The fall of Madam Mao [1 ed.] 053303678X, 9780533036783

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THE FALL OF MADAM MAO by Ly Singko The year 1976 saw one crucial event after another in Red China. Chou En-lai’s death in January was followed eight months later by the death of Mao Tse-tung himself. At that point, power seemed to pass to Mao’s widow, Chiang Ching. Yet within a month, she and three close “radical” associates—together, they formed the so-called gang of four—were suddenly arrested and accused of all sorts of crimes, to the astonishment of the world. At long last, The Fall of Madam Mao tells the inside story of the dramatic and puzzling events of October 1976—what led up to them and why they were greeted with such enthusiasm by the Chinese people. Written by an expert who is uniquely qualified to comment on these events, the book paints a revealing portrait of Madam Mao, one that is considerably less flattering than others that have been offered to Western eyes. Equally important, it places recent struggles in the context of four millennia of Chinese history and shows how these struggles grew out of deep social, ideological, and even geo¬ graphical conflicts within the Chinese Com¬ munist Party. An informative epilog indi¬ cates what is probably in store for the pres¬ ent Chinese regime.

Vantage Press, Inc. 516 West 34 th St., New York, N.Y. 10001

951.05

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PASADENA CITY COLLEGE LIBRARY PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

THE FALL OF MADAM MAO

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THE FALL OF MADAM MAO

Ly Singko

New York

VANTAGE PRESS Washington Atlanta

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Hollywood

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FIRST EDITION All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Copyright © 1979 by Ly Singko Published by Vantage Press, Inc. 516 West 34th Street, New York, New York 10001 Manufactured in the United States of America Standard Book Number 533-03678-X Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 78-054378

CONTENTS Preface Chapter vl. Mao’s Death and the Arrest of His Widow v 2. The Cause of Chiang Ching’s Fall 3. “Peasants” and “Man-Fridays” ■J 4. The Aftermath of the October Coup 5. A Historical Problem in Modern Time ^ 6. What Next?

1 13 28 37 52 87

Epilog

106

Appendix I. Principal Peasant Uprisings in Chinese History II. Chronology of Chinese Events Since 1900 III. On Roxane Witke’s Comrade Chiang Ching

118 120 131

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PREFACE The year 1976 was a crucial year in the history of modern China. Three of the principal founders of the People’s Republic—Chou En-lai, Chu Teh, and Mao Tse-tung—died. Their disappearance was soon followed by the arrest of Mao’s widow, the leader of the “radical” group who controlled most of the Party’s affairs and the mass media. These events happened in such close succession to each other and so suddenly, that not only did China observers exercise discretion when making long term projections, but China’s “allies” began losing confidence in the soundness of official declarations from Peking. Some of them even abandoned loyalty and began to question the truth of cir¬ cumstances that led to events in China. The image of New China sustained a sharp fall. Even the Sino-Albanian alliance, once exemplary and steadfast, began to shake: not completely veiled attacks have been launched against the political principles of the new Chinese leadership. While Tirana might be over-sensitive to Peking’s new attitude towards Yugoslavia, other Marxist-Leninist groups in Europe showed signs as well, of having a lack of confidence in the new leadership of Peking, now dominated by “moderates.” This is especially in re¬ gards to the now confirmed rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-ping, their support of the EEC, and their eventual rapprochement with Washington. In France, where the strongest Communist party in the world outside the USSR is found, an “anti-Mao” campaign burst forth from the day Mao passed away. An eminent Sinologist, prob¬ ably Maoist once upon a time, gave Mao the posthumous title of “the paper emperor.” He believes that “Mao was less the prophet-philosopher as has been described by so many of his fol¬ lowers than, first and foremost, a pragmatic politician for whom what came uppermost was power: how to get it, how to keep it,

how to win it back. ” In the opinion of this Sinologist, Mao consid¬ ered that “to have his power assured, no sacrifice was too big, in particular, the sacrifice of his principles. Only from that point of view can one begin to understand his alternations of compromise and intransigence, of fairness and ferocity, of subtlety and brutal¬ ity, of all his most abrupt volte-faces: they were never gratuitous nor arbitrary.” A television journalist who has recently published a book en¬ titled La France et Ses Mensonges (“France and Her Lies”) sum¬ marized this new attitude by blaming the French, saying that “they are dreaming of a Maoist China instead of seeing China as she really is.” The journalist continues thus: The whole of Mao Tse-tung’s thought is first and foremost a justification of a system which ensures the author his control of power. Mao knew better than anyone else how to “ideologize” his ambitions. His greatest theories always justily~fhe elimination of those who interfere with him or threaten him and the consolidation of his power. A wily au¬ tocrat, knowing all the resources of trickery and armed with power, he had the genius of employing the power of speech to lead the people. What are our intellectuals going to do now? Are they going to turn to Enver Hoxa’s Albania or Marshal Kim Il-sung’s North Korea? China has apparently betrayed them. We are waiting to see the working of a Mao-thought which would serve other than Mao’s ambition. The first signs of the subject seemed indicative of the fact that the successors plan to keep the trademark, but empty the bottle, making into “pure speech” a way of thinking which would die out while ceasing to serve. The French point of view of post-Mao China, of course, will not necessarily be shared by others as easily as the ever-changing fashions of French haute couture, but it is no less true to say that the post-Mao happenings in China did perplex the whole world. Many articles and books on Chinese events of the past year have already been published in western languages. Judging from these writings, I got the impression that the Chinese puzzle still re¬ mains unsolved: most Sinologists and Sinophiles have the need of

understanding the typical Chinese social structure and its histori¬ cal evolution, and thereby, the basic undercurrents in the politi¬ cal struggles and movements in modern China. / 1 had the ambitious idea of writing this book in the hope of Contributing certain knowledge that seemed lacking. My contribu¬ tion will certainly be modest, but all the same, I won’t hesitate to say that I have the advantage of being, not only a simple ob¬ server, but also involved to a certain extent with my fellow coun¬ trymen who were of my generation. In particular, three of the “gang of four” were my old acquaintances: I met Chiang Ching in Yenan, before ber marriage to Mao; Chang Chun-chiao was with me in Hankou and contributed as I did to the same short-lived magazine. The Struggle of Ting Ling; and Yao Wen-yuan was the son of a friend of mine who lived in Peking and, later on, in Chungking. As far as I can see, I am perhaps the first to try to analyze jthe political history of China from the point of view of a Chinese “intellectual” (one who differs greatly from his Western counter¬ parts); to point out the existence of a special class, “queer manFriday” intellectuals, in modern China; and to show the struggles underground between the “Muscovites” and intellectuals, on the one hand, and the tukung (“peasant communists”), on the other, within the Chinese Communist Party. The first six chapters of this book were written before the appearance of Roxane Witke’s Comrade Chiang Ching. When flipping through the latter, I found that Miss Witke has given us a very interesting picture of the Red Empress, confirming per¬ fectly what I knew of the great lady; but Miss Witke was ancon^ YTusivp in many aspects. In particular, she left us wondering about" the real relationship between Chiang Ching and Mao dur¬ ing the last decade, the real influence Chiang Ching had over Mao, the real relationship between Chiang Ching and the ambi¬ tious Lin Piao, Chiang Ching’s relationship with Chou En-lai, what led to Chiang Ching marrying Mao, and the reasons why she was never liked by the other leaders of the Party.,/ I think that the answers to all these can be found, at least partially, in my book. I may be mistaken in my opinion, but that does not mean to say that my views aren’t new or useful,Lat least as food for thought. I hope that my hardened non-conformism will help stir up fruitful discussions and lead eventually to a bet-

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ter understanding of China and the Chinese affairs of the present and future. The present book was originally written in French. This En¬ glish version was partially done by Miss Evelyn Quek, rewritten and typed out by Miss Colleen Leslar, to both of whom I owe much. I am grateful to all my friends who have lent me a hand in the completion of the book; their names, I am reluctant to enum¬ erate here in order to avoid any possible inconvenience, one way or other.

