Agents of Disorder by Walder Andrew G

Author:Walder, Andrew G.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

6

THE EMERGENCE OF FACTIONAL WARFARE

DISPUTES AMONG REBELS IN THE WAKE of power seizures were ubiquitous. They were an inevitable product of the fragmented and cellular structure of rebel insurgencies, and of the rapid downward diffusion of power seizures in the national political hierarchy. In localities where a new structure of political authority was created quickly and certified by Beijing—as in Shanghai—these disputes were unlikely to coalesce into large and antagonistic factional alliances, and factional warfare was unlikely to emerge. When a new structure of power—a “revolutionary committee”—received the direct sanction of Beijing, military units defused opposition relatively quickly in support of new structures of political power.

In the vast majority of Chinese provinces, however, a revolutionary committee certified by Beijing would not be established for well over a year. These regions were instead placed under military control, forcing military officers to operate on their own. They intervened in the midst of festering rebel disputes, and they inevitably inserted themselves into the middle of local conflicts. The initial impact of military intervention was to shift the axes of local conflicts from disputes among rebels over the power seizure to stances of support or opposition to military authority. These were new factions, defined by a rebel group’s initial position relative to local power seizures, and by their evolving relationships with military units.

Figure 6.1 traces the emergence of factions relative to power seizures and military intervention.1 Military intervention reached almost everywhere by March 1967, even localities that had not experienced a power seizure. Factional divisions continued to develop into the summer of 1967, eventually becoming almost as prevalent as military intervention. Very few localities (2.5 percent) reported factions prior to the calendar month that a power seizure occurred. Only 19 percent reported factions prior to military intervention. The median month for a reported power seizure was January, for military intervention March, and for the development of opposed factions April. This pattern is what one would expect if military intervention crystallized nascent factional divisions.

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