ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the power-restructuring dynamics during the first two decades of Chinese Communist rule, 1949 to 1966. It demonstrates that power dynamics during the first two decades of Chinese Communist rule often paralleled those of the Soviet 1920s and 1930s and of the Soviet 1950s and early 1960s as well. The chapter explores the crucial differences that distinguish Chinese Communist power restructuring from the Soviet experience. It also focuses on processes of concentration and control, contending developmental strategies, the deconcentration and decentralization of power, political conflict at the top and at the societal level, and top and bottom versus the middle power-restructuring processes. The chapter considers the origins of the most fateful power-restructuring episode in the history of Chinese communism— the Cultural Revolution. In a discussion of political structure under Maoism, Hong Yung Lee spoke of the "enormous discretionary powers" wielded by the leading cadres at all institutional levels.