THE FALL OF MADAM MAO

1

MAO’S DEATH AND THE ARREST OF HIS WIDOW I Mao died in Peking on the September 9, 1976. It was a porten¬ tous event for the whole world. The Chinese people cried, for be¬ fore Mao, China was nothing. Mao had done everything for China: born among the ruins of an old decaying empire, ravaged by foreign invasions, revolutions, and endless civil wars, Mao fought for more than half a century and forged a new nation, the People’s Republic of China. He had thus set free from the yoke of feudal warlords and the imperialist powers a backward peasant mass amounting to almost a quarter of humanity, the inheritors of a past of servitude, of misery, and of national troubles. He had set the country on its feet, waked it from a long sleep that had lasted for more than two centuries, and made it rise by a “great leap” from the Middle Ages to the nuclear era. No doubt the way to victory is still a long one, but this immense Middle Empire, humiliated for a long time and in the throes of despair has, under the leadership of Mao, regained her self-confidence and dignity; it is now moving by giant steps towards a future befitting its physi¬ cal, cultural, and geopolitical importance. In achieving the revolution, Mao had accomplished a mission that even Stalin had judged impossible and advised against more than once. Mao thus became, in the eyes of his people, not only a hero, but also a saint, if not a god. To outsiders, during his lifetime, he had been considered first as the most subversive “red

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bandit,” then as “the great charlatan,” but upon his death he has been given by the Western press such posthumous titles as “Pro¬ metheus,” “the last prophet of the world,” “the last god,” and “the last titan of the twentieth century.” The “Great Helmsman” had arrived at the end of his long march. His death hardly surprised anyone, for he was actually eighty-two years old, and there had been rumors that he was dying for the past twenty years. Still, when the news of his death broke, it shook the entire planet. The great Chinese historian, Sima Chian, once said, (“Everyone dies, but the death of some carries less weight than a feather, whereas that of others is heavier than the mountain Tai ’ No other death in the world has been greeted with such sadness: It seemed almost unanimous except perhaps in Taiwan, where the occasion may have drawn a certain amount of rejoicing; but even in Moscow, it seemed that nobody dared to proclaim outright relief. Some rare detractors did not hesitate, however, to taunt the dead by calling Mao “the paper emperor.” In their eyes, yester¬ days China had been nothing and today’s China thus remains “the China of paper tigers.” “History that is the judge of the world,” writes Jules Michelet, “has, as its first task, to lose re¬ spect.” But those “historians” overzealous in their job, are in fact, ineffectual when they contest the role of this leader in the history of humanity. The “little red book has changed the face of the world, modeled at Yalta, and will certainly affect for a long time to come t;he fate of mankind. Even a year before China was pro¬ claimed the “People’s Republic” and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, a Parisian journalist wrote that “the des¬ tiny of the world is being played in China. Judging one genera¬ tion later, the prediction seems still valid: since 1949, Chinese in¬ fluence has not stopped growing, and the “thoughts of Mao” have expanded beyond the Chinese boundaries. “Empires have fallen,” writes the Paris Herald Tribune upon the death of Mao, “but mainland China is at a height of power that it has not been since Marco Polo journeyed there from a budding Europe.” Now it is the postwar world which is budding, and there is no saying whether world history will be heavily impregnated with impacts from the “chopsticks culture” rejuvenated by the “thought of Mao.”

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II Mao s death ended one of the most prodigious demonstra¬ tions of individual sway over history. Yet his work seems to have ended with a certain confusion: he did not name a successor or take steps to ensure the succession of the power line, ( l shall die without posterity,^ said Chairman Mao in 1959. “One of my sons has died in Korea, the other is mad.” Why did he forget to men¬ tion his two daughters? One does not quite know. Perhaps he wanted to speak indirectly about the problem of succession of leadership in the country. Like other great men before him, the father of the Chinese Revolution died even before he settled the problem of who was to succeed him; as a result, the new China he had created enters once again into a period of uncertainty. None of the old comrades or subordinates of Mao inspires respect and admiration comparable to that which the 850 million Chinese gave to their late Chairman. All founders of a new dynasty cannot be replaced; Mao him¬ self, belonged to this category of extraordinary beings, superhu¬ man and even legendary. He did have certain combat companions who possessed great charisma: the famous Chou En-lai, for exam¬ ple, but this co-founder of the Red Dynasty died eight months before, on January 8, 1976. Chu Teh, former commander in chief of the Red Army and president of the National Assembly and the Ministry of Defence, was no doubt of lesser status, but he was also incontestably respected in the Army and Party; however, he died not long before Mao, on July 5, 1976. Mao did not assign a successor from the younger generation after the purge, of Liu Shao-chi and of Lin Piao. Whatever had been the real power of Mao, already weakened by age and sick¬ ness during these last few years, his presence was in itself a factor of equilibrium. He played the role of arbitrator and had the ulti¬ mate say in moments of crisis. Thus were quarrels and confronta¬ tions avoided. The case of Teng Hsiao-ping was an obvious exam¬ ple. By the force of circumstances, Mao’s seat has now been tem¬ porarily filled, but for how long? Who today in China has suffi¬ cient authority to command the supreme power that Mao had to settle the multiple problems that can arise so quickly in such a vast and populous country? It seems that Mao did not forget to consider this problem. In

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1964, he launched a campaign to form a “generation of succes¬ sors,” not one person but “millions.” For him, this was to be the essential task of the Party, as it was the only way to ensure that power would not be grasped by a-small clique, but would be passed to the masses. Actually, the major part of the succession had already been accomplished during Mao’s lifetime, in the sense that even if Mao did hold supreme power, he did not occupy himself with the administration and the current affairs ot the state; a group of principal leaders in the Politburo exercised these functions in his place ever since the proclamation of the People’s Republic. The problem is technical: Who amongst the functionaries will become the chairman of the CCP and the actual head of state? Most Chinese analysts think that the arrangement made by Mao could not solve the basic problem, for the moment Mao was gone, even if he'was only a “figurehead,” even if the real execu¬ tive powers had passed a long time ago into the hands of others, the absence of the “Helmsman’ would create, within a short while, strife between different factions of the Party; radicals, moderates, and right-wingers would all be fighting for the reins of commaiid; rival claims disputing authority would start domestic frictions; the provinces, numerous in China and always under the authority of well-established military commanders, would start balking and actualizing the menace that Mao himself had de¬ nounced as the “constitution of independent kingdoms.” Are the Chinese to meet up with their old fate again?

Scarcely a month after the departure of the Chairman, when the obituaries and the grand ceremonies honoring the memory of the Father of the Revolution were hardly ended, when the towns were still decorated with banners and filled with the signs of mourning, a spectacular coup suddenly broke out in the Imperial Palaces of Peking: the^ Chairman’s widow Chiang Ching was ar¬ rested at the same time as three of Mao’s closest and most impor¬ tant proteges, who were accused of attempting a coup d’etat to get power into their own hands. Chances are, a purge of their followers will ensue, if it has not already begun. What actually happened? The enigma seemed inexplicable

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up to now. From Marco Polo’s time to date, China has always appeared to be a country shrouded in mystery. A French Sinologist announced his bewilderment: “Whoever wished to analyse scientifically the Chinese reality cannot but come to one conclusion: it is not the cause that creates the effect but the re¬ verse!” For him, “China is a universe that is strangely a-causal. ... In the twentieth century, miracles and mysteries run the span of the 'Avenue of the Long Peace’ and the ancient ‘bund’ of Shanghai.” Another expert of no less eminence remarks with derision: “Instead of mobilizing millions of people to end in the re¬ education of four, it would have been simply better to kill off a certain number secretly or to torture the rest of the innumerable dungeons.” And he warned sarcastically: “It is dangerous to incite children to play with matches; one runs the risk one day of set¬ ting fire to the house. Especially upon grounds as changeable as politics, where yesterday’s good becomes today’s bad and where today’s good can easily become tomorrow’s bad. ...” Soon after the dramatic coup in the Red Palace, two nuclear tests took place and an earthquake, similar to the one that rav¬ aged Tangshan, caused new catastrophes in Tientsin and the envi¬ rons of the capital; but all that could not stifle the scandal sur¬ rounding the fall of Madam Mao and her cronies. China observers continued to scrutinize the dazibao (“wall newspapers”), to read in between the lines of news cables, to interview people who had just come out of the country, and to worry about the fate of the country that had lost its leader. The life of the “Great Helmsman was a great historical act that interested the whole world; but on his death a black cloth fell upon the “bamboo curtain. Will China enter henceforth into a new age of chaos? What exactly is her position now? The following questions of major importance are now on the agenda: —Will the political situation in China stabilize after the elimination of the “four pests”? Conseauentlv, does the succes¬ sion mark the beginning or the end of “palace intrigues ? —The “gang of four” represented, in the eyes of foreign ob¬ servers, the progressive leftist tendency. Now that the Four have disappeared, has the fundamental weight of the left lost its sub¬ stance? Today, what are the reactions of the forces at the base— young factory workers, rural workers coming from the poor peasantry, and radical intellectuals?

