Mao vs. China

...Finally, Defense Minister Lin Piao, who became Vice-Chairman of the Communist party and was hailed as "Chairman Mao's closest comrade-in-arms," was not only the nation's senior soldier by rank and authority, but was also "Chief of Staff" of the Red Guards...

...Instead of a quick victory, the pro-Mao forces face a pitched battle to destroy the Party apparatus...

...In Peking, the cold, beautiful capital on the edge of the Asian steppes, those who once fought together are assailing each other in language more vicious, more vituperative, more violent than they ever addressed to their enemies?the Chinese Nationalists, the American "imperialists," the Russian "modern revisionists...

...The stalwart railway workers????some of them the same men who had been the backbone of the Communist labor movement for decades in the struggle against the Nationalists????left their throttles...

...He was disturbed by three chief irritants: 1. His own physical and mental faculties were fading, and the severe illness he underwent late in 1965 compelled his attention to the pressing problem of insuring that he would be followed by a worthy "revolutionary successor...

...Stevedores refused to work, and the rhythm of the docks along the muddy Whangpoo River slowed convulsively like the pulse of a dying giant...

...Not until August did it rally...

...Above all, the opposition wants a reasoned and practical approach to the government of China...

...At first the powerful People's Liberation Army stood to some extent aloof from the struggle, and so far has kept civil violence from becoming civil war...

...The great majority of the Chinese people?peasants, workers, intellectuals, even apparatchiks????are utterly disillusioned with grotesque intellectual gyrations under the unremitting physical and spiritual pressures of Maoism...

...He wishes to create a "perfect Proletarian Government" for China and, eventually, to impose his new model on the entire world...

...At the beginning of August, the Maoists packed the Central Committee and ordered sweeping changes in the structure of the powerful Political Bureau...

...The violent attacks by Red Guards in Great Character Posters against both the Premier and his Foreign Minister, however, are merely a symptom of the decay of the government's authority...

...There is...

...The prototype is the Paris Commune of 1871...

...The phenomenon, called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, will probably fall short of either extreme...

...The professional propagandists among the opposition attack Mao's absolute control of the arts for defeating its own purposes by producing works which no one will read...

...Since that time, the conflict has shifted back and forth...

...Most would function from their work benches...

...2. His power over events in China had been eroded by the new atmosphere of relaxation in Peking itself, as well as by the growing tendency of provincial and municipal Party officials to disregard Central Committee directives commanding hard-line measures...

...The buildings remain, and some of the bureaucrats sit behind their desks...

...They sing martial songs like "The East Is Red and the Sun Is Risen, China Has Produced Mao Tse-tung...

...Industry was progressing...

...Slowly the opposition began to take form, and the Maoists realized that they would have to destroy the entire structure of the Communist party to prevail...

...The formal structure called the Government of the People's Republic of China still exists in Peking...

...But similar declarations of independence by municipal and provincial Party branches and by government organizations have not been publicized for fear that the news would reveal the true state of anarchy upon which the nation verges...

...The cataclysm could be the characteristically confused death throes of one more Chinese dynasty????to be followed by anarchy engulfing more than 700 million people...

...They straggle in weary columns across the frozen yellow landscape of North China and parade along the miniature dikes dividing the rice fields of South China...

...The opposition was both stunned and incoherent...

...Nonetheless, the initial tactics were carefully plotted, though they proved faulty...

...Tao Chu also became chief of the Party's Propaganda Department, and Chen Po-ta was named Chairman of the Group Directing the Cultural Revolution...

...Field Marshal Lin Piao, thundered threats of dire punishment for all supporters of the traitorous Municipal Committee and ordered instant arrest of all its adherents...

...School was out????for more than a year it soon appeared...

...Lin Piao, hailed for the first time as Mao's "closest comrade-in-arms," became sole Vice-Chairman of the Party, while Chairman of the People's Republic of China Liu Shao-chi was dropped from second to eighth place in the hierarchy...

...They would be called the "groups, committees, and congresses" of the Proletarian Revolution...

...He was the 73-year-old Chairman of the Communist party, Mao Tse-tung, the creator and ruler of the realm...

...While it is almost inevitable that the struggle will spread before either side can achieve victory, there is still some hope that unrestrained violence can be avoided...

...The real cause is the cutting of the wires that lead to the central switchboard...

