October 1, 1977
Dear friends,
We are sorry for the delay in printing the revised edition of our study on the political struggle in China. With each new development in China, the extent of the purge which began there a year ago becomes more clear, and the need for clarity about the significance of the change in Party leadership becomes more apparent.
The most recent issue of Peking Review, #40, 1977, indicates the direction of present Chinese foreign policy in an article “New U.S. Trend of Appeasement Meets Opposition” (p. 21), supporting conservative U.S. senators who are pushing for increased arms buildup to defend the Western alliance. The same issue indicates the CCP’s “new policy toward intellectuals” (restoration of titles, separation of manual and mental labor, etc.), p. 10.
Other recent issues of PR report on the meeting of the 11th Party Congress, where the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was officially called to a close and a new era of “stability, unity, and national construction” was called for. Out of the 319 members and alternate members of the Central Committee, 155 or nearly half have been replaced. The number of women in the Central Committee has decreased rather than increased, from 12.5% to 11.4%.
The Party leadership of 13 of the 29 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions has been changed. Out of the 13 new provincial Party leaders, nine had been removed from their posts in 1966 or 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. Many of these were publically and nationally criticized along with Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping as capitalist-roaders. For example, before the Cultural Revolution Ma Li and Wan Li were the Peking Municipal Party Secretary and the Vice Mayor of Peking. The Peking Municipal Party Committee was the first to be attacked and exposed by Chairman Mao in 1966 as part of the bourgeois headquarters. Now Wan Li is First Party Secretary of Anhwei Province and Ma Li is First Party Secretary of Kweichow Province.
We have been careful to limit our observations to those aspects of the situation that are verifiable from the concrete information available to us. We encourage all readers to carry on the research we have undertaken and to communicate with us about your analysis. The accumulating evidence verifying the analysis we made earlier this year makes us unwilling to accept any of the statements of the present Chinese government at face value.
It is important that we not become cynical about the nature of class struggle and the difficulty in establishing and maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxism does not promise us quick or easy victories. Our task is to move ahead confident in the ability of the masses to secure victory even in the face of tremendous setbacks. We must not vacillate in our commitment to the struggle nor in our willingness to base our strategy in moving forward on concrete realities rather than on the way we might wish things to be.
China Study Group
57 South Bannock
Denver, Colorado 80223 U.S.A.