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—It is true that no one knows who is at the controls: the moderates seem to be there, whereas the extremist “radicals” seem to have lost ground. The immediate confusion that threatened when Mao breathed his last has momentarily dissi¬ pated. But in which direction will the new leadership steer the boat? Who comprises the ruling group and what are their real motives? Are they the real political heirs of the “Father of the Revolution”? Or are they merely functionaries and opportunists who have put on the mantle of the dead hero? —The four “favorites” of Mao, in the eyes of foreign obser¬ vers, incarnate orthodox Maoism and the spirit of the Cultural Revolution. Does one assume then, from their arrests, that it was the four who have been eliminated or is it the Cultural Revolu¬ tion itself? No one had foreseen such a violent and sudden crisis. During Mao’s funeral, the far left—those that the West called “radicals”—seemed to be solidly implanted in power. Three weeks later, all of these “favorites” were crushed. The flow of ac¬ cusations, of a somewhat incredible nature, directed against them leads one to ask: Is it a return to the “chinoiseries” of yesterday’s China? Are today’s politics a fall back to the intrigues of the an¬ cient Imperial Court? —The new power characterizes itself for the moment by a strong desire for equilibrium, and seems to want to run up against the fewest enemies possible. There appears to be a lack of interest in delineating their position, whatever it is. A closer look, however, will show that none of the theories in favour before the crisis has been completely abandoned or repudiated. Some of these have simply been given secondary importance. Is this new episode in the history of the Chinese Revolution at a stage of un¬ certainty that can mark a momentary loss of equilibrium or at the beginning of a great total upset? The new ruling class in whom authority has yet to be ensured is at the moment without any ideological cement; does it then look to maintain order at all cost or to leave each player to call his own tune? Will the political body try to expand their own privileges; the militarists, to claim their dukedoms as payment for having helped to “make the king ”; the workers, to demand higher salaries; the peasants, to claim a bet¬ ter life; the writers, artists, teachers, and students, to seek free¬ dom of culture? —Will the non-Chinese Maoists, who have followed with anx¬ iety the evolution of the events in China as they look for theoret-

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ical solutions to the problems of their own countries, keep their confidence in the fighting value and the ideology of Mao’s thoughts? What can become of their fundamental reflections on the Chinese Revolution? /-A—How is it possible to drag in the mud the wife of Caesar without putting into question Caesar himself? Is it not Mao and Maoism that were attacked when Madam Mao and her close col¬ laborators were accused of plotting against Mao instead of putting into action his orders? Is it possible that “de-Maoization” has al¬ ready started? Mao’s mortal remains have been carefully kept, embalmed in a crystal coffin, but will his works be re-edited in such a way that his political directives of these last years be kept in silence?

IV All these questions involve a number of assumptions which must be analyzed in order to understand the political evolution in China today. But the lack of concrete facts makes clarity of expla¬ nation difficult. Yet one important thing comes to mind, which the Western press did not overlook, but has not tried to inter¬ pret: It is the general joy that was felt by the Chinese people themselves, in China as well as overseas, upon the arrest of Madam Mao and her cronies, j) Here are some extracts taken at random from Western press reports. According to a French paper : The fight for places in China has ended for once in a popu¬ lar joy that is not merely superficial. Certainly, the good people of Peking, well-known for their circumspection and prudence, would not have taken to the streets without hav¬ ing been invited, prepared and briefed. But all witnesses agree: the manifestations of last Thursday (21 October) at Tien An Men Square had too much dancing, too much sing¬ ing and were too bold to be pure fabrication. Another French paper confirms: Don’t the manifestations favorable to the new government transmit a certain desire of the masses tired by too much

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ideological campaigns and continual tensions? And the English press came up with the following: As far as the outsiders could judge, most ordinary Chinese were happy about the fall of the unpopular Chiang Ching, and they seemed to be relieved that China’s chronic factional feuding was at least temporarily at an end. The demonstrations and the attacks on the radicals quickly 'pro¬ duced pledges of allegiance to Hua from army units, fac¬ tories, communes, and local revolutionary committees all over China. Even Hsiao Hsing Chung, the rural brigade once praised by Chiang Ching herself as “a model of politi¬ cal awakening,” jumped onto the moderate wagon. Peking and Tsinghua universities, two radical strongholds, de¬ nounced their own left-wing administrators, and after a somewhat slow start, the radical-dominated city of Shanghai expressed exuberant support for Hua and the Central Committee. . . . On the surface at least, the Chinese people seemed ut¬ terly complacent about Hua’s move. Under a wan autumn sun, armies of workers pedaled past Peking’s Forbidden City with no sign of curiosity about the convulsive events taking place behind its walls. Some Western observers fur¬ ther speculated that the public disdained Madam Mao as a common scold and was tired of the political upheavels of the recent past . . . The Chinese people are fed up with the radicals and are dying to get down to a calm, non-political life. A Hong Kong review says it even more clearly: Everyone coming out of China these days has the same story to tell: the people there are hugging themselves with glee. This is not simply because some rather foolish oppor¬ tunists now nicknamed “the gang of four” were predictably outmanoeuvred by the seasoned generals of the People’s Liberation Army and the long-intimidated Chinese bureau¬ cracy:! Certainly the Chinese, like other people, enjoy seeing

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a vain and ruthless woman taken apart in public, together with her creatures. . . . It was clear that many people hadn’t known which side to support. But when it became apparent that there was broad popular support for the purge, there was a strong mood of relief and even euphoria. Thousands of schoolchildren marched past the caricatures giggling, laughing and pointing at Chiang Ching . . . The people were appar¬ ently being given more details than were appearing in the posters, and there was no sign of dissent.

V Can we explain this curious phenomenon? While China ob¬ servers were astonished at the brutality and the apparent com¬ plexity of the recent events, the Chinese congratulated them¬ selves unanimously. It was too big a contrast to pass unnoticed and to remain without explication. In the author’s opinion, the reason why foreigners failed to grasp the significance of events was their ignorance of the Chinese mentality and the history of modern China. As a matter of fact the arrest of Madam Mao was foreseen well before it happened in informed circles. The Far Eastern Economic Review of September 17, 1976, wrote: The 64 million dollar question—what will happen after Mao’s death—is being posed by knowlegeable circles in Hong Kong in a new form. These circles are now taking it as virtually inevitable that Chiang Ching will be driven into obscurity, probably together with Yao Wen-yuan and Wang Hung-wen, shortly after the Chairman’s death. (People in Canton are already referring to her as the Empress Dow¬ ager”.) These words were evidently written before Mao’s death; they were not given any attention because it was not understood that, at the moment when Chou En-lai died, the problem of succession to the chairmanship had already become the burning question ol the day. During the April 5 riots in Peking, Chairman Mao