...and on the leaves of Great Character Posters that have blossomed on Peking's walls like some new tropical creeper, infinitely luxuriant and infinitely malevolent...

...on the shifting official press...

...Those plans did not include Mao's own candidate, 59-year-old First Vice-Premier and Defense Minister Lin Piao...

...Only a year ago, it seemed that China was finally attaining stability...

...The presence of the Army had also kept the excesses of the Cultural Revolution within limits throughout the turbulent months since August, and the threat of the Army had intimidated the opposi 717tion...

...in fact, no government in operation over most of this vast country...

...The military command was completely reshuffled...

...He envisions a "truly popular government" with all officials elected by universal proletarian suffrage and subject to both referendums on their actions and recall if they err...

...That government will be easier for the Chinese to live under????and easier for the rest of us to live with...

...China is exploding in a gaudy conflagration of verbal pyrotechnics, with old revolutionary comrades howling for each other's heads...

...It was neither intended to destroy wholly the normal structure of the Party nor to carry China to the brink of anarchy...

...From the fetid depths of the ancient well of Chinese invective they are fishing out expressions like "ogres with the spirits of oxen" and "monsters with the souls of snakes...

...The perfect new Communist man, possessing no property whatsoever, would be inspired by the canonical thought of Mao Tse-tung...

...The opposition, grown powerful, riposted with strikes in Shanghai and other major cities...

...Wherever they are, they recite en masse the awesome liturgy of hate and self-encouragement from the plastic covered Maoist texts?their young, unformed voices cracking in proud hysteria...

...The great port city was shaken by widespread strikes which interrupted its communications with the rest of China...

...The outcome of the climactic battle now in progress is impossible to predict, though the opposition appears to have a slight edge...

...The generic charge: plotting like the Petofi Club of Hungary to prepare public opinion for "peaceful evolution" to capitalism...

...While the pace of industrialization was so slow that it could not, within the conceivable future, make China a great industrial and military power, the people were enjoying more consumer goods...

...The controlled press and radio made cause celebre of the Shanghai "counter-attack of the reactionaries" in the hope that the severe repression they are essaying would serve as a warning to all China...

...But the true impotence of the People's Government in foreign affairs, is indicated by the recall to Peking of great numbers of Chinese diplomats from abroad...

...Only one thing is quite clear...

...The adolescents began rampaging through China's cities...

...Not a single regular organization of the Communist party, the People's Government, or the People's Liberation Army appeared on the list of 32 signatories to the Maoist rebels Urgent Proclamation...

...Instead of achieving its sweeping-ly romantic, but still rational objectives, the extremists' pressure forced the crystallization and expansion of the opposition...

...It was almost as remarkable as the denunciation of Tao Chu, a strongman abruptly elevated to the fourth position in the Communist party in mid-August and simultaneously appointed chief of the Party's Propaganda Department, the organ first afflicted by the cancer of "bourgeois revisionist reaction," the seedbed of "the poisonous weeds of anti-Party, anti-Socialist, anti-Mao Tse-tung Thought...

...The "revolutionary rebel faction," loyal to Mao Tse-tung and his heir presumptive...

...The People's Liberation Army, almost three million strong, and the "security forces," consisting of local and national police and para-military units, appeared to have escaped the vicious contention which has rent other institutions...

...Their purpose was to terrorize the opposition into compliance...

...Chiang Ching, Madame Mao Tse-tung, became First Vice-Chairman of that group, apparently to show Mao's support...

...While Mao brooded, knowledge of his illness spurred the regular Party apparatus to its own thoughts of the future...

...The final battle was provoked by the Maoist decision to carry the fight into industry, which had been exempt from the ravages of the Cultural Revolution...

...The opposition is also opposed to the Maoist policy of fostering People's Wars, i.e., guerrilla forces and mass movements, throughout the world...

...The rapid fall from favor of the Minister of Public Security was startling...

...Guiding all men under this perfect government would be the perfect altruism and utter dedication that arises from expunging all personal desires and dedicating one's self solely to the common good...

...The entire Municipal Committee of the Communist party of Shanghai, the nation's largest city, has been denounced by the official press and radio as a band of traitors who "followed a bourgeois reactionary line...

...Until last week, one rock of stability appeared to stand amid the tidal wave of anarchy sweeping China...

