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restoration of Soviet-style “capitalism”—the CCP’s “hidden revisionists” who
prior to Mao’s Cultural Revolution had held the levers of power in the CCP’s
apparatus, which is to say in the PRC state.
A link-up between Mao’s CCP opponents and Moscow may not have
been entirely a figment of Mao’s imagination. As Wang Ming’s advocacy
in January 1967 suggests, among the options laid before Soviet leaders circa
1967–1970 was seizure of some portion of Chinese territory, perhaps in asso-
ciation with bombing attacks on other targets in China. China’s northeast
and Xinjiang, both long-time Russian-Soviet spheres of influence, were
targets commonly mentioned by Western analysts. Had Soviet leaders
chosen to deal with their “Mao problem” in this way, they would almost
certainly have established a satellite government run by anti-Mao Chinese
communists. Another option was for Moscow to help trigger a civil war in
China, and then intervene on the anti-Maoist side. Still another, perhaps
more likely, scenario would have been the ousting of Mao by a group of
his opponents. The ouster of CPSU General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev
in October 1964 was a warning for Mao. Although the Soviet leaders that
ousted Khrushchev amounted to “Khrushchev without Khrushchev,” in
Mao’s view the earlier transition of power in the CPSU following Stalin’s
death had seen a radical shift in policy away from socialism and toward “re-
visionism.” Had CCP “hidden revisionists” seized power from or after Mao,
they would certainly have had the support and encouragement of the USSR.
One way or the other, China’s “hidden revisionists” and the Soviet “revi-
sionists” were linked. In the words of Zhou Enlai’s authoritative Chinese
biographer Gao Wenqian:
Mao succeeded in destroying the pro-Soviet [sic] faction within the
Chinese Communist Party. Yet he still feared his enemies. He could en-
vision a Soviet invasion of China ending in a vindictive comeback of all
those whom he had routed.^25
The Maoists and their policies of “seizing power” faced strong opposition
from powerful veteran leaders. In February 1967, a group of Politburo mem-
bers that included several top PLA leaders not closely tied to Lin Biao con-
fronted top Maoist leaders, other than Mao of course. (The group of veteran
military leaders included marshal and vice chair of the CMC Ye Jianying,
marshal and head of the Science and Technology Commission and head of
China’s atomic weapons program Nie Rongzhen, marshal and CMC vice
chair Xu Xiangqian, and marshal and foreign minister Chen Yi.) Again in
July, military commanders in Wuhan in central China moved forcefully to
suppress radical Red Guard organizations before troops loyal to Lin Biao
moved in to disarm those anti-left regional military forces.^26 Throughout
1967, civil war conditions developed across China as moderate Red Guard
organizations battled extremist Red Guard groups. Clashes were increasingly