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seemed to have taken very prudent steps: first, he dismissed Teng Hsiao-ping, but took care not to expel him from the Party—It wasT'nScessary to avoid giving an excuse TO" the-- radicals to “turn the tables and to start afiother Cultural Revolution (be¬ cause Teng was already injured during the first); second, Mao named, to the surprise of everyone, a young unknown, Hua Kuofeng, as successor to Teng. That he had not chosen a new leader from among the “radicals” signified that Madam Mao had already lost her standing. Tf she had not been able to obtain the first post for her party members from the then living Mao, a coup d’etat in the palace the moment the “emperor died was predictable, especially when one bore in mind the innumerable historical les¬ sons contained in the Twenty-Six Histories of ancient China. It was even possible that the show of hands by Hua three weeks after the obsequies for the Chairman was actually Mao’s idea because it should be known—and everyone does know it— that Mao was not at all a romantic, but a great revolutionary Communist all his life. Even if he did marry Chiang Ching thirty-eight years before, whether out of love or need, he kept her in his “golden room” for nearly fifteen years without letting her appear as a public figure.'.It was only in 1962, after the Ko¬ rean War, when things went so badly for him that he was forced to retire to Lushan to recuperate from an “illness,” where in fact he outlined his plans for the Cultural Revolution, did Madam Mao suddenly come to the fore. But would Mao leave his life’s work, built up over so many years at the price of so many sac¬ rifices and sufferings, so much bloodshed and tears, to a successor without merit nor competence under the idle pretext that he had shared his bedroom with her? To do so would be incomprehensi¬ ble to the Chinese mentality. To base a lot upon this reasoning is perhaps a little trivial, but the author is willing to believe that the document addressed to Hua and said to have been written by the hand of the late Chairman on April 30, 1976—a document, saying that “with you in charge, I can be at ease”—is not completely without truth. Hua, acting according to the directives of Mao or according to his own initiative, brutally arrested the widow, even before “the mortal remains of the Chairman were dry.” In doing so, he had to have solid reasons and be sure of the support of public opinion, which he had to face. Being Chinese, he understood per¬ fectly the mentality of the cadres, the officers, and the soldiers.

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and especially the general public: Everyone remembered clearly and vividly the “Empress Dowager” and her infamous eunuchs, who had caused China great disaster at the beginning of this cen¬ tury. The “Empress Dowager” in question was the contemporary of Queen Victoria of England/jlf the English people of today begin to reject the viewpoint that Queen Victoria did good for Great Britain, the Chinese, on their side, have not forgotten what her Chinese counterpart did for China. She was one of the con¬ cubines of the Emperor Hsian Feng (1851-1861); she poisoned the legal empress, usurped her title, and upon the death of her son in 1875, installed her nephew as emperor, contrary to both tradition and law. She constructed the incredibly luxurious Sum¬ mer Palace of Peking with funds destined for the construction of the naval forces. She destroyed the first “reform movement” of 1898, caused national crisis, and gave away national territories to foreign powers, all of which resulted finally in the Boxer Revolt of 1900, which ruined the country. The Ching empire fell ten years later, but the Republic was not able to release herself from her debts and her misery before the Great Revolution of 1949. All Chinese aged more than seventy years have a vivid memory of the famous year of kengtse (1900), and their children have learnt by heart the legends of the “boxers” and the barba¬ rian soldiers who invaded Peking to set fire to the Summer Palace. These historical scenes are so fresh to the Chinese that nobody is ignorant of the old villainous witch, her extravagance, her cruelties, and her reputed bad temper. How could one avoid associating her with Madam Mao, for they both appear to play ac¬ tive and turbulent roles in troubled political times ?JJ Chinese are not necessarily misogynists, but they are cer¬ tainly inclined that way in politics, being conscious of their un¬ forgettable historical lessons. Besides the Empress Dowager Tsi Hsi (1825-1908), one finds the famous Madam Chiang Kai-shek: the family Kung (that of her brother-in-law) and the family Song (that of her brother) governed China and were responsible for the fall of the Nationalist regime on the continent. The history of China abounds with legendary great female despots. The first and the most known was the Empress Lu, wife and war companion of the founder of the Han Dynasty (206— 220 B.C.). She contributed to the success of the Emperor Kaozu (206—195 B.C.) and participated in the massacres of former war

11

companions, so that when the emperor died, the imperial power no longer belonged to the imperial family of Liu, but to the Em¬ press’s family of Lu. She assumed the regency of the throne from 195 B.C. until her death in 180 B.C. and it needed a bloody coup d’etat to oust the Lu’s and re-establish the rightful Liu on the throfte. These events constitute the themes of numerous Peking opera plays. Another celebrated imperial usurper lived during the Tang dynasty (619—907 A.D.), the second greatest empire in world history after the Han. She was the famous Empress Wu, one of the concubines of the Emperor Kao-zung (651—683), a Chinese “Marie de Medicis” who lived nearly one thousand years before the French queen herself. At the death of Kao-zung, Empress Wu assumed the regency in 684. Eventually, she usurped the throne to found a new dynasty in 690, which she maintained for fifteen years until she was overthrown by her own son, whom she had sent into exile. It was the only case in Chinese history where the empire was truly ruled by a woman. Before the Great Rev¬ olution, the Confucian writers never spared her any attacks. They regarded her as the symbol of brutality and despotism. Only alter the Great Revolution, the poet Kuo Mojuo, now one of Pek¬ ing’s leaders, reversed the judgement in one of his historical plays; and during the last few years, in occasional articles published in Chinese press, an effort was made to give her a more flattering image, just as Lin Yu-tang and some Western historians had done in the West. In a Chinese ballet called “The Brigade of Red Amazons,” the dying hero demands that the heroine take his place of com¬ mand in the revolution. The author of the play was sometimes al¬ leged to be Madam Mao herself. Did she really think that she could succeed her husband in real life? It is a point that we may leave to future historians to clear up if it amuses them to waste their time. But, judging from her personal history, one thing seems clear/ Chiang Ching’s over-zealousness in “revolution” against all and sundry was surely one of the most unfortunate steps in her political career.

12

2

THE CAUSE OF CHIANG CHING’S FALL

Mao’s wife and her cronies are generally thought of in the West as the representatives of the progressive movement within the Chinese Communist Party, that is, the extremist left-wing “radi¬ cals.” Chiang Ching was Mao’s wife and the other three—Wang Hung-wen, Chang Chun-chiao and Yao Wen-yuan—were Mao’s young favorites. All consider themselves Mao’s torch bearers and sentinels of the revolutionary spirit. The word “radicals” is put here in quotation marks because, despite the fact that it is cur¬ rently used internationally when talking about Chinese affairs, it is very often an antiphrasis when applied to particular persons. Political tendencies in China following the Cultural Revolution generally have but one source—Mao’s thoughts. If different fac¬ tions, groups and tendencies do exist among the Maoists, all of them quote Mao to a maximum in order to justify themselves, to reinforce their positions, or simply to protect themselves. Which is to say that in most cases when there is a dispute of “lines,” it is more a conflict between personalities or naked ambitions than anything else. In his meeting with George Pompidou, Mao admitted that he was a “centrist leftist.” How can one then pretend that his wife and the rest of the “gang of Shanghai,” who supposedly are the incarnations of the Maoist spirit, stand on the extreme left? In the author s opinion, the word “Shanghai” in association with them is most pertinent.

13

Professor John Fairbanks, an eminent Sinologist, has more than once tried to put forth his own interpretations of the political process in today’s China. According to him, the Chinese political tradition is made up of two disparate currents of thought which often come into conflict: the agro-bureaucratic tradition from in¬ land China, and the commercial-maritime tradition from the coas¬ tal and adjacent regions, particularly southern and eastern China. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was the coastal regions that produced the most famous revolutionaries because of their easier contacts with the West, contacts which usually gave birth to revolt against foreign exploitation. Sun Wen (Sun Yat-sen), the father of the Republican Revolution, and Chiang Kai-shek were both from the South. On the other hand, Mao, being from the inland provice of Hunan, lacked direct contact with foreign coun¬ tries and could only, at best, read about them from translated texts. During the Cultural Revolution, as everyone knows, prac¬ tically all the left-wing extremists were associated with the city of Shanghai, the centre of the “bourgeois compradors.” The three titans—Wang, Chang, and Yao—were from Shanghai, and Chiang Ching was from Shantung Province, though she lived and made her career as an actress and movie star in Shanghai. To all appearances, the “gang of Shanghai” seemed the most devoted and loyal apostles of Mao’s party line. As they main¬ tained, China must observe and apply rigidly Mao’s thought: China must be kept in a state of perpetual revolution, depend only upon herself, and resolve her social, economic, political and diplomatic problems through her own efforts and resources, inde¬ pendently of all foreign or bourgeois influence. This was Mao’s position after the Sino-Soviet break-off, when China was “con¬ tained” by Americans on her eastern and southern flanks and by the Russians on the north and west. At that time Mao was held by world opinion to be saber-rattling, aggressive, expansionist, megalomaniac jingoist. However, Mao’s hard-line philosophy was to become that of Chiang Ching and company. They exploited it in their political and cultural activities to keep their key places in the political arena, to maintain their prestige and their authority over the youth movements and radicals, and to solve problems, including those that had no direct relation to either politics or ideology.

