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Organized and run along military lines, the People's Armed Police (PAP, renmin wuzhuang jingcha budui) emerged in the post-Mao era as an increasingly important safeguard of party rule. Its birth may be traced to the CCP Politburo's decision, in April 1950, to abolish the four so-called "field armies" which had brought the Communists to power, and to re-organize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into a regular army of national defense and a domestic public security force. Two years later, the PLA Public Security Force (Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun gong'an budui), as it was first call…

Mao Zedong, who launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, never produced an extended systematic and credible explanation of what this political super-movement was meant to achieve. All he left behind were scattered and often conflicting remarks indicating a general sense of purpose. The Cultural Revolution was to prevent the emergence, in China, of what he called Soviet-style revisionism; it was to ensure that China remained forever "red"; it was to empower the "people", and purge the governmen…