ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the power structure of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the oscillations of the party line, the Machiavellian power plays of Deng Xiaoping, and the intensified factional strife for Deng's succession. It discusses the showdown between Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng that directly triggered the brutal slaughter of the demonstrators. Power in the CCP is centered in the Party's Central Committee, particularly the Political Bureau. Power bases in the central and provincial Party organizations are also discernable. Mao advanced Marx's belief one step further by maintaining that even after the bourgeois class had been removed from power, it would retain some of its traditional influence on society. Power struggle at the top always takes place under the guise of ideological schism. The fatal weakness of both Hu Yaobang and Zhao rested in their inability to control the army, the instrument of power in a proletarian dictatorship.
