The first aim of the counter-revolutionaries was to gain control of the High Command of the People’s Liberation Army, with the aim of transforming it into the main instrument of force for the imposition and maintenance of their military-fascist dictatorship.
The main obstacle which stood in the way of this plan was Marshal Peng Teh-huai, who had been Minister of Defence since 1949 and who had commanded the Chinese volunteer forces in the Korean War.
Peng had long been an opponent of the revisionist faction led by Mao Tse-tung, and of its attempt to make the revisionist “thought of Mao Tse-tung” the guiding principle in the work of the Party and – in particular – of the armed forces.
As far back as the Seventh National Congress of the Party, Peng Teh-huai openly opposed the laying down in the Party Constitution of Mao Tse-tung’s thought as the guiding thought of the Party. ... The “Regulations of Committees of the Chinese Communist Party in the Army (Draft)”, prepared in 1953, originally included the following article: “The Party committees take Mao Tse-tung’s thought, which integrates Marxist-Leninist theory with the practice of the Chinese revolution as the guiding principle of all their work. This article constituted the core of the draft regulations but Peng Teh-huai cut it out when he revised the draft.’’ (Li Hsin-kung: “Settle Accounts with Peng Teh-huai for his Heinous Crimes ... etc.”, in “Peking Review”, No.36, 1967; p.14).
Peng Teh-huai has long been making vicious attacks and spreading slanders inside the Party and the armed forces against Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the leader of the Party, and against other leading Comrades of the Central Committee and its Military Commission. (“Resolution of the 8th. Plenary Session of 8th. Central Committee”, August 16, 1959, in: “Peking Review”, No. 34, 1967; p.9).
Peng Teh-huai’s criticism of the line of the revisionist faction led by Mao Tse-tung came to a head in 1959 and followed the lines of the Wuhan meeting; it was made at a time of
certain transient and partial shortcomings in our great movements – the great leap forward and the people’s communes. (“Resolution ... etc.”, ibid. P.8).
At the 8th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, held at Lushan in August 1959, Peng Teh-huai
came out in opposition to the general line of the Party ... and to the leadership of the Central Committee and Comrade Mao Tse-tung. (“Resolution ... etc;” ibid; p.10).
and
viciously attacked our great leader Chairman Mao. (Li Hsin-kung: ibid.; P. 14).
The counter-action of the revisionists followed obvious lines. Since Mao Tse-tung was the “great Marxist-leader of the Party” and since the thought of Mao Tse-tung was “Marxism-Leninism applied to the concrete conditions of China”, Peng Teh-huai, who had attacked both Mao Tse-tung and the thought of Mao Tse-tung, must be an “anti-Party counter-revolutionary revisionist.”
Peng Teh-huai strove to impair Chairman Mao’s immensely high prestige. This exposed his bitter hatred for our greatest leader, for the Party and for socialism, and Peng Teh-huai’s own ugly features as a counterrevolutionary revisionist. (Li Hsin-kung: ibid.; p.14).
This counter-attack succeeded in confusing a number of leading Comrades, and a resolution was approved by the Central Committee along these lines, removing Peng Teh-huai from his post as Minister of Defence. And in September 1959 a new Minister of Defence was appointed in the person of Marshal Lin Piao, who later became known as “Chairman Mao’s closest comrade-in arms”.
The Marxist-Leninists accordingly opened a campaign to reverse the verdict on Peng Teh-huai.
The top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road (the term used by the counter-revolutionaries to denote Liu Shao-chi – Ed.) ... whipped up the evil wind of reversing the correct verdict passed on the Right opportunists ... He vainly tried to help Peng Teh-huai rise again and resume command of the armed forces.” (“Peng Teh-huai and his Behind-the-Scenes Boss cannot Shirk Responsibility for their Crimes” editorial in “Renmin Ribao” (People’s Daily), August 16th, 1967; in: “Peking Review”, No. 35,. 1967; p. 7).
Later he (i.e., Liu Shao-chi – Ed.) openly attacked the Lushan Meeting and made a mistake! (Editorial Departments of “Hongqi” (Red Flag) and “Renmin Ribao” (People’s Daily). “Along the Socialist or the Capitalist Road?” in: “Peking Review”, No.34, 1967; p.15).
China’s Khrushchov (another term used by the counter-revolutionaries to denote Liu Shao-chi – Ed.).... openly tried to reverse the verdict on Peng Teh-huai at the enlarged Work Conference of the Party’s Central Committee held in January 1962. He said in Peng Teh-huai’s defence that in Peng’s anti-Party programme ’much is in conformity with the facts’ and ’it shouldn’t be regarded as a mistake’. He viciously attacked the struggle led by Chairman Mao against Peng Teh-huai’s anti-Party clique as ’an erroneous struggle that over-stepped the limits’. With powerful support and encouragement from China’s Khrushchov, Peng Teh-huai brought out in June 1962 a document running into a full 80,000 words aimed at reversing the verdict passed on him.” (Editorial in ”Hongqi” (Red Flag); ”From the Defeat of Peng Teh-huai to the Bankruptcy Of China’s Khrushchov”, in: ”Peking Review”, No. 34; 1967; p.20).
The threat which this campaign presented to their whole counter-revolutionary strategy forced the Chinese revisionists to appeal to their Soviet counterparts. The Soviet revisionists responded in the course of the international meeting held in Bucarest in June 1960, at which the Soviet revisionists opened the attack upon the Chinese Marxist-Leninists, Khrushchov went out of his way to defend Peng Teh-huai. This enabled the counterrevolutionary faction in China to add to the case against Peng the charge of being an agent of the Soviet revisionists.