14

Of course, it is not true that Chiang Ching and her group did not have any concrete knowledge of Chinese politics and China itself, but it is not wrong either to say that they were not veteran, experienced revolutionaries. They had no noticeable records dur¬ ing the Long March and the Great Revolution. They came to power only through the Cultural Revolution. “Newcomers,” they dominated ever since their arrival the Party organization, the mass media, artistic and literary activities, and in part, the militia. In the eyes of foreigners, they are “radicals.” But as far as Chinese public opinion is concerned, they are the “Shanghai status seekers.” In this regard, it is well to understand what the word “Shang¬ hai means to the Chinese in order to understand the Chinese mentality, in particular, that of the inland Chinese. Before the Great Revolution, Shanghai was a port at the mouth of the Blue River, a large cosmopolitan city where most of the European “settlements” could be found, independent en¬ claves in a country reduced to impotence under the yoke of the “unequal treaties.” The Chinese government had neither power in these concessions nor any rule over the foreigners, who en¬ joyed extraterritorial rights even outside the concessions. Shang¬ hai was the adventurers’ paradise, a great, lively, prosperous, and international metropolis. Anything could be found here: legal and contraband goods, money, unemployment, missionaries, pros¬ titutes, peasants and sophisticates, spies and secret societies, revolutionaries, and the unscrupulous . . . most of all, the last. The Chinese word haipai originally meant “Shanghai-style,’ but most often, pejoratively, “neither fish, flesh nor fowl,’ and it has thus come to be synonymous for the Chinese with scandal and decadence. It happens that the core of Chiang Ching’s group of “radi¬ cals” was largely recruited out of Shanghai and from among Shang¬ hainese. Certainly, Shanghai is no longer what it was before the Great Revolution, but the man in the street still judges Shang¬ hainese with an eye largely coloured by the prejudices of those days. There are many rumours surrounding Chiang Ching’s life outside Shanghai. She was born in 1913 or 1914 in Shantung Prov¬ ince, the home of Confucius and Mencius. Gossip has it that

15

her family were poor peasants and that she was sold at the age of fifteen, after being kidnapped by a travelling theatre group. Her original name was supposedly Luan Shu-ming, but this hardly seems possible, since Chairman Mao called her Li Chin) in one of his poems, which we shall see later. Moreover, one of her daughters is named Li Na. Thus, her surname is most likely Li. It is also said that she was never sold to or kidnapped by a travelling theatre group. In any case, she did study at the School of Experimental Theatre in Tsinan, capital of the province of Shantung. From there, or perhaps from Tsingtao, she left for Shanghai where, shortly afterwards, she became an actress and later a movie star. In 1934 and 1935, she starred in two films made in Shanghai: The Storm and The Children of the Mother Country. Her stage name, Lan Ping (Emerald Apple), was fairly well known. So were her publicized romances: first, her “penta¬ gonal love affair,” which resulted in her marriage in April 1936 to the cinema critic Tang Na, whom she left soon after; then, her cohabitation with the playwright Chang Min. In 1937> like most young people, she left Shanghai, then under attack by the Japanese army, and joined a traveling theatre group which had been formed to entertain troops of the national resistance armies. In the same year, she went to Wuhan, then to Chungking, and finally to Yenan, the famous red capital of the era. Before she came to that political center, which was attracting world-wide attention and to which patriots, radicals, and simple curiosity-seekers were flowing; Chiang Ching had no history of political activities, whatever may be said or written about the matter. In Yenan, she began acting in anti-Japanese plays. Later, she entered the Institute of Luhsun, where she met Mao. Two years latejv>no one knows the exact date, she married the Chairman". Some say that one day in autumn, when the Communist authorities were having a meeting in a cave that served as a conference room (in Yenan, the population is partially troglodyte), a cave below the one used by Chairman Mao himself. Miss Lan Ping rushed in, raised her hand and asked to be al¬ lowed to speak. “I have good news for all of you,” she said, “Chairman Mao and I have started living together.” Her audience was shocked by the unexpected announcement and was left speechless. Finally, it was the Chairman himself who, after a cer¬ tain lapse of silence, broke the stilled atmosphere. “It is true.

16

) And we are going to continue to live together. But just remember one thing. This has got nothing to do with politics. We are in wartime. AncTas for you, Lan Ping, stay out of politics.” No one knows the truth of this story. One thing is certain: Lan Ping, having become Mrs. Mao, changed her name to Chiang Ching and did not appear in public for fifteen years, until just before the Cultural Revolution. /lAWhy the name change? Some say it was Mao’s idea; the Chairman himself had given her the new name. This is again rather improbable for in the poem written by Mao in 1961 on the photograph she took, he referred to her as Li Chin and not Chiang Ching. Any educated Chinese will be able to see that Chiang Ching is a name that she picked herself because it is part of the familiar locution ching chu tju lan er cheng iju Ian (“azure comes from the emerald and triumphs over the emerald ”). If Mao s wife changed her name from lan (“emerald”) to ching ( azure ), it would be to express contentment with her own success. Furthermore, the Chinese word for “sky”—ching tian—may refer to the euphoric satisfaction Mao’s wife experienced on the day after her marriage, for there exists another well know locution, yipu teng tian (“in one step to the sky”). The name “Chiang Ching” may depict her climb (chiang) to the sky (ching). Hsing chiang yipu tengshang ching tianP All names have a meaning in Chinese, so too would Mao’s wife’s. Besides, two of her pen names indicate her ambition: sometimes, she signs Chu Lan (“First Waves”), which is an expression composed of two Chinese homonyms that appear in the aforementioned phrase ching chu yu lan. And sometimes Chiang Ching signs her name as Chiang Tian (River Sky), a name evidently drawn from the Chinese locution hsing chiang yipu teng tian (“in one step to the sky”), which we have already cited. She appears then to be using in her pseudonym a homonym which means “river,” instead of chiang, which means “about to (climb).”

Mao’s wife remained contentedly at home in marital bliss for fifteen years. In 1962, she suddenly became a public figure, this time on the political scene.^Why this unexpected re-appearance

17

9 after such a long silence? No explanation has yet been offered, In the author’s opinion, if the marriage was not for political reasons, the re-appearance most assuredly was. In the early sixties, Mao was being attacked from all sides simultaneously, from within as well as outside the country. He was criticized for being the author of all the economic, political, and diplomatic disasters of the country: his “Great Leap Forward” had brought chaos to the cities and the countryside; his disputes with the “Muscovites” and the pro-Soviets had created divisions within the Party; his refusal to modernize the army disgruntled veterans of the Korean War, as well as the younger officers; fi¬ nally his quarrels with Moscow had resulted in a complete break-off of relations with the USSR, the USSR having abruptly decided to pull out its technical advisors and leave China to her own fate. The Chairman found himself thus in a difficult position^ to the extent that he was obliged to resign from the presidency and retire to the South to undergo medical treatment. In his an¬ thology of poems, there are two, dated 1961, which are interest¬ ing in this regard. One is dated September 9, and serves as an inscription on a photograph taken by Comrade Li Chin (his wife Chiang Ching) in front of the Cave of the Immortals in Lushan. The other, dated November 17, is dedicated to Comrade Kuo Mojuo. Both are reflections of the Chairman’s state of mind then: Look at the robust pines in the grey twilight, Forever tranquil when the clouds fly away in disorder. And the Cave of the Immortals, a masterpiece of nature. What beauty is hidden in the perilous pinnacle! $ yTy This poem alluded quite obviously to his own circumstances then. Mao compared himself to the pines in the forest, still robust despite old age (twilight) and calm, despite the confusion that was brewing (the clouds flying away in disorder). Mao appeared to be in temporary retirement to admire the scenery; but in reality he was preparing his return to power in a manner that gave him con¬ fidence to face grave danger. The second poem alludes to an episode taken from the classi¬ cal Chinese novel, The Pilgrim to the West, the story of the long and hazardous odyssey of Hsuan Tzang, a sixth-century Buddhist monk who travels to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. He

