A significant aspect of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been to reveal the least stable areas of China geographically and politically. One of these is Inner Mongolia. Also, the events of the upheaval— in direct contradiction to the Maoist dictum that “the Party must always control the gun, the gun must never be allowed to control the Party”— have caused a breakdown in Party and Government authority and a shift to military control in many parts of China: administrative organs at provincial, municipal and local levels have been replaced by People's Liberation Army (PLA) directed “Revolutionary Committees.” In most areas of China, the political upheaval can be ascribed to a power struggle between the Party, Red Guards and other semi-organised groups. However, the Cultural Revolution in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region takes on added significance in that “local nationalism” among the Mongol national minority played an important role in the conflict between the established political structure and the efforts of the Maoists to “seize power.”

Two threats arose in China after land reform that imperilled the transition from the anti-feudal, new democratic revolution of land reform to the socialist revolution of collectivisation. One threat came from “below,” from the village environment; the other from “above,” from the hierarchy of party and government. Both threats centred on the basic-level leadership and activists who had been recruited into political roles during the guerrilla years and especially during land reform. One threat arose as the interests of the peasants in the maintenance of the small-producer economy affected the attitudes and behaviour of village leaders, leading them to such responses as wanting to withdraw from political involvement. The other threat arose as the rural administrative system became increasingly burdened by numerous tasks and assignments. As pressure to produce results increased, rural leaders tended to become administrators and command mobilisers, orientated towards getting each job done quickly, using coercion. This approach caused a variety of problems; for example, it jeopardised a central goal of the socialist transformation of agriculture of securing peasant support and cooperation with this change.

One of the most arresting aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been the confrontation between Mao Tse-tung (or the Maoist group) and the Chinese Communist Party. There is, to be sure, an area of vagueness and uncertainty concerning this whole matter. Have the Maoists attacked the party as such? What indeed is the party as such? The party may be conceived of as the sum total of its actual members—of its human composition. It may be conceived of in terms of its organisational structure—its “constitution,” rules and established mechanisms. To any genuine Marxist-Leninist, it is, of course, more than its cells and anatomy. It is a metaphysical organism which is more than the sum of its parts. The “soul” of this collective entity incarnates all those intellectual and moral capacities which Marx had attributed to the industrial proletariat.

The role played by the Soviet Union in the early days of the Chinese communist movement has always been shrouded in mystery. Recently some of this mystery has been dispelled as the Soviet Union has begun to publish a number of books and articles about the experiences of Soviet advisers in China.

Initialy, the Chinese Communist Government held high hopes for a speedy solution to “the nationalities question.” Recent events, however, show that this question is still much in evidence and has been causing considerable anxiety in Peking. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guard exposures of “black bandits in power who are following a capitalist path” have revealed the existence of minorities problems which cast doubt on the régime's previous claims of progress. The Cultural Revolution has also revealed a split between those in the top leadership who favour concessions to the customs and traditions of the minorities and those who favour immediate and total assimilation. Since the former are generally experienced administrators while the latter are ideological zealots, this split may also be seen as yet another manifestation of the continuing “Red” versus “Expert” controversy.

This article attempts to explore the status of the leading personnel in the State Council since the advent of the Cultural Revolution. The State Council, of course, contains some of Peking's most famous personalities—such as Chou En-lai and Lin Piao—but my purpose here is to ignore for the most part the famed leaders and, rather, to dwell on a quantitative assessment of the entire body of 366 persons who were (in 1966) ministers and vice-ministers and chairmen of China's 49 ministries and commissions. One might also describe this as a study of the focal point of “experts” in China, even though it is clear that the State Council does not have a monopoly on China's “expert” talents.

The revolutionary Japanese artists have several times revised parts of the historical play Prairie Fire which they have been staging during their tour of China. It depicts the Japanese peasants' uprising in 1848, and they have made changes in it, in accordance with Mao Tse-tung's thought, to bring out even more clearly the armed struggle waged by the peasants. They have added a magnificent new scene at the end of the play. Amidst the singing of “The East is Red” and “The Internationale”, a great image of Chairman Mao appears on the backdrop, and the Japanese people, holding red-covered Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and also spears and rifles, all turn to Chairman Mao.

The activities of the Communist Government of China in Tibet have been the object of international attention for some years. This attention has centred mainly around the occupation of parts of Tibet in 1950, which precipitated a discussion in the General Committee of the United Nations' General Assembly, and the continuing suppression of the civil unrest in Tibet which came to world attention in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled from his capital and sought political asylum in India.