The Political Transition

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the political process leading up to the consolidation of a new leadership group within the Chinese Communist Party in the aftermath of the 1976 coup d’état. Whereas this ‘political transition’, which was instrumental in the adoption and implementation of the Central Committee’s economic and social reforms, is pinpointed here as coinciding with the events of 1976 which led to the demise of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’, the ‘Rightist line’ within the party had gained considerable impetus since the late 1960s, and many f the economic and social changes were, in fact, present at a much earlier stage as a result of the confrontations of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. The political form of the Shanghai commune was abandoned and replaced by the revolutionary committees set up after 1967. These committees and other organs of revolutionary power, such as the workers’ management groups set up in the first years of the Cultural Revolution, were, however, gradually encroached upon by the party bureaucracy.¹ By 1971, the revolutionary committees in the factories had in practice been superseded by unelected party committees which reinstated the authority of the factory cadres and engineers.