ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party launched the "Great Leap Forward" movement at a time when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was fast becoming an increasingly complex, specialized and bureaucratic type of defence establishment and the authority and influence of commissars was on the decline. Lin Piao had been very closely associated with the PLA's political work programme, the most important plank of which was the study of Mao Tse-tung Thought. Marshal Lin Piao issued "extremely important directives"—which later came to be known as the "four firsts,"—on the army's political work. Military, political and economic democracy, Hsiao Hua observed, must be practised within the army "under centralized leadership in order to forge unity in our own ranks and defeat the enemy". The Party Committee should place military chiefs and various departments under its unified leadership in order to prevent independent governance.