18

has numerous adventures on the way. Hsuan Tzang regularly falls into traps set for him by demons and devils, and each time he is saved in the nick of time by the fabulous personage called Sun, the Great Sage or the “Golden Monkey.” Gifted with many supernatural powers, Sun accompanies the monk during his travels in the quest for truth. Sun the Monkey, the Chinese popular hero, is the symbol of Man, whose audacity enables him to rise up against celestial laws and earthly despots. Energetic, tempestuous, rough, and yet true to his promises and loyal to the monk, he sees through hypocrisy and lies and does not hesitate to defend the monk when he is in danger. The episode described in the poem relates to an incident in which a skeleton demon attempts to kidnap the monk. The allseeing Monkey, of course, recognizes him despite his disguise. But the monk refuses to believe the warnings that he hears. He takes his friend for a cruel man and his enemy for a magnanimous prince, letting the demon escape three times. Mao’s stanzas might be translated thus: As soon as the tempest arises over the earth, Demons are born out of piles of skeletons. The monk, even though naive and stupid, can be educated, But the monster, emerging from the world of devils, will wreak havoc. The Golden Monkey waves his cudgel of a thousand tsins And the dust is swept off ten thousand lis under the heavens of jade. Today again we hail Sun the Great Sage, For the evil spirit has come back, bringing with him his thick fog. Mao alludes here to his fight against revisionism. He com¬ pared the revisionists to skeleton demons, Liu Shao-chi to the monk, Khrushchev to the monster emerging from the world of dev¬ ils, and himself to the Great Sage. This was but a short while after the Twenty-second Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. The controversy between Peking and Moscow was being resuscitated, and the entire world ap¬ peared hostile to China and was predicting its ruin. Within its borders, the country was then the victims of disasters in the ag-

19

ricultural sector because of the continued drought. From outside, she had to face the challenge of Russia and the United States, si¬ multaneously.

Ill In the minority since September 1956, when the Eighth Party Congress had been held, shortly after Khrushchev began attacking Stalin in public, Mao, stoically, indefatigably working in seclusion, prepared his return to the summit. During this time, Chiang Ching made herself useful, running errands for him from one end of the country to the other incognito, and gathering in¬ formation to help him keep abreast. Since Chiang Ching knew only Shanghai, and had no per¬ sonal relations outside that city, Shanghai became the center of her, activities and later her headquarters. /a it was natural that Chiang Ching should, under the circtiftistances, become more and more essential to Mao. Finally, in 1962, she made her first appearance on the political scene. Clutching the Little Red Book, she let loose, along with Lin Piao, all the furors of the Cultural Revolution. She was, for all intents and purposes, Mao’s spokeswoman among the newly amassed forces of the extreme left, and during that period, she appeared as Mao’s close collaborator. In the fall of 1966, she had become sufficiently important to appear in a military uniform next to Mao during a big parade of one million Red Guards. Two weeks later, she received the title of vice-president of the Cultural Revolution on the Party Central Committee. This was her hour of glory, perhaps the only one in her life. For without an educational background (she holds neither a secondary school certificate nor a university degree) nor a revolutionary career behind her, she could not go any further. .’^But Chiang Ching’s ambitions were without limits. Encour¬ aged by her success on the stage and screen, her patriotic ac¬ tivities, and her marriage to the Chairman, fortified by secret missions and her elevation to the rank of Party leaders, she aimed for greater heights. If we are to believe the accusations of the new regime in Peking, then we could even say that she may have been coveting the presidency itself in the belief that she could succeed Mao.

20

To what extent did Mao actually appreciate his wife? Nobody is in a position to give an unequivocal answer. All that we know is that during his lifetime, Mao never encouraged Chiang Ching be¬ yond the sixth place in the Party hierarchy, notwithstanding the personal contributions of this “Sehora Peron” during the tumultu¬ ous years of the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, if Mao s personal writings about his private affairs are any indication, all one can find is his one romantic poem in remembrance of his first wife, \ang Kai-hui, dated 1957 and entitled “An Answer to Lee Shuyi. Lee was one of Yang’s best friends; she had lost her husband, whose name was Liu (“willow”) during the Revolution, just as Mao lost his wife, Yang (“poplar”): I have lost my poplar as you your willow, The one and the other are united trembling in the Ninth Heaven, Ask Wu Kang what gifts he offers them, For them, he brings out his divine mead. The Goddess of the Moon spreads her ample sleeves in her solitude, Up there she is dancing on ten thousand li for the loyal souls. Suddenly the earth announces that the Tiger has been tamed. And tears of joy flow out in a torrential rain. Wu Kang, in Chinese mythology, was the chief guardian of the moon. The Tiger symbolizes the old regime of Chiang Kai-shek. The love that Mao cherished for his first wife is well evident in the poem. Chiang Ching’s jealousy was evident; the People’s Daily of December 8 reports that once she went so far as to censor a footnote concerning Yang in an English edition of Mao’s poems which was published in May 1976. Certainly, Chiang Ching was not in agreement with Mao in his judgement of her talents and abilities. In any case, after the Cultural Revolution, she continued to act in the name of Mao and to exercise an enormous influence over the press, the univer¬ sities, and literature and the arts. She kept her place as a member of the Central Committee and of the Politburo. /\What was her real political role, aside from her personal rela¬ tionship with Mao? She never made any positive contribution nor had any real influence in Party affairs or in the country. All that can be retained from her words and her actions was that she found her major weapon in one quotation from Mao Tse - tung : “To

21

revolt is just!” Thus, she could revolt for any reason, any time, anywhere. Let us take a recent concrete example: On the July 28, 1976, a disastrous earthquake struck ' and ravaged the region of Tangshan, causing great losses of human life as well as equip¬ ment. Concerned about the population of the affected region. Chairman Mao, still living then, and the Party Central Commit¬ tee sent, on the same day, a message expressing their sympathy and the first shipments of aid. Prime Minister Hua flew im¬ mediately to the area to take charge of relief operations and the task of reconstruction. It would have been absurd to question the authority of this troubleshooter for the task at hand, particularly under the tragic circumstances. Yet the “Shanghai radicals” not only refused to travel to the area, but asserted that the attention given by the Central Committee to the earthquake and its af¬ termath was an excuse of “ignoring the class struggle.” “In this preoccupation with the earthquake, a handful of people are trying to block the revolution and the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping,” they claimed. “This earthquake only alfected a region of a few hundred square kilometres. It’s just a matter of a few months.” As far as they were concerned, it was merely a minor and insignificant thing compared to the “one cause of major importance,” i.e., to continue the attacks against the former vice-prime minister and the vice-president of the Party, who had dared to denigrate Chiang Ching’s projects for the reform of the theatre and the cinema. One of the four Shanghainese, Yao Wen-yuan-, even pub¬ lished article about the disaster, in which he quoted these two lines written by the emperor of the “Taiping” (1850-1864): The earthquake hails the advent of a new world. And the wheeling of the skies consecrates the New Dynasty for eternity. Did the author imply that the calamities brought by the earth¬ quake and the “wheeling of the skies’ were the opportunity for founding a new dynasty, and the scourge, a cause for rejoicing? The entire world was shaken by these misfortunes which struck far-off China, but one of the important leaders of the coun¬ try itself remained, to all appearances, unmoved. He was proud to find in them a good auspice confirming “the advent of a new

22

dynasty. How can anyone believe then, in the face of such in¬ sensitivity, that Chairman Mao during his last breath had the slightest idea of choosing a possible candidate to succeed him from amongst the “radicals”? .

