the bottom of these troubles. There is, however, no evidence
 that opposition forces were ever anything more than
 a loose coalition, or that leaders at the regional or
 provincial level were playing for anything more than a
 stalemate which would enable them to retain their positions.
 Most of the provincial and regional power holders
 were able to hold out until after the middle of
 January, a situation which would not have existed if
 the armed forces had been committed on the side of
 central authority. It seems equally clear that, if the
 Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) had been firmly backing
 provincial and regional authorities, unarmed bands of
 troublemakers from other parts of China would never
 have been able to humiliate local officials and disrupt
 the operation of the party and government apparatus.
 The Armed Forces on the Sidelines
 12. Peking's directive publicized on 23 January
 ordering the PLA actively to support Maoist revolutionaries
 implies that the army had until then been under
 instructions to stand clear of the struggle. Peking's
 failure to use the armed forces against resistance in
 the provinces during the August-December period might
 have resulted from a decision by Mao and Lin Piao that
 the situation was not serious enough to warrant such
 drastic action, or that is was not yet time to bring
 the Cultural Revolution to a victorious conclusion.
 During the early part of the period this explanation
 is a plausible hypothesis but after the middle of December
 it is unconvincing. The situation outside the
 capital became steadily worse toward the end of the
 month, and by the turn of the year it had become the
 most serious internal security crisis faced by the
 regime since it took power in 1949. It is hard to believe
 that Mao and Lin would have permitted the massive
 disorder to drag on in East China as it did from late
 December to the middle of January--in particular the
 cutting of the important Shanghai-Peking rail line--if
 they had been certain of the PLA.
 13. The evidence does not indicate that the
 armed forces had ceased to be a coherent and functional
 organization. The available evidence indicates,
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