After Peng Teh-huai came out into the open at the Lushan meeting, the Soviet Khrushchov blatantly and shamelessly praised him as ’correct’, ’brave’ and as his ’best friend’. The facts clearly reveal that Peng Teh-huai is a man who maintains illicit relations with a foreign country and who in co-ordination with the Khrushchovian modern revisionists aims at overthrowing the dictatorship of the proletariat in China.” (“Peng Teh-huai and his Behind-the-Scenes Boss Cannot Shirk Responsibility for their Crimes,” editorial in “Renmin Ribao”, August 16, 1967; in: “Peking Review”, No. 35, 1967; p.7).
On December 24th, 1966 Peng Teh-huai was “arrested” by “Red Guards” at Chengtu, but in August 1967 the counter-revolutionaries were still demanding:
Let us thoroughly settle accounts with Peng Teh-huai for his crimes against the Party, against socialism and against Chairman Mao.” (“From the Defeat of Peng Teh-huai to the Bankruptcy of China’s Khrushchov”, editorial in “Hongqi” (Red Flag), No. 13, 1967; in: “Peking Review”, No. 34, 1967; p;35).
However, a further obstacle had to be removed in order to place the High Command of the army securely in the hands of Mao Tse-tung’s counter-revolutionary faction. This obstacle was the Chief of Staff, General Lo Jui-ching.
General Lo ceased to appear in his official capacity after November 1965, but no official announcement of his removal was made and it was not until August 1966 that this was implied in the official reference to General Yang Cheng-wu as Acting Chief of Staff. It was General Yang who later put forward the slogan:
Thoroughly establish the absolute authority of the Great Supreme Commander Chairman Mao ...! (Yang Cheng-wu: “Thoroughly Establish… etc.”, in: “Peking Review”, No. 46, 1967; p. 17-24).
Lo Jui-ching, a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party, had been Minister of Public Security from 1949 until his military appointment in September 1959, and a Communist security minister is always a prominent target for the hatred of counter-revolutionaries. On December 20th, 1966 Lo Jui-ching was “arrested”: by “Red Guards”, and on January 4-5th, 1967, was paraded and denounced, along with other leading Marxist-Leninists, before mass rallies in Peking.
The charges published later by Mao Tse-tung’s counter-revolutionary faction were that, after the removal of Peng Teh-huai as Minister of Defence in 1959:
Lo Jui-ching became the foremost champion of the reactionary bourgeois military line.” (Proletarian Revolutionaries of the Headquarters of the General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: ”Basic Differences between the Proletarian and Bourgeois Military Lines”, in: “Peking Review”, No. 48, 1967; p.11).
What was this “bourgeois military line” alleged to have been championed by Lo Jui-ching?
Firstly, it was alleged that
the military thinking of Lo Jui-ching is founded on the theory that weapons decide everything. (“Proletarian Revolutionaries ... etc.”; Ibid; p.13).
Yet Lo Jui-ching is on record as emphasising that
THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE ANTI-FASCIST WAR ALSO TEACHES US THAT WEAPONS ARE AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN WAR BUT NOT THE DECISIVE FACTOR, AID THAT PEOPLE AND NOT THINGS ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR DETERMINING THE OUTCOME OF WAR. (Lo: Jui-ching: “Commemorate the Victory over German Fascism” Peking; 1965; p.16)
Secondly, it was alleged that
Lo Jui-ching frenziedly opposed Chairman Mao’s strategic principle of active defence and made every effort to push the strategic principle of passive defence for no other purpose than that of meeting the political needs of imperialism and modern revisionism. (“Proletarian Revolutionaries, etc.”; ibid; p.15)
Yet, Lo Jui-ching is on record as emphasising that
THE HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE ANTI-FASCIST WAR ALSO TEACHES US THAT THE STRATEGY OF ACTIVE DEFENCE IS THE ONLY CORRECT STRATEGY FOR THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES IN FIGHTING AGAINST IMPERIALIST WARS OF AGGRESSION. (Lo Jui-ching; ibid; p.13).
Thirdly, it was alleged that
Lo Jui-ching wanted to subordinate politics to military affairs, to make military affairs command politics. (“Proletarian Revolutionaries ... etc.”; ibid.; p.13).
Yet Lo Jui-ching is on record as holding the exact opposite.
What gave the Soviet Army the strength to stand up to and defeat Hitler’s fascist army? ... It was because the Soviet Union relied on the people, the socialist system, revolutionary political work in the Red Army arid the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Communist Party. (Lo Jui-ching; ibid; p.17).
In fact, it is clear that the reason for the removal of Lo Jui-ching as Chief of Staff was political. He opposed the introduction into the People’s Liberation Army of the cult of Mao Tse-tung’s personality and the revisionist ”thought of Mao Tse-tung”, which was a prelude to the transformation of the army into an instrument of Mao and his counter-revolutionary faction. He was “guilty” of
opposing the thorough establishment by our army of the absolute authority of the great thought of Mao Tse-tung. Comrade Lin Piao said that Mao Tse-tung’s thought is ’living Marxism-Leninism at its highest in our time.’ Lo Jui-ching, the counter-revolutionary revisionist, asserted nonsensically: ’We cannot say that.’ (Yang Cheng-wu: “Thoroughly Establish ... etc.”; ibid; p. 21).
With the High Command of the People’s Liberation Army in their grip, the counterrevolutionaries were ready for the next step in their strategical plan.