ABSTRACT
In summer 1959, a political storm arose in the leadership that shook the foundations of both the party and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The original agenda of the enlarged Politburo session was to discuss how to correct leftist mistakes in implementing the party's economic policies of the Great Leap Forward. The Mount Lushan conflict occurred in the context of a debate on China's developmental model. The Lushan struggle was directly related to the civil-military dualism established in the early 1950s. By 1959, the process of incorporating military leaders into the national party and government leadership had been completed. A rule for the triangular power game is that whenever two fell out, the third party would benefit in the outcome. The result of the Lushan Conference affirms the rule. The Lushan struggle was directly related to the civil-military dualism established in the early 1950s.