IV It is dillicult to establish Chiang Ching’s virtues. However, according to the foreign press, it would seem that shey is imaginative, tenacious, with a facility of words.” There are those .

who say that she is also “violent, often unreasonable, vituperative A' and vindictive. The American writer, Roxane Witke, who wrote her biography, told journalists after fhe arrest of Mao’s wife that she is “highly intelligent, contefitibus, physically strong, though had a great many ailmenbC Great endurance. Can talk for hours without resting, when others get tired. Extraordinarily energetic and imaginative, gifted at manipulating people. Extremely au¬ thoritative and commandeering to an extent that one rarely expe¬ riences in a Chinese woman, or a woman of any culture. She’s not embarrassed about exercising authority.” All this cannot be simple fabrication. An accusation against her by a young civil servant more or less confirms the legend of the great lady: Chiang Ching came to Tachai twice, once in September of last year and once in September this year. . . . We saw her ourselves. This was about the time that Mao’s illness was worsening. The Central Committee wanted her to re¬ turn immediately to Peking, and the rest of us did the best to allow her to leave as soon as possible, but she was taking her time and didn’t want to leave Tachai. We heard her speaking with our own ears. This is an ambitious woman who wishes to become empress of China. She speaks con¬ tinually of matriarchal societies in history and claims that women too can attain great power and is uninhibitedly boastful. What luxury and sumptuousness we saw her living in everyday! She flaunts her privileges and diversions of the rich while she squanders the sweat and blood of the workers, and as much as she desires! We understood that she also hated us, the people of Tachai, she hated us with a passion.

23

Last year, in September, as soon as she arrived she accused us of not wanting to criticize the novel At the Waier’s Edge; she was about to accuse us of being “capitulationists.” She came back again this year. Waving her arms, she announced to us that she had come to fight Teng Hsiao-ping. Was Teng Hsiao-ping in Tachai? . . . She wasn’t fighting Teng Hsiaoping in Peking, why come looking for him here? She was picking quarrels every day and trying to incriminate us. We had built a pigsty; and she told us it was Teng Hsiao-ping’s idea. We filled a ditch where she had dug and dug another for her elsewhere, and she said that it was Teng Hsiaoping’s ideas. And we justly protested: “Tachai was the red flag that Chairman Mao himself had planted, the people of Tachai listens to the Chairman, and we are criticizing Teng Hsiao-ping resolutely. We can’t accept absolutely the things you’re saying to us. Chiang Ching grew furious and en¬ raged, hearing us talking like this, and told us: “You are in¬ solent, you are retrograde!” And she taught us a lesson; “You aren’t listening to me. ...” This brief narration, if it is authentic, vividly describes the Chiang Ching personality. Certainly she is gifted with a number of good points, but some of her characteristics would not always be suitable for a lady occupying the position of a “Sehora Peron” in a country far more vast and populated than Argentina. ) How Chairman Mao could have chosen such a creature to be his third wife remains a mystery. The historians of the future may. be able to answer that question. No doubt he had personal reasons.

V During the first part of his stay in Yenan, Mao was not com¬ pletely at ease. Not long after setting up the new base, the Cen- , vy tral Committee, dominated by the Muscovites and large detach-^ ^ merits which were not under his direct ^command, arrived. Caught too much in between the “rubles” 'find the “rifles,” Mao was forced to give up his position. He was elected to the Chair¬ manship of the Military Committee of the Party in Tsunyi in 1935, thanks to the strong support of Chou En-lai and Liu Pocheng, but the “enlarged’ Politburo conference was not recog-

24

nized by the Party, and its decisions were not approved until much later. At that time, he was called "‘President ’ Mao by everyone, but he presided neither over the government of the border re¬ gions, nor over the Central Committee. He was one of the top men in the Politburo, although subordinate to Chang Wen-tian, the Party secretary. The press and the publishing services were under the control of the Muscovite intellectuals and theoreticians, who always sought to oppose Mao. He finally gave up the pres¬ idency of the government of the border regions to Chang Kuotao on grounds of ill-health and contented himself with teaching. At the Luhsun Institute, his meeting and later his marriage to Lan Ping were circumstantial. His first wife, Yang Kai-hui, had been beheaded by Chiang Kai-shek in 1930. His second was to Ho Tsi-chen, who left him, although it is said that Mao divorced her—for personal or political reasons./ In Yenan, girls were con¬ siderably less numerous than boys. Lan Ping was one of the few girls there and was a member of the elite besides/ But in the face of the apparent opposition expressed by his colleagues, Mao was forced to keep his new wife away from the Party and politics for quite a while.); In 1962, Chiang Ching, ex-Lan Ping, resurfaced, for Mao was once again in the minority, and his authority was weakening under the preponderance of the Muscovite “rightists” in the Party, who were proselytizing Marxist internationalism in direct opposition to Mao’s Sinism. Mao had insisted that Marxism be adapted to the Chinese milieu, but the militarists had gained status through the Korean War and demanded that the army be modernized according to the Russian mode. Little by little, Mao risked disappearing completely to the advantage of his comrades in whom he had “put too much trust,” and who had built up their own authority over the power structure. A/Faced with unfavorable perspectives, Mao prepared a plan of retirement in order to regain his position as the center of author¬ ity. It was then that he brought out his idle wife, and Chiang Ching appeared ready to share the leadership of the Cultural Rev¬ olution with Lin Piao, whose wife, Yeh Ch un, is one of her closest friends. Achiang Ching nonetheless had no political experience. To get herself started, she used her old base at Shanghai, the city she knew best. It was there that she recruited her “gang.” Chang Chun-chiao was the eldest of the “gang.” He was one

25

of the writers belonging to the former “Left League.’ Little known before the War. Chiang Ching became ^at+icirlarly at¬ tached to him, as to a great Machiavellian, Both took part in the Peking Opera Club, which met from time to time after the war at the Mei Lung Chen restaurant, kept by a Szechuanese woman named Wu Mai. /^This “Shanghainese radicalism” was more the product of events: the Chinese Communist Party has never been a "monolithic entity since its founding in 1921. Several times, it has known internal conflicts between ideologies and personalities which have threatened its very existence. Following the Korean War, the position of the Communist government was substantially reinforced. The leadership of both the Party and the Army be¬ came more and more entrenched in their own priviledges^ Mao finally decided to set the Cultural Revolution in motion, insisting that the masses should have the right to “oversee” the Party cadres and revolt against any tendency which would betray the revolution. Sharing the leadership of the Cultural Revolution, Lin Piao and Chiang Ching declared themselves the flag-bearers of Maoist thought. Both were but verbal Maoists, using Mao to climb the ladder towards their own goals._ Named Minister of Defense to replace Peng Te-huai, Lin Piao became Mao’s “best pupil,” the Party’s second-in-command and the one designated in the Con¬ stitution as Mao’s successor. Chiang Ching became, in her turn, the advisor to the Cultural Board of the Liberation Army. Lin Piao fiercely applied himself to promoting a personality cult, in which Mao took almost divine status. Yeh Ch un, Lin’s wife, with the same intentions and using the same tactics, did the same for Chiang Ching. Each time Chiang Ching came before the public, Yeh Ch’un was there, leading the applause and the chanting of slogans like “Learn from Chiang Ching” and “Long live Chiang Ching.” In her book The First Day of the World (v.p. 359), Han Suyin mentions that Mao became so tired of these panegyrics that he finally admonished Yeh Ch’un telling her to “Stop spewing out all this flattery.” But the harmony between Lin Piao and Chiang Ching did not last long. As comrades in the Cultural Revolution, they were humming the same tune, but Mao was not blind to what was going on, and his tolerance for the ultra-leftists was but a part of his strategy: “Kill the tiger first, then the wolf.” After Liu Shap-

