi Indeed, it was in suspicion of and, finally, in opposition to, many aspects of that conventional wisdom that the current study was undertaken; for this book is the product of an unrelieved skepticism about the role and power of Mao Tse-tung in the evolving decision-making process within the Chinese Communist political-military leadership. Too many authors and students of Communist China have ascribed most major decisions, significant actions, and even most major events in the long history of the Chinese Communist Party to Mao or the "Maoists" or the "Mao-Lin clique," etc. Such oversimplified credit to one or two men not only insults our intelligence and our knowledge about how human institutions actually operate but also denies well-deserved credit to brilliant military-political leaders whose achievements between 1927 and 1969 were often made in spite of Mao. It was, therefore, interesting that research uncovered early, pervasive, sustained, and fundamental opposition among professional military leaders to many aspects of the Maoist military ethic and style. While attempting to avoid excessive emphasis on the controversy between Mao and his generals, this study has nevertheless given the sources and implications of such controversy special attention, precisely because it has not been recognized by many nonspecialists. The indulgence of specialists is, therefore, requested as they proceed through many familiar episodes in the lives and times of the chairman and his military colleagues. It is possible for the busy reader to jump from the Introduction to Part II, if he is willing to trust my persistent effort to remain objective in the search for what Lasswell calls "pre dispositional factors." Part II returns the reader to the Introduction's discussion of military ethic and style. Each chapter in Part II analyzes one of six predispositional factors historically and currently influencing Chinese military perceptions of and responses to their individual, elite, and national security problems. Broad attitudinal patterns toward those six factors have distinguished the Chinese high command from other functional groups in Chinese Communist society. The lead chapter of Part II (Chapter Nine) addresses the concept of "military generations," because both research and logic argued for the existence of a "generation gap" in China, just as that phenomenon has afflicted other polities and their elites. This subject led research into the treacherous waters of "political socialization"; that is, the process by which people are taught appropriate attitudes toward authority. On the basis of extensive interviews with psychiatrists and psychologists on Taiwan and in Hong Kong, the author concluded that Chinese generals had experienced a "hardening of associations and convictions." 16 The problem remained, "At what age did Chinese Communist military leaders' convictions become hardened?" Because the problem of "attitude aging" remains one of the most fascinating and experimental fields in psychological and behavioral research, the analysis of "military generations" in China necessarily draws on the disciplines of biology, psychology, and sociology to argue, very tentatively, that generals not only tend to fight the next war with the concepts and viewpoints of the last one but even tend to be predisposed toward all issues of military ethic and style by the personal, political, and professional context that prevailed when they were relatively junior officers; that is, before they had attained the age of thirty. In fact, such a theory should be no more startling than its counterpart hypothesis in the psychology of personality development, to the effect that a man's xxii Preface personality is almost fully developed before he is twenty years of age. 17 Chapter Nine, therefore, stands as a tentative division of the Chinese Communist high command's history into distinctive periods of crisis and military-political socialization. Further, it attempts to provide an overview of the Chinese Communist military approach to one major factor of military ethic: personnel selection for high command. Chapter Ten examines a second factor of military ethic: the authority of the commander. It also deals with functional specialization as a potential source of division within the high command. At the outset of research, the author was not prepared to find that the vast majority of the high command had specialized in either commander or commissar functions, for conventional wisdom has accepted the Chinese image of the "politicized officer," equally adept at either political or military work-both "red" and "expert." Indeed, one of the earliest studies of the Chinese military leadership swept aside significant distinctions between commanders and commissars with the statement that most Chinese military leaders had played both roles and could not, therefore, be categorized. 1 8 This conclusion seemed unwarranted after a careful analysis of the biographical data on about 700 members of the high command. Both commanders and commissars seemed to have "professionalized" their functions as early as the creation of the Central Kiangsi Soviet in November, 19 31. Chapter Eleven moves to military "style" and the important subject of alternative patterns of strategic and tactical behavior. While arguing that Chinese professional commanders developed an ethic and style in fundamental opposition to the thoughts of Chairman Mao, this analysis also concludes that Russian concepts have had only marginal influence over Chinese professional military philosophy. Likewise, the organization of the Field Armies in 1949 and the establishment of thirteen military regions were departures from the Russian experience. Chapter Twelve focuses on one element of military style -military organization -to demonstrate the uniquely Chinese adaptation of Russian military form to China's history and contemporary military-political environment. Since Part I is organized in terms of Field Army institutional and elite histories, this chapter will not come as a surprise. However, it seemed necessary to explore some of the implications of the Field Army as a source of informal loyalties and pressure groups still active in the policy process. Finally, Chapter Thirteen draws on the entire book to review the primary question of military ethic -the role of the military in Chinese society. The final section of this chapter attempts to explicate the operational code by which Chinese military leaders have guided and continue to guide their responses to security issues, both internal and external. Perhaps the most important element of that code is the primacy