ABSTRACT
The purge of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih was the first major leadership struggle within the Chinese Communist Party after 1949, and to this day remains one of the most obscure. Cultural Revolution sources provide further information concerning the 1953 financial and economic conference which appears to be the first major instance of political maneuvering by Kao, Jao and others linked to them. While nothing explicit was openly said about Kao Kang or Jao Shu shih, the Fourth Plenum clearly sealed their political defeat. The official case against Kao and Jao was stated in the National Party Conference's resolution on the affair; a press campaign in subsequent months elaborated somewhat but made no substantial new revelations. The campaign to promote Party unity in 1954 and the open attacks on the "Kao Kang-Jao Shu-shih anti-Party alliance" in 1955 were major events in the political history of People's China.
