China After Chou

...Chang, who was attacked personally by Chiang Ching during the Cultural Revolution, may well succeed Hua as the First Party Secretary of Hunan...

...At the height of the anti-Rightist campaign, many moderate officials besides Teng also vanished from view, boycotting all public functions to express their displeasure...

...But soon news leaked out of similar demonstrations that had erupted simultaneously in other cities...

...As the weeks went by, a campaign against reversing educational policies established during the Cultural Revolution was widened...

...a new contributor, is on the stall of Asia Magazine...

...Any doubt about his identity was removed when the attackers dragged out Teng's famous saying: "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice...

...Consequently, there was widespread anxiety within the Party and among the masses that the new political drive would undermine Chou's blueprint for China's economic progress...

...Initially, it was thought that Teng was occupied with high-level conferences...

...AN UNEASY COMPROMISE China After Chou BY FRANK CHING Hong Kong Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the violent protest in Peking's Tien An Men Square last April 5 was its suggestion of widespread grassroots unhappiness with Chairman Mao Tsetung's recent master-minding of events in China, a land of surprises...

...On the night of April 7, it was announced that the Politburo had stripped Teng of all his posts and appointed Hua Kuo-feng Premier and First Vice Chairman of the Party...

...In the latest confrontation the radicals sought to dissociate Teng from Chou...

...After the Politburo announcements, Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien, China's chief economic planner, made his first appearance in three months...

...In Chengchow, the capital of Hunan Province, at least one man was killed during a protest...

...When Hua was formally named First Vice Chairman, of the Party, the radical Wang was in effect demoted...

...These radicals became prominent in the Cultural Revolution by leading the movement against moderate Party and government functionaries...

...Perhaps most significantly, moderate leaders have been presiding over rallies attended by several hundred thousand people...

...There have been no public appearances by prominent radicals either, causing speculation that they are unhappy with Hua's promotion and consider him a stalking horse for the moderates...

...Mao's death could even be followed by the reemergence of a kind of warlordism, rendering Poking incapable of dictating to the provinces...

...It is even possible that only a handful of the remaining 18 members made the April 7 decisions...

...Faced with a choice between belt-tightening and some greater comfort, it is small wonder many Chinese consider the moderate position more attractive...

...Once the sweeping turmoil of the '60s died down, many of the disgraced officials, including Teng, were rehabilitated by Chou, creating two opposing factions whose hostilities toward each other were rooted in personal antagonisms as well as philosophical differences...

...Although provincial and military leaders publicly hailed the politburo decisions, by late April none of the leading radicals had openly endorsed them...

...Chou outlined a plan to mechanize agriculture "in the main" by 1980, and to "accomplish comprehensive modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense and science and technology" by the year 2000...

...Nor was any attempt made in the ensuing days to have them ratify the decisions, indicating that power today rests in the hands of a very small group not acountable to lawfully constituted bodies...

...Throughout the morning their numbers grew, until 100,000 people were massed in the Square...

...There have been other signs of renewed moderate ascendancy, too...

...Nevertheless, a profound cleavage remains within the Chinese leadership as two hostile factions maneuver for position in the coming post-Mao era...

...Again, when Chou left his sickbed to preside over the National People's Congress, Teng and other experienced, pragmatic officials were given the responsibility of constructing a "powerful, modern, Socialist country'' in the next 25 years...

...He had spent most of his career in Chairman Mao's native province of Hunan as a provincial leader, specializing in agriculture, and his appointment provided the first clue that Teng was in serious trouble...

...Wu Teh, another rehabilitated official purged during the Cultural Revolution who is now Mayor of Peking, has likewise gained increased prominence and could be Hua's replacement as Minister of Public Security...

...The 40-year-old Wang, a Shanghai factory worker who was catapulted into the highest Party echelons in 1973, was believed then to have been picked by the Chairman himself as his eventual successor...

...Both bodies were ignored...

...Chou En-lai was customarily merely listed first among the vice chairmen...

...For Teng, after all, was pursuing the course shaped by Chou...

...All signs indicated a smooth transition...

...The campaign was conducted in the name of Chairman Mao, but the force behind it was a group centered around Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, and the Shanghai clique of Wang Hung-wen, Chang Chunchiao and Yao Wen-yuan...

...The anger and frustration caused by what was seen as the abandonment of Chou's policies found an outlet on Ching Ming, the day China traditionally honors its dead...

...The Tien An Men incident precipitated China's gravest internal crisis since the Cultural Revolution a decade ago, although this was not immediately apparent to outsiders...

...Hua, a man not identified closely with any faction, was presumably chosen to reassure the moderates and the people in general that should anything happen to the 82-year-old "Great Helmsman," the reins of power would not pass into radical hands...

...They complained that moderate policies of providing material incentives and relying on experts to run factories, research institutes and universities would create a new elite class and pave the way for the return of capitalism...

...Indeed, the Politburo's speedy actions were extraordinary...

...Chang Ping-hua, a Party leader in Hunan who had been under radical criticism, has been named a political commissar of the Canton Military Region in addition to his other posts...