of internal factors in determining Chinese responses to grave issues of external threats -ICBM's, the Sino-Soviet conflict, and issues of similar import. Indeed, in one sense, it may be said that this book is ultimately an effort to clarify the reasons for the focus of China's military leaders on the internal problem of equitable distribution of political wealth. Whether this focus is labelled the "Middle Kingdom syndrome," "parochial nationalism," or "bureaucratic determinism," its similarity to American and Russian military and security policy planning should be evident to the informed reader. ## Preface xxiii The essential political involvement of Chinese military men in domestic affairs, both historically in classical China and throughout the period of Communist administration of the People's Republic, must be understood as a unique characteristic of the Chinese high command. Unlike the American joint chiefs of staff, Chinese military leaders, when discussing matters of grave importance for China's political survival, have also been discussing, by implication, their own political survival as key figures in an active political elite -a fact that makes it impossible to equate the role and perspectives of military leadership in China with its counterpart in the United States. A comment on terms and romanization seems in order. In general, the Wade-Giles system of romanization has been used. Provinces and major cities, however, have been given as they appear under the popular postal system employed on standard maps of China. Thus, Szechwan is cited in that form instead of the Wade-Giles "Szech'uan." Some readers may take offense at the use of "corps" in translation of "chiin." Needless to say, repeated reorganizations of the Red Army during its forty-year history made the preparation of Field Army evolution charts both confusing and challenging. Although the literal translation of "chiin" has traditionally been "army" and remains so in most official U.S. government documents, "army" has long been abandoned by both the Chinese Nationalist and Communist translators when they refer to a unit consisting of three divisions. Because the Chinese themselves translate such a unit as "corps," because the English term conveys to Western military readers a more accurate image of the approximate strength and organization of the unit being discussed, and finally because "corps" precludes even more inappropriate terms such as "army group" and "groups of armies" when discussing several "corps" under one command at various periods of the history of the PLA, the military hierarchy of the PLA has been assigned a set of terms that relate to approximate actual strength in Western armies. The only exception to this general rule is the case of the New Fourth Army (hsin ti szu chiin). That translation has become generally accepted for the Communist organization that emerged in South China in 1937 from the remnants of Ch'en Yi's guerrillas, who had stayed behind in Kiangsi when the First Front Army embarked on the Long March. Any author who reads the next few paragraphs must appreciate the pleasure that their writing has afforded me. Apart from the fact that these lines write finis to a very long trip through the epic of China's modern military history, they also are a small recognition of a debt owed to several hundred men and women who sacrificed significant portions of their lives to make this book possible. It is impossible to name and to thank all these people. But foremost in the long list of thoughtful students of Chinese Communist affairs is Huang Chen-hsia, without whose support the book might never have emerged from an early admixture of theory, fact, and conjecture. Mr. Huang's contribution of a formidable body of carefully researched biographical and historical data, plus his comments on most of the hypotheses contained in the book, and his unique formulation of the Field Army evolution charts clearly required credit on the cover and title page, in acknowledgment of his wealth of knowledge and his generous assistance. While the ultimate responsibility for the exposition of fact xxiv Preface and theory and their schematic portrayal on charts and maps was mine alone, Mr. Huang was an indispensable reference source, colleague, and friend during the course of research, analysis, and writing. Mrs. Ivy Wang deserves special mention for her careful reading of most of the manuscript, her research into countless Chinese Communist novels and memoirs, and her unfailing good humor in matching her own life on the mainland until 1963 with my interpretation of events and leaders. Her knowledge of Communist values and behavior made her an uncompromising critic of any exposition in the manuscript that excessively rebuked or praised Chinese Communist military leaders. I am especially grateful to Fred Ch'en for his careful preparation of all maps contained in the book. Frequently requiring extensive research by Mr. Ch'en, these historical maps are surely a unique contribution to the study of modern China. Special thanks are also due to Chang Kuo-t'ao and Kung Ch'u. Mr. Chang generously permitted the author to read his second volume of memoirs before their publication in series in Ming Pao, a Hong Kong magazine. Mr. Chang has donated that volume of his memoirs to the West Point library. Ultimately scheduled for publication by the University of Kansas Press, these memoirs reveal many original aspects of the lives of senior Communist leaders before the Sino-Japanese War. Likewise, Mr. Kung's personal experience with Mao Tse-tung, Teng Hsiao-p'ing, Lin Piao, and many other ~iro military leaders between 1924 and 1934 provided a wealth of reminiscences about these men in their formative years. Front Matter....Pages i-1 Introduction: Origins of the Chinese Communist Military Ethic and Style....Pages 3-23 The Central Military Elite....Pages 24-100 The First Field Army Elite....Pages 101-122 The Second Field Army Elite....Pages 123-200 The Third Field Army Elite....Pages 201-259 The Fourth Field Army Elite....Pages 260-335 The North China Field Army Elite....Pages 336-363 The Role of Military Leaders in the Cultural Revolution, 1965–67....Pages 364-389 The Role of Military Leaders in the Cultural Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1967–70....Pages 390-415 Military Generations in Communist China....Pages 416-435 Commanders Versus Commissars....Pages 436-457 Strategy and Tactics....Pages 458-497 The Field Army in Chinese Communist Military Politics....Pages 498-517 The Military’s Role in the Policy Process, 1949–69....Pages 518-547 Epilogue: 1972....Pages 548-557 Back Matter....Pages 559-638