The Chinese Communist Party Constitution states:
The leading bodies of the Party at all levels shall be elected through democratic consultation in accordance with the requirements for successors to the cause of the proletarian revolution and the principle of combining the old, the middle-aged, and the young.
Wang Hung-wen put forth the Party’s reasoning for this principle in his speech on the revision of the Constitution at the 10th National Party Congress in 1973:
We must train millions of successors for the cause of proletarian revolution in the course of mass struggles. Chairman Mao said, ’In order to guarantee that our Party and country do not change their colour, we must not only have a correct line and correct policies, but must train and bring up millions of successors who will carry on the cause of proletarian revolution.’ As stated above, those to be trained are not just one or two persons, but millions. Such a task cannot be fulfilled unless the whole Party attaches importance to it. . Both veteran and new cadres expressed their determination to learn each others’ strong points and overcome their own shortcomings. We must, in accordance with the five requirements Chairman Mao has laid down for successors to the cause of Proletarian revolution lay stress on selecting outstanding persons from among the workers and poor and lower-middle peasants, placing them in leading posts at all levels. Attention must also be paid to training women cadres and minority nationality cadres. (PR #35-36, 1973)
The plan of the Party for training and selecting successors for the revolution is outlined in more detail:
We must lay stress on placing in leading posts at all levels those outstanding comrades who have been tempered in the movement of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, have a high level of consciousness of the two-line struggle, dare to combat every unhealthy tendency, are qualified and efficient in various fields and show a great deal of enthusiasm. We must particularly lay stress on selecting the outstanding elements from among the workers and poor and lower-middle peasants, and pay attention to training women cadres and national minority cadres. We must not select for leading posts those ’Wise Old Man’ elements who are submerged up to the neck in their vocational pursuits, have no interest in politics and want to hurt no one’s feelings. At the same time, we must especially watch out for selfish careerists, conspirators and double-dealers like Khrushchov, and prevent such bad elements from sneaking onto leading bodies and usurping the leadership of the Party and the state at any level . . In training successors for the revolution we must correctly apply the principle of the ’three-in-one’ combination of the old, the middle-aged and the young. (A Basic Understanding of the CPC, Shanghai, 1974, p. 121)
This move was resisted at many levels by revisionists who wanted to maintain their dominance and complained that the new people were not smart enough or experienced enough.[1] Teng Hsiao-ping downgraded the new leaders and insisted that more and more of the old leaders who had been “unjustly” purged during the Cultural Revolution be brought back into the leading bodies. Reversing the correct verdicts of the Cultural Revolution and bringing back those leaders who opposed it and were correctly removed from their posts basically means negating the great gains made during that revolution. Revisionists have always tried the same trick. In 1962, Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping tried to bring back many of the cadres who had been purged in 1959 along with the revisionist traitor P’eng Teh-huai. Liu Shao-chi said:
After the Lushan Conference [of 1959], the anti-Rightist struggle was improperly unfolded among cadres in rural areas, enterprises, and schools and even among the masses.” (see Between Two Plenums, E. Joffe, U. of Michigan) More to the point, he said:
Verdicts can be reversed on those who hold similar viewpoints to P’eng Teh-huai’s but who have no illicit relations with foreign countries.
Chairman Mao realized this was an attempt to negate the gains of the anti-Right struggle after the Lushan Conference and said in 1962 at the 10th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee:
Recently there has been a tendency to vindicate and rehabilitate people. This is wrong. Only those who have been wrongfully charged can be vindicated and rehabilitated, but those who have been correctly dealt with cannot be so vindicated. We cannot vindicate and rehabilitate all people. (Between Two Plenums)
In the last few years, Teng Hsiao-ping tried to pull off the same thing, only he combined it with attacking the leaders of the Cultural Revolution.
Teng Hsiao-ping opposed setting up of ’three-in-one’ revolutionary leading bodies, mustered unrepentant capitalist-readers and put them in important positions…He did his utmost to keep in the Party renegades and special agents who had been identified as such during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, so they could stage a comeback sometime in the future.”
