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The Power of the Military
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11767 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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4 / 1987 |
2,185 Words |
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June Teufel Dreyer
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While the details of Hu Yaobang's dismissal as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are not known, it is clear that the military has been opposed to him for some years. Part of Deng Xiaoping's efforts to arrange for an orderly succession of power, and the continuation of the reforms Deng had begun, involved making his protégé Hu Yaobang both the head of the party as a whole and head of the party's Military Commission. Curiously, he was able to accomplish the first goal but not the second. Opposition to the same person holding both offices is unlikely to have been the cause: Mao Tse-tung held both positions, as did his successor Hua Guofeng. An alternate hypothesis - that elements within the high command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) refused to accept him as their leader - was corroborated by rumors from within the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Why the military chose to oppose Deng's handpicked choice, the reasons they were able to successfully resist his appointment, even after Hu assumed the CCP's most prestigious position, and what role the PLA played in facilitating Hu's dismissal as general secretary are intriguing questions that have important implications for the politics of leadership succession in the PRC. Allegedly, high-ranking military figures considered Hu's military experience inadequate for the position of head of the Military Commission. However, they apparently were willing to accept - or perhaps were simply not able to successfully oppose - other leaders whose military background was scarcely more impressive, including Hua Guofeng and, apparently, Zhao Ziyang. Even the present head of the Military Commission, Deng himself, has not had a primarily military career.
Did not resist other changes
The exact means through which the PLA leadership resisted Hu's appointment as the head of the Military Commission are a mystery. Certainly the leadership was not able to resist most of the other changes Deng wanted. Military budgets were reduced for several years in a row after their high point in 1979 to cover the costs of the Chinese invasion of Vietnam; they remain austere. PLA representation on the party's Central Committee has been reduced to less than 20 percent. The creation of the People's Armed Forces Police under a separate command has split off the domestic peacekeeping functions of the military.
The civilianization of the PLA's Railway Corps and some units of its Capital Construction Corps has similarly reduced the scope of the military's jurisdiction. The field army system, which many foreign scholars believe provided the institutional structure for much of the PRC's elite-level factionalism, was abolished and replaced with a system of group armies. The 11 military regions were reduced to seven, with a nearly complete changeover in the upper-level command hierarchies of each, including both commanders and commissars. Some older high-ranking military figures, including several heroes of the revolution whose reputations bordered on the mythical, were persuaded to retire into positions carrying advisory duties. At lower levels, some units were abolished and others merged, with officers transferred among them in a manner unprecedented in the PLA's history. In fact, one important reason for the transfers was the attempt to break up the loyalty networks within existing units that could facilitate resistance to Deng's reforms.
Elements within the military also objected,
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