Until the Cultural Revolution, the predominant western view of
contemporary Chinese elite conflict was that it consisted of “discussion”
(t'ao-lun) within a basically consensual
Politburo among shifting “opinion groups” with no “organized force” behind
them. The purges and accusations which began in 1965 and apparently still
continue, have shaken this interpretation, and a number of scholars have
advanced new analyses - sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, sometimes of
general application, sometimes applied only to a particular time span or
segment of the political system. Of these new views, perhaps the most
systematic - and at the same time the one which represents the least change
from the pre-Cultural Revolution “opinion group” model - is the “policy
making under Mao” interpretation, which sees conflict as essentially a
bureaucratic decision-making process dominated by Mao.