Using stability and unity as a pretext, the capitalist-readers tried to suppress the struggle waged by the people of the whole country against their activities to restore capitalism, and directed their spearhead at the revolutionary masses and cadres. Using various pretexts, they elbowed out and attacked new and veteran cadres who persevere in following Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, and installed in important positions those who oppose the Great Cultural Revolution. They negated the principle that leading bodies at various levels must be a three-in-one combination of the old, the middle-aged and the young as advocated by Chairman Mao, and they repressed new forces, sowed discord in the relations between the Party and the masses and undermined stability and unity. (PR #12, 1976, p. 12)
The present leaders continue the ploy of Teng Hsiao-ping, attacking the advancement of new cadre from the mass revolutionary movements. Many articles refer to how the “gang of four” disrupted the order of things by “rush promotions” of new cadres and opposing capitalist-roaders.
They [the ’gang of four] vigorously carried out ’rush recruiting of new party members’ and ’rush promoting of cadres’ . . the ’gang of four1 distorted and opposed the five requirements laid down by Chairman Mao for revolutionary successors and undermined the principle of the three-in-one combination of the old, the middle-aged and the young. (PR #49, 1976, p. 7)
They were obsessed by the desire to ’ferret out capitalist-roaders at all levels and overthrow a large number of leading cadres in the Party, government, and Army at the central and local levels. . At the same time, they demogogically paid such complimentary remarks to the youth as ’great young men’ and ’heroes going against the tide’. While doing all they could to win over the young people to their side and corrupt them, the ’gang of four’ also worked hard disrupt the unity of the new and veteran cadres. (PR #7, 1977, Pp. 11 and 13)
The article goes on, talking about “factionalism” as if it had no basis in political line. Its author feebly tries to link the “gang of four” to Trotsky on the basis that they were “factionalists” and “conspirators”, ignoring that Trotsky opposed Marxism-Leninism from both the Right and the “Left” while the ”gang of four” opposed the right and the ultra-“Left”, maintaining a consistent political line. Without discussing political line, it is useless to discuss factionalism.
The consolidation of the gains of the Cultural Revolution was dependent on bringing the leaders of the masses into the leading bodies of the Party and state. This task had in no way been completed, and to vigorously “rush” promote new cadres or to oppose veteran cadres who were taken in by revisionist ideas was no crime . . it was the Party’s priority. This does not “undermine” unity and the three-in-one combination, but provides the basis for it.
That this progressive policy met with resistance is no surprise. . the electing of leading cadres to both central and local bodies is a matter of acute struggle between the two lines. The present leaders are only showing which side of that struggle they are on.
The Party Committee of the Tachai Production Brigade firmly upheld the Party’s policies and attacked the revisionist fallacies about “hurting veteran cadres” in an article in China Reconstructs, September, 1976 (p. 14):
Teng Hsiao-ping, the arch unrepentant capitalist-roader in the Party, attacked and smeared class struggle and the two-line struggle waged by our Party, saying that it would hurt veteran workers and experienced cadres. This openly negated the great class struggles and struggles between the two lines carried out by the Party. It was another big lie Teng Hsiao-ping spread to confuse the people.
Most of our cadres, including old ones, have been tempered in the long revolutionary struggles and educated with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought. They want to make revolution. We will never hurt those experienced old cadres who are true revolutionaries if we resolutely carry out Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line and proletarian policies and correctly distinguish and handle the two different types of contradictions [among the people and between the people and the enemy].
By waging class struggle and the two-line struggle, will the proletariat and the poor and lower-middle peasants hurt the handful of people who oppose revolution? Experience in class struggle tells us they will and must hurt revisionism, capitalism, the bourgeoisie within the Party, the capitalist-roaders, the restoration staged by Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, Teng Hsiao-ping and other ringleaders promoting the opportunist line. Is it right to hurt them? Surely right, ten thousand times right! Is this good or bad? Surely good, ten thousand times good! Without such hurting there won’t be any socialist revolution.
[1] Part of the criticism of Lin Piao and Confucius that began in 1973 was a serious attempt to further the emancipation of women in Chinese society. At the commune level, for instance, the principle “Anything a man can do, a woman can do,” was deepened through struggle to mean, “Anything a woman can do, a man can do,” which meant that men expected to wash clothes and cook. These changes did not come without struggle. Some women cadre lost their positions for bringing up such questions, but later they were reinstated and held up as medals, as we can see from reading China Reconstructs and Peking Review, 1973-l976. Today, Chang Ching is being attacked by the present leaders for having “divided the masses” by “setting women against men.” (see China Reconstructs, #6 1977).