Kenneth Lieberthal - Central Documents and Politburo Politics in China

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

MICHIGAN PAPERS IN CHINESE STUDIES
NO. 33

CENTRAL DOCUMENTS AND POLITBURO POLITICS IN CHINA

by
Kenneth Lieberthal
with the assistance of
James Tong and Sai-cheung Yeung

Ann Arbor

Center for Chinese Studies
The University of Michigan

1978

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

Copyright 1978

by

Center for Chinese Studies
The University of Michigan

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Lieberthal, Kenneth.

Central documents and Politburo politics in China.

(Michigan papers in Chinese studies; no. 33)

Includes bibliographical references.

1. China--Politics and government--1949-1976.

2. China--Politics and government--1976

3. Chung-kuo kung chan tang. Chung yang wei yen hui.

4. Chung-kuo kung chan tang. Chung yang cheng chih ch. 5. China--Government publications. I. Tong, James, 1947- joint author. II. Yeung, Sai-cheung, joint author. III. Title. IV. Series.

JQ1509 1978. L53 354.51 78-8740

ISBN 0-89264-033-2

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-89264-033-1 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12754-2 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90149-4 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

To my parents
Milton and Naomi Lieberthal

CONTENTS

I undertook the research for this study at the Center for Chinese Studies of the University of Michigan and benefited greatly from the excellent working facilities and staff support provided by the Center. James Tong and Sai-cheung Yeung made major contributions to this project, each in his own way having far more input than is usually conveyed by the rubric research assistant. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to each. Sophia Lee put together the information in Appendix II from my scattered files, typed the initial draft of the manuscript, made important editorial suggestions, and assisted in certain phases of the research. Her dedication and good judgment have thus played a significant role in bring this project to fruition. Marlene Thom worked with great speed and skill in improving the quality of the presentation and husbanding the manuscript through the editorial and publication processes.

I have also benefited from the comments of a number of my colleagues. Most of these were made in response to presentations of portions of this study in seminars at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Columbia University, George Washington University, and the Department of State. Michel Oksenberg and Gregory Shaw read the entire manuscript and made important and useful suggestions.

The research for this study was supported by the Department of State under Contract No. 1722-620042. Views and conclusions contained in this study do not represent the official opinion or policy of the Department of State.

I am very grateful to M. E. Sharpe, Publisher, for permission to use the translation of the Outline Summary Report of the Work of the Academy of Sciences contained in Appendix I. This translation also appears in Chinese Law and Government , vol. XI.

Neither the organizations nor the individuals mentioned above are responsible for the views, interpretations and misinterpretations that appear on the following pages. All errors of fact and judgment are my own, but they would have been more numerous by far had it not been for those whose generous assistance is acknowledged here.

Virtually every analysis of Chinese politics views the Politburo as the nerve center of the system, but questions abound as to how this center governs itself and how it interacts with the system around it. Specifically, how much consultation occurs during the drafting of major Politburo documents, and who is brought into this process ? How is information channeled up to this body, and what are the rules that govern the access of the Politburo members themselves to data generated by the bureaucracies ? How are the political strategies of individual leaders and political factions attuned to this system of information channeling? What types of decisions are reached by the Politburo? To whom are they communicated ? How rigidly must they be followed ? How institutionalized is this entire decision making system, and has it become more--or less--institutionalized over the years ? How has the factional legacy of the Cultural Revolution affected its mode of operations ? Indeed, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, how much in control of the system has the Politburo itself been?

Scholars to date have looked at the apex of the Chinese polity from a range of angles--by analyzing factional conflict among the leaders, This is the series of documents through which the top Party leadership directly communicates with the rest of the political system. While officially regarded as Central Committee documents, the overwhelming majority of these have in fact been adopted by a smaller group--the Politburo, its Standing Committee, or even by Mao Tse-tung alone in the name of the Central Committee. Some have been adopted at large meetings that bring together a considerable range of Party leaders, as detailed below, and a very few have actually issued from Central Committee plenums and been published in the media at the conclusion of these gatherings. This last group clearly differs from the larger class of Central Documents of which it is a part, however, and is therefore omitted from consideration in this study.

The political environment within which the Central Document system is nested is one marked by a constant tension between formal organizations and procedures, recognized as indispensable for governing a vast country, and informal means of deliberating and communicating, required to circumvent bureaucratic rigidities while maintaining strict secrecy. Although study of the Central Document system of necessity focuses more on the formal dimensions of the policy process at the highest levels, political strategies inevitably intrude and affect such fundamental choices as whether or not to use the Central Document system in the first place. The top Party leaders, after all, enjoy a wide variety of options for communicating information to lower levels.

Structurally, the Central Document series is only one of an impressive array of document streams that flow from Peking to the lower levels of the political hierarchy. Each major Central organ, for example, can issue its own documents, and almost certainly the Politburo can channel information into any of these other document series (such as that of the State Council or the Military Commission, as appropriate). Indeed, given the fact that most members of the Politburo simultaneously hold at least one major post in another leading organ, it is possible that key individuals might use their special access to these other document streams to convey information that they do not want funneled through the Politburo itself.

Changing relationships among Chinas major bureaucracies--the Party, PLA and government--also may have contoured the use of the CD network at different periods. In brief, the government apparatus under Chou En-lai maximized its role during the First Five Year Plan of 1953-57, the Party hierarchy under Liu Shao-chi largely ran the Great Leap Forward in 1958-62, and the PLA under Lin Piao picked up the pieces from the shambles of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. In all likelihood, as Chou, Liu and Lin successively assumed the key roles under Mao in the system, they shunted an increasing range of issues into the document stream of their own bureaucracy. although too little information is available to draw firm conclusions on this issue.