...One wreath was pointedly dedicated to Yang Kai-hui, Chairman Mao's second wife, who was executed by the Chinese Nationalists in 1930...

...Slogans pasted to the monument contained thinly disguised rebukes of Chiang Ching: "Down with the Empress Dowager...

...This enraged those who showed up early...

...For example, a broadcast from Liaoning Province, where the Party secretary is Mao's nephew, Mao Yuan-hsin, declared: "Comrade Chou En-lai said much about class struggle, the struggle between the two lines, and the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in his political report delivered at the Fourth National People's Congress...

...The uneasy truce that now exists, though, is at best temporary...

...Whatever the case, they appear to represent a compromise between the two rival factions...

...A mountain of paper piled up over the weekend, but by the time Monday dawned the huge Square had been swept clean and all the wreaths were gone...

...This was taken to mean the two factions had reached an accomodation Li could live with, and in rapid succession lesser moderate leaders started to show up at public events...

...What this really meant, the critics said, was that "it doesn't matter if China takes the Socialist or imperialist road so long as it promotes production...

...The Politburo used to consist of 21 persons, but the deaths of Chou and Vice Chairman Kang Sheng and the ouster of Teng have reduced its size...

...Normally, the Central Committee is responsible for the dismissal of high-level officials, and the appointment of a premier is the function of the National People's Congress...

...Thus after he died on January 8, the Chinese poured out their grief in prolonged mourning but there was little anxiety about the nation's direction...

...He talked only about 'modernization, not revolutionization...

...The subsequent decisions to dismiss the late Chou En-lai's hand-picked successor, Teng Hsiao-ping, and name Hua Kuo-feng Party First Vice Chairman as well as Premier, were followed by massive, organized demonstrations of approval...

...If so, his selection may be seen as a setback for Mao...

...Spontaneously, tens of thousands of ordinary citizens laid homemade paper wreaths at the Monument to the Martyrs of the Revolution in Tien An Men Square on Saturday and Sunday, April 3 and 4. Although the demonstrators were ostensibly expressing sorrow for their departed Premier, the wreaths, slogans and posters were clearly directed against the radicals, who had dishonored Chou by attacking his proteges and policies...

...The sudden decisions signalled a desire to prevent new outbreaks of violence and calm the Chinese public, unsettled by months of radical leaders' denunciations...

...The other, called radical, asserts that ideological principles are primary and cannot be bent, even to increase production...

...Then, a month after Chou's death, the relatively unknown Vice Premier and Minister of Public SeFrank Ching...

...For if the dismissal of Teng was a loss for the moderates, the elevation erf Hua over a half dozen senior Party officials, especially in the light of his newly created title, was a defeat for the radicals...

...When Chou entered a hospital in mid-April, Teng, the pugnacious heir apparent, took over most of his responsibilities...

...Both groups seek to raise China's standard of living while building a strong, self-sufficient country that will be accepted as an equal by the major powers...

...Down with all counterrevolutionaries who scheme to attack Premier Chou En-lai...

...The radicals did not criticize the goal of modernization itself...

...Yet despite such statements the thrust of the campaign was unmistakable: It was aimed at the late Premier and the entire moderate bureaucratic structure he had built...

...The current round in what has actually been a long-fought conflict began with the death early this year of Chou En-lai, whose most remarkable achievement may have been surviving in the position of Premier from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949...

...In fact, it was his last public appearance...

...Down with Indira Gandhi...

...Gradually the assaults were directed at one person, a "capitalist roader" in the Party who had regained power after being purged in the Cultural Revolution...

...By contrast, rallies conducted by radicals during the anti-Rightist campaign often attracted only a few dozens of participants...

...The ceremony was televised in China and transmitted overseas, seemingly setting the stage for Teng's eventual appointment...

...Philosophical and personal differences persist at the top in China, and it will be the biggest surprise of all if they do not again result in open conflict as soon as one side feels itself strong enough to move decisively against the other...

...The radicals favor exhorting the people to work harder, not for their own welfare, but to advance the cause of Socialism...

...However, that unrepentant capitalist roader within the Party never mentioned these things...

...At the funeral service Teng delivered a lengthy eulogy before an assemblage of all the Party's leaders (except Chairman Mao Tse-tung...

...And a month earlier, it developed, the publication of articles thought to be critical of Chou by the Shanghai newspaper Wen Hui Pao had triggered a rash of wall posters in Nanking and elsewhere demanding that the editors be punished...

...The ugly mood degenerated into mob violence: Cars were burned, militiamen were beaten up and a building was set on fire and looted...

...A broadcast from Nanning, in Kwangsi Province, hit out at material incentives and called on the already frugal Chinese people to be more sparing in their use of necessities like coal, electricity and oil, thereby "guaranteeing an increase in output by means of economizing...

...With his death, Wang Hung-wen ranked immediately behind Mao...

...But one, labeled moderate, emphasizes economic growth and pays little more than lip service to revolutionary purity...

...Rightist deviationists" in the Party, it was alleged, were overemphasizing economic development to the neglect of ideological principles...

...Such people, it was further charged, would sabotage the revolution and restore capitalism in China...

...curity, Hua Kuo-feng, was named Acting Premier...