27

>

O-iV

chi and Teng Hsiao-ping had been eliminated, Lin Piao and Chiang Ching could not succeed in getting Chou En-lai out of the way and it was finally Lin Piao’s turn to jump the track. When he committed suicide, Chiang Ching, certainly having got wind of it beforehand, made a “split” (a word used by foreign observers at that time) between her and the designated heir. Was it to be her turn after Lin Piao? No one thought so, but Mao did not seem to fbrgef/ Having achieved her mission by the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chiang Ching refused to leave the stage and kept on singing soprano in a chaotic era when'"90,000 jdead and wounded were counted in Szechuan and many in Yunnan, and when rival factions were proceeding with random assassinations in Canton. The military commander of the City, Huang Yung-sheng, re¬ pressed die Red Guards so harshly that he was afterwards called the “CantOrf Dutcher.’’^ Mao let his wife go on singing, but Chou En-lai was saved. It , was Chou who was Mao’s closest collaborator, not Chiang Ching. ,/_If she could advance herself no further after the Cultural Revolu¬ tion (in spite of betraying her friendship with Lin Piao and his wife, Yen Ch un), her hopes of starting another revolution, cul¬ tural or otherwise, were basically condernned before the start. Not having fully understood this, she had overlooked the futility“Uof her unthinkable enterprise: Lin Piao had at least a good part of the armed forces under his control, but the Shanghai group did not even have the whole militia at their disposal, except perhaps an ill-armed one million in Shanghai, too much concentrated in one place. The “radicals” had neither ideology, nor practical knowledge, nor a well-defined line of action/ They were nothing more than a poor, ambitious, and immature political clique.

3

“PEASANTS” AND “MAN-FRIDAYS” I The continental Chinese have in general prejudice and suspicion toward the Shanghainese; and Madam Mao’s group, the Shanghai Four instilled this even more, for they represent a special class— that of “man-Fridays,” a product of the coastal and adjacent re¬ gions in China. Who are these “man-Fridays”? For those readers who have never had the occasion to set foot in developing countries, one has to give a brief explanation, for it involves a social class that does not exist elsewhere. In Third World countries, the colonies and semi-colonies in¬ cluded and, to a certain extent, Japan as well, “Fridayism” is a common disease. Because of conquest by and the influence of the imperialist powers, the national tradition of these countries tended to weaken, and a new tendency took its place: Westerni¬ zation, which led to the birth of a new social class of “wogs” (“westernized oriental gentlemen”)—or “man-Fridays,” the name being taken from a character in the famous novel by Daniel De¬ foe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. These “wogs” were initially interpreters for the occupational forces; after that, they became eompradores, small colonial civil servants, and even¬ tually, diplomats and businessmen. The “man-Fridays” are indigenous people cut off from their national culture and westernized to such an extent that they be¬ come “more royalist than the king,” that is to say, more wester-

28

nized than the Westerners. They may not be able to speak their mother tongue in some cases, whereas they may speak perfectly the foreign tongue imported into their country. They may know very little of their own country, but are very up-to-date on foreign matters. They were the first collaborators of the foreign¬ ers, although that does not prevent them from being “xenophobes” time and again. The “man-Fridays” were always the elite of the society. It is amongst them as well that one always finds the most fervent of the nationalists and the revolutionaries. The influence that they hold in their respective communities is enormous. In countries that have been colonized for a long time, a new caste system may develop; with the intellectuals formed at Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, or at Harvard as the brahmans; the officers from Sand¬ hurst, Saint Cyr or West Point as the kashtriya; the great busi¬ nessmen with the same academic background as the vaicya; and the civil servants, commercial agents, and specialized workers of various trades who speak the language then in vogue as the cudra. The respectability of each is determined in proportion to his knowledge of this indispensable language. Those who do not know it, very often the greater part of the majority of the peasant masses, constitute the pariahs or outcasts, the dregs of the soci¬ ety, the untouchables. The “man-Fridays” live and think in a particular way; with regards to norms and customs, they are semi-oriental and semioccidental^ that is, “neither fish, flesh nor fowl.” Where ideology is concerned, they can be at the same time xenophile and xenophobe, revolutionary and reactionary, the most fanatical of patriots or the most villainous anti-patriots. Embarrassed by his incongruity, a “man-Friday” has often occasion to be a liar by habit, since he always has to pretend to know that which he does not. But with him, the greater danger lies in the field of politics: when he wishes to serve the country, nothing works for him and the remedies that he recommends to heal the ills do not extend beyond the solutions that he has ac¬ quired from abroad. This importation and the mechanical transposition of exotic formulas without adequate adaptation to the local context often results in more bad than good. When everything proves that nothing works anymore, the only answer that the new ruling class usually has is an about-face. There are many such cases among

29

new nations founded upon ancient colonies: At the beginning of their liberation all these states profess parliamentarianism and democracy, but several years later, they turn, inevitably, towards a totalitarian regime, sometimes called “controlled democracy” or “emergency state.” In spite of these different names, the reality is the same in all the new autocracies. Human rights make way for internal se¬ curity measures and the people, newly liberated from the im¬ perialist yokes, fall from the frying pan into the fire. Before a country gains independence, the administering colonial au¬ thorities are certainly despotic towards the indigenous people, but because they have to answer to their respective goverments and the parliaments of their countries, they may well have to ob¬ serve a certain amount of “democracy.” But once independent, the power of the country is passed into the hands of the new “enlightened” elites—the “manFridays”—who have been best prepared to hold the reins. And by their basic inclination to serve the interests of the foreigners, the “man-Fridays” do not represent in fact any social class of the country except their own, which is a warned minority; they are in general not interested in the welfare of the public, but onlv oc¬ cupy themselves with their personal interests. Once the power is in their hands, the taste of authority, ambition, and material at¬ tractions often instigate them to enhance their own position. Con¬ sequently, the regime, newly liberated, exposes itself rapidly to the avidity of those who think themselves made to instruct, to educate, to guide, and to exploit the people—and thereby to the tutelage of absolute despots. In the case of China, the preponderant role, that of the in¬ telligentsia, was a historical phenomenon, unique in its kind. The birth of the class of “man-Fridays” in her modern history, turned this social ill into a complicated sickness, especially amongst the progressive parties. The hot disagreements over “policies” within the CCP were, by and large, an interrupted series of quarrels be¬ tween the tukung (“bumpkin Communists”) and the “manFridays”—“Muscovites” and pro-Soviets.

30

II Different from any other country, Chinese society is com¬ posed of four major classes in this typical order: shi, nung, kung, and shang, that is to say, “the literati, the peasants, the workers, and the merchants. The intelligentsia is the cream of society, whereas money-makers are not so much in favour. Domination by the intellectuals is a typical characteristic, derived from a long pro¬ cess of historical development. Two centuries before Jesus Christ, the First Emperor, foun¬ der of the Chin dynasty' (221—207 B.C.), abolished the feudal sys¬ tem. Cultivable land became freely available to be bought and sold. By the reform, land became concentrated, and consequently unemployed peasants were driven from their land into the towns in order to find work to make a living. Those who were absorbed into town life became porters, artisans, and workers of all kinds. Those who were rejected became tramps, bandits, and rebels. The latter increased, turned to insurrection, and engaged in war against the ruling authority. After years of bloody troubles, the ancient dynasty fell, and a new one took its place. During the war, the destruction and the killings broke up the division of the fields and reduced drastically the unemployed number of people. When peace came, there was a redistribution of arable land, a period of resurrection, then a golden era, after which the cycle started again: a new concentration of land, acute peasant unem¬ ployment, and new disorders and troubles. This vicious cycle repeats itself unceasingly during the whole of the millenary history of China and follows a single rule of evolution. The life of each new dynasty became shorter and shor¬ ter, while the length of disorder and wars grew longer and longer during the time of change-over of the different dynasties. This constitutes the sum total of the perpetual process of the political history of China from the time of the Chin to date. This “Asiatic ’^society is a social system that even Karl Marx could not explain, for, according to his theory, there should not be a profrahted period of transition between the feudal society and the bourgeois society. But in China, against all sociological notions, this “transition” endured for more than 2,000 years. This extraordinarily prolonged transition period was mainly due to the role played by the literati, an intermediary class between the