areas. Day-to-day operation of governmental and party
 machinery in regional organizations led, almost inevitably,
 to the growth of self-serving "establishments"
 made up of officials accustomed to dealing with
 one another and taken up with local problems.
 9. It seems likely, moreover, that over the years
 many of these men have become progressively alienated
 from authorities at the center who have been the source
 of relentless pressure to achieve results and who repeatedly
 made local officials the scapegoats for
 blunders committed in Peking. The considerable degree
 of popular support commanded by these men stems
 mainly from the regional diversity and provincialism
 based on geographic, economic, ethnic, linguistic, and
 cultural differences which still exist.
 The Provinces Fight Back
 10. Local authorities outside the capital responded
 to Peking's offensive with a counterblow using political
 weapons denounced by central authorities under the
 blanket term "economism." This was an appeal to parochial
 self-interest designed to produce paralyzing
 confusion and at the same time to enlist support from
 the people by offering them improvement in their lot.
 Peking had in fact issued instructions which authorized
 some of the actions taken by provincial authorities.
 Later, however, the center charged that local authorities
 were "bribing" the workers with wage increases and
 a share-out of public property, encouraging them to
 strike and go to the capital in order to present grievances.
 Other devices used by local authorities included
 deception tactics--setting up false "rebel" groups and
 staging sham "take-overs"--and a kind of political
 judo which involved overcompliance with orders from
 the center such as the demand that workers be placed
 in charge. Management technicians followed this instruction
 by leaving their jobs and thus crippling
 operations in key installations or shutting them down
 entirely.
 11. All this added up to a kind of passive
 resistance with produced disorder verging on chaos
 in many parts of China. Peking's propaganda asserted
 that a "revisionist" conspiracy to seize power lay at
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