THE DEATH OF MAOISM

...Hopefully, this will not be the case...

...But the turmoil in China does present the United States with the opportunity for more constructive and imaginative diplomatic initiatives...

...mdash;TH E EDITORS To assert all this is not to gloat at the expense of the Chinese, or even at the expense of Mao...

...No future Chinese regime is likely to give up readily its claims to China's so-called lost territories, and since these include vast areas of Soviet Asia, Moscow is equally unlikely to resume large-scale military and economic assistance to Peking...

...In his State of the Union message, President Johnson delivered a reasonable appeal for a settlement of differences with Peking...

...To record their demise is to comment not only on the fallibility of Mao, but also on the imperfection of man...

...THE DEATH OF MAOISM by CHARLES TAYLOR Charles Taylor, foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail of Toronto, has had the rare reportorial experience of living inside China for eighteen months...

...For while there has been no comparable political and social upheaval in China since the Communist victory in 1949, the issues and impulses are rooted in the nature of Mao and in the history of the revolution of which he was the dominant leader...

...more important, by concentrating on raising farm yields and curbing popu lation growth, Chinese planners at last seemed to have their priorities right...

...Although his notions seem twisted and impractical, to some extent they are as noble and visionary as the egalitarian ideals of the early Christians...

...policies of containment and isolation...

...True, the upheaval which first became apparent to the outside world last spring is partly a struggle for power, as well as a settling of old scores and a resolution of festering rivalries...

...Despite the statements of American leaders, the dispute between China and the United States has never had very much to do with an allegedly expansionist Chinese Communist imperialism which aims at global conquest...

...Despite the lasting changes which Communism has brought to China, the pattern of the conflict suggests parallels to the past, with provincial and regional Communist Party and army bosses acting like war lords and groups of peasants rising in revolt...

...By early 1966, with the start of the much-delayed third Five Year Plan, China seemed only a decade or two away from the stage of economic polemics would not imply an end to the Sino-Soviet rift because this now involves basic and inevitable differences between two great nation states to a greater extent than it involves a dispute over Communist ideology...

...Nothing would be more likely to weaken the hand of those contenders who are relatively more moderate and pragmatic...

...For Mao has been opposed not by some narrow clique of reactionaries, but by a majority of the Chinese Communist Party's senior leaders—Long March veterans who struggled with Mao in the revolutionary wilderness with equal heroism and dedication...

...With ruthless methods and relentless pressure, the Communists eliminated the worst social and economic exploi tations of the past...

...There is little doubt that these overtures would be rudely rejected by Peking...

...But the door would have been opened for China to secure some of its basic and legitimate national goals by peaceful means and to play a part in the hopeful schemes for Asian economic cooperation which are now unfolding around its borders...

...To rulers and rebels throughout the developing world of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, China can no longer be portrayed as a model for their own political and economic progress...

...Eighteen years ago, Mao proclaimed the founding of the Chinese People's Republic as he stood high above the hordes on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in a Peking that had been won for the Communists by the tattered army of a rising young military genius named Lin Piao...

...His book, "Reporter in Red China," was published recently by Random House...

...But much more is involved than a concern for personal position...

...But the more pragmatic policies of recent years produced a visible upturn in the economy...

...Under Mao, the Communists expelled both the foreign carpetbaggers and the remnants of the discredited Chiang Kai-shek regime...

...During his assignment in Peking Mr...

...At times they blundered badly through their own dogmatic zeal—as when the follies of the Great Leap Forward helped to cause a severe depression...

...Three articles adapted from it appeared in the October, November, and December, 1966 issues of The Progressive...

...It would be tragic if Washington's reaction were largely negative, based upon the assumption that the current convulsions offer further proof of China's alleged dangerous immaturity and that therefore the wisest response would be to step up U.S...

...It has, instead, a great deal to do with an old-fashioned struggle for spheres of influence in Asia...

...For while the violence and terror that he has unleashed are deeply repugnant to most Westerners, and probably to most Chinese, Mao retains a bold and romantic idealism that has prompted his last and most desperate campaign...

...While the odds are still very much against any immediate conciliatory response from Peking, now is the time for the United States to offer clear-cut and constructive options for some future Chinese government as a way out of the present sterile and dangerous impasse with the currently tottering regime...

...Far from proclaiming that the millenium was in sight, Mao told his people that China was "poor and blank" and that only tremendous hard work and dedication on the part of every Chinese could revive the never-forgotten glories of the Middle Kingdom...

...At least by implication, the turmoil in China is calling into question every aspect of Chinese domestic and foreign policy...

...There could be no better time for the Administration to state publicly that it is prepared to discuss with China the establishment of diplomatic and trading relations, its entry into the United Nations, the eventual status of Taiwan, and the military and political security of Southeast Asian nations...

...W HATEVER the immediate outcome of China's current turmoil, it marks the death of Maoism—not only for 750 million Chinese, but also for the world...

...To an even greater extent, the conflict is resolving a debate between different policies and philosophies which are firmly held by different groups of dedicated Communists and which involve noth ing less than the future of the Chinese revolution...

...To understand what is happening, it is necessary to know something of Mao himself...

...As long as the United States protects the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, rings the coastline of China with its fleets and bases, and seeks to maintain anti-Communist alliances contrived for the diplomatic and military "containment" of the Chinese, no Peking regime is likely to seek any serious rapprochement with Washington...

...Taylor was one of four resident correspondents from the West and the only one from North America...

...The violent struggle that has engulfed much of the nation since last spring has demonstrated to every Chinese the fallibility of Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung and has demolished the pretense that he is more omnipotent and omniscient than any earlier emperor who sat on the Dragon Throne...

...But more is needed than vague statements of good intent...

...There was impressive progress in many industrial fields...

...Nothing would be more likely to convince all the contenders for power in China that there is no hope in seeking a modus vivendi with the United States...

...Today, a lesser leader might be content with the achievements of those eighteen years...

...Politically united and genuinely independent, virtually for the first time in a century, China fought the United Nations to a standstill in Korea, trounced the Indians in the Himalayas, and scornfully defied both the United States and the Soviet Union as it triumphantly entered the nuclear era...

...No matter which leaders finally emerge victorious from the present chaos, they will meet only with a derisive response if they again venture beyond their borders to proclaim with proud certainty that the world is ripe for revolution and that the Works of Mao should be in every guerrilla's knapsack...