Explaining Factional Sorting in China and Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Why do autocracies exhibit divergent intra-elite factionalism despite similar institutions? Why do some regimes' factions rally around ideologies while others emphasize personal networks? Through a typology of factional sorting, I argue how external military conflicts exogenously shape a regime's factionalism by deepening or eroding the logistic and social cleavages that constrain factional recruitment. The Chinese Civil War separated Chinese Communist Party elites into isolated “mountaintops” and promoted factions based on geographic and professional backgrounds. In contrast, casualties suffered during the Vietnam War homogenized Vietnamese Communist Party cadres' backgrounds, weakened North-South cleavages, and led factions to adopt ideological over background sorting.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For a discussion of prominent characterizations of contemporary factions among the VCP elites, see Gainsborough (2010, chap. 7).

2. Later known as the Thanh Nien Cach Mang Dong Chi Hoi, with Dong Chi (comrade) attached to the name.

3. Ho Chi Minh himself described Thanh Nien as a nationalist-socialist movement (Pike 1978).

4. Before this, there were early conflicts, both rumored and real, among the Vietnamese revolutionaries in China, such as between Ho Chi Minh and Phan Boi Chau or between Ho and Nguyen Hai Than, founder of Vietnamese Revolutionary League (Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi), a rival organization to Thanh Nien. However, these disagreements never turned into well-delineated groups (Quinn-Judge 2002, 76–77).

5. Historians disagree over how much Ho’s gesture mended the feud within the Party. William Duiker (1996) argues that the meeting solved “the thorniest problems” in the Party, after which other issues were resolved “in an atmosphere of unity and love.” On the other hand, Tuong Vu (2017) points out the limits of this meeting. The new Party still had no leader: Ho did not take control of the newly formed VCP, and the factions only agreed on the procedure to nominate a central committee, but not the actual nominations. The new Party program, strategy statement, and Party code were also terse, and showed no sign of having adjudicated the different views expressed by the Party’s factions (Vu 2017, 43). Ho himself was jailed in China from 1931 to 1933, and would spend the next eight years in China and the Soviet Union before returning to Vietnam in February 1941 (Quinn-Judge 2002).

6. COSVN was designed to be “a part of the Central Committee […] always under the Politburo’s instructions.” Furthermore, “with regards to important matters related to national interest or to the overall strategy and mission in the South, [COSVN] is required to ask for directions from the Central Committee and Politburo” (Vietnam Communist Party 2002b). See also Asselin (2013, 65).

7. One area where revolutionary clientelism could, and did occur, is cadre promotion. Typically, a cadre in a combat zone would have to complete advanced military and political courses at a central training school before he/she was eligible for promotion. This requirement put him/her at a disadvantage against Northern cadres who in the safety of North Vietnam had received extensive formal training, a fact that caused significant resentment among Southerners (Davison and Zasloff 1966, 48–50). However, because promotion decisions ultimately rested in the hands of the NLF’s local Current Affairs Committees, Southern cadres in the field were able to fill the ranks with local cadres except during extreme personnel shortages (Davison and Zasloff 1966, 12).

8. Zachary Abuza (2001) mentions Quoc Doan instead of Van Doan.

9. Low estimate from Department of Warfare report (No. 124/TGi, Document 1.103, February 11, 1969), cited in Nhan Dan Online (2010). The high estimate came from a U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam report cited in Smedberg (2015, 149). Discrepancies might arise from differences in the definition of casualties, whether they include Phase 2 (May 1968) and Phase 3 (August 1968) of the Offensive, and whether they count North Vietnamese regulars separately from Southern Communists.

10. For a discussion of the group’s membership, see Kampen (2000, 9–37).

11. On November 29, 1937, Wang Ming arrived in Yan’an from the Soviet Union. With the Comintern’s tacit support, Wang was able to force the creation of a new Yangtze Bureau, in charge of commanding the CCP’s New Fourth Army in southern China and cooperating with KMT forces in the area under the Second United Front framework Huang (2000, 113). Prior to the KMT defeat at Wuhan, more Politburo members were in Yangtze than in Yan’an (Table 5).

Table 5. Rise of the 28 Bolsheviks in CCP Politburo of the Sixth Central Committee, 1928–1938

12. With Deng’s approval, Bo Yibo proposed during the Fourteenth National Party Congress, when several princelings were not elected to the Central Committee, that each revolutionary veteran would have one child promoted to a government post at vice-minister or vice-governor level or above, regardless of election results (Li 2001, 131).

13. Examples include Wang Jun (son of Wang Jiaxiang), chair of China International Trust and Investment Corporation and of the army-owned China Poly Group; Ye Xuanning (Ye Jianying’s son), CEO of Carrier Group and a director of the PLA’s General Political Department. See Li (2001, ch., 5) and He and Gao (1992).

14. In fact, during the 1980s, the CCP even rehabilitated cadres implicated during the 1962–1965 Socialist Education Movement and earlier purges, going as far back as the 1930s and 1940s (Lee 1991, 176–77).

15. The “Eight Elders” included Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shangkun, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Peng Zhen, Wang Zhen, Bo Yibo, and Song Renqiong.

16. These associates included Li Qiang (Zhejiang associate, promoted to party secretary of Shanghai), Yu Weiguo (Fujian associate, promoted to Fujian party secretary), and Tang Yijun (Zhejiang associate, promoted to mayor of Chongqing). See Willy Wo-Lap Lam (2018).

17. For example, P. J. Honey (1962) and Soviet intelligence in 1972 considered Le Duc Tho to be pro-Chinese; however, Nhu Tang Truong (1986), minister of justice in the VCP-created Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, identified Tho with the pro-Soviet faction. For a discussion of disagreements in factional affiliation, see Stephen Morris (1999).