...Swept from their desks shortly thereafter were almost 200 of China's leading propaganda directors, writers, editors, motion-picture directors, and educators...

...Dissident voices were heard on the airwaves and in the press, though their criticism was invariably couched in Aesopian language...

...But no one can be certain...

...No matter who wins the internecine battle, China will never be as it was before 1966...

...In these circumstances confusion is unavoidable...

...It believes that material incentives are essential to both industrial and agricultural production, and that industry must be managed by specialists...

...Waving pocket-sized volumes of The Quotations of Mao Tse-tung encased in red plastic, hundreds of thousands of Red Guards, most of them under 18, are behaving like the country's true rulers and describing themselves as "the arbiters of China's ancient civilization, the arbiters of all civilizations...

...The Red Guard's terrorism at the begirming of the Cultural Revolution was intended to paralyze the intra-Party opposition to Maoist policies and to clear the ground for a wholly new political system...

...In time, new popular bodies would replace the People's Government and the Communist party itself...

...The contest over personalities and policies was precipitated by the grave ailment which deprived Mao of much of his vigor and made it appear that he might soon die...

...The myth of the seamless unity of the Chinese Communist party has been exploded, and the shock waves of the explosion are sweeping destructively over the entire Chinese nation...

...And only at the beginning of last August, the "revolutionary faction" announced with great satisfaction that the third major mutiny among senior officers since 1949 had been cut down...

...Observers????both outside China and within the tormented nation????are dependent for their information on the hysterically ranting voices, primarily female, of the Chinese radio network...

...The opposition considers this plan to be, at the very least, visionary...

...the emphasis was upon orderly, if slow, material progress attained by pragmatic measures, rather than upon dedication to perpetual revolution at home and abroad...

...Their movement has now developed a force of its own which sometimes evades the control of its creators, and they are the most obtrusive political spectacle in China, but they are not the government of China...

...But neither reverse was as significant as the need to purge "a group of bourgeois reactionaries within the Armed Forces...

...Senior officials are being paraded through the ice-rimed streets in dunce-caps, their faces painted with red ideographs reciting the details of their "crimes...

...It is impossible to distinguish between what is fact and what is merely propaganda...

...3. An amorphous????but powerful —psychological transformation was occurring throughout China...

...The Army was hailed as the perfect model of disciplined "study and application of the Thought of Mao Tse-tung," and was the mainstay of the Cultural Revolution...

...A field marshal until formal military ranks were abolished in mid-1964, Lin had also purged the Army for Mao after the upheavals of 1958-1959 demonstrated that the military was a center of "revisionist" thinking...

...With the rock i ?. t - of stability gone, it is now literally impossible to descry a single fixed point in the entire Chinese landscape...

...Not only the conventional apparatus of the Party, but also the working masses were alarmed by the new excesses...

...The men who created the Red Guards and ordered them to "dare to rebel, dare to spread disorder," told them that they were the only hope of the great nation...

...It contends that Maoist fervor is no substitute for specialized training...

...But their tactics had the opposite effect...

...The People's Government is also maintaining formal relations with other nations through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Foreign Minister Chen Yi...

...There should have been no such total breakdown of authority as China now faces...

...It should not have grown so strong that, today, the question is no longer whether Mao Tse-tung can impose his policies on China, but whether the faction he commands can retain even its formal ascendency...

...The provincial and municipal agencies of the government are, quite simply, no longer responsive to the orders of a government which is itself harassed unmercifully by hooligans...

...These officials????legislators, executives, and judges in one????ould receive salaries no higher than those of any other worker, and would enjoy no special privileges...

...It argues that ideal systems can only be ideals, but cannot work in practice...

...The group which had presided over the de facto change in the condition of China began to make its own plans for the succession...

...It is bored and irritated by the unending claims that China can move mountains, build steel mills, conquer all enemies, and remake mankind????if each Chinese only reads, rereads, and memorizes the works of Mao Tse-tung...

...Regardless of who wins the current struggle, one fact has already been clearly established...

...The Communist party no longer devoted its chief energies to the imposition of absolute ideological uniformity...

...But the apparent solidity of the military last week collapsed in the turbulence like a children's sand-castle dissolving in the oncoming tide...

...Above all, they have by their erratic violence forfeited the respect of the Chinese masses...

...Instead, that list was compromised of newly constituted, amorphous groups like the Shanghai Branch Committee of the Peking Aeronautical Institute's Red Flag Struggle Team, the Shanghai Branch Committee of the Harbin Military Engineering Institute's Red Rebellion Group, and the United Shanghai Municipal Units to Bombard the Headquarters (of the Rightists...

...Professional soldiers in the opposition argue that China is too weak to dare the risk of war with either the United States or the Soviet Union...

...The body politic had been severely injured by the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960, a simultaneous effort to create modern industry by massed human labor and to impose a Utopian and new social system...

...Above all, the opposition should have been swept away within a few months' time...

...The performance of his forces had obviously displeased the "revolutionary rebel group" which still controls the content of the great majority of those posters, as it does the press and radio...

...The fascinated audience cannot even be sure who is speaking with, which voices...

...It could be the violent birth throes of a new totalitarianism, more rigid, more dedicated, and more dangerous than any the world has ever seen????the hordes of Genghis Khan inspired by an implacably militant ideology and armed with nuclear weapons...

...Directives continue to be issued in the name of its Cabinet under Premier Chou En-lai, just as the Central Committee of the Communist party and its appurtenant bodies still issue directives...

...The Red Guards believe they are "the revolutionary vanguard, the selfless embodiment of the future...

...A measure of laissez faire replaced rigid economic organization, and many individuals—particularly among the peasantry?were permitted to spend part of their time working for their own profit...

...Besides personalities, the fighting between the two groups is over policy...

...They carry pennants inscribed with fierce slogans and wave portraits of their "great leader, great generalissimo, great guide????Chairman Mao Tse-tung...

...They stalk arrogantly through the great cities, challenging their elders' doctrinal purity and occupying governmental and Party offices...

...The Red Guards were guided by senior military officers, who served as their "political and military advisors...

...Although he is failing and the practical command of the Cultural Revolution is in the hands of Lin Piao, the grand purpose is Mao Tse-tung's...

...One man, however, was increasingly unhappy at the spectacle of material gratification he saw everywhere around him...

...The Maoists threatened to use the Army against their opponents...

...To put it mildly, it would be the peak of folly for provincial officials to obey a small Party clique which has seized control of the central apparatus with the avowed purpose of destroying the men and the institutions who have ruled China for the last 17 years...

...Since 1960, the Army had been the object of an "ideological reindoctrination campaign" and a reorganization of an intensity and thoroughness impossible in most civilian institutions because of their size and lack of absolute discipline...

...Revolutionary fervor had decayed, and any determination to create a society that would be a model for the future had withered...

...Even if Lin Piao should triumph in this particular battle, the unmistakable prospect is a more reasonable and more realistic Chinese government after Mao's death...

...The course of the "revolutionary faction" may seem irrational to outsiders...

...The Maoist group struck first, vilifying and deposing the entire Peking Municipal Committee of the Communist party at the beginning of June 1966...

...But the Communist party of China is at war with itself, and it is as if the entire leadership of this most populous nation of the world has gone mad...

...Water and electricity supplies operated intermittently, and many factories were closed down...

...Its specialists in foreign policy contend that the present quarrels with those two countries harm China immeasurably...

...The Minister of Public Security, Hsieh Fu-chih, appointed only five months ago, was bitterly and consistently attacked by the Great Character Posters...

...Two groups of dedicated Com-munists are joined in a struggle to determine not only who will rule China, but what fundamental policies the country will pursue????and by what political philosophy it will test those policies...

...A number of serious conciliation attempts have failed, making the prospects for compromise slight...

...Premier Chou En-lai retained his third rarJting, but two Mao adherents, Tao Chu, a practical politician from southern China, and Chen Po-ta, Mao's secretary and ideological mentor, were elevated to the fourth and fifth places...

...The provincial agencies of the Communist party are even less responsive to the directives of a Political Bureau and a Central Committee which have both been reorganized by force majeure...

...The Maoists called the Red Guards into being and staged a series of turbulent mass rallies in Peking extending into November to show their strength...

...Within the limits imposed by an omnipresent and officious bureaucracy, the Chinese masses were happier than they had been since their honeymoon with the Communists ended in 1957...

...The Liberation Army was ordered purged, and a special body, called the New Liberation Army Cultural Revolutionary Group, was created to direct the purge...