Cultural Revolution

The People’s Liberation Army  (PLA) played a key role in preventing China’s descent into anarchy during the Cultural Revolution. Yet its strategies and tactics remain poorly understood. We also don’t know why the PLA was so much more effective in some parts of China than in others? To investigate these issues, the paper draws on a unique set of military reports from all around Hubei province and makes careful forays into the methodologically less charted territory of online sources to reconstruct military activity, strategy and tactics during the most tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution. The PLA was at its best when it threw its military prowess behind a political process, focused on creating local Revolutionary Committees. Moreover, there are indications that places, which used to have stronger party organizations before the Cultural Revolution, experienced less turmoil. Although formal party hierarchies had all but disappeared by 1968, the legacy of informal party networks continued to have a tangible impact. To test this hypothesis, the paper draws on a database that compares Cultural Revolution pathways in the provinces. It appears that, holding other things equal, provinces where party saturation was highest prior to the Cultural Revolution experienced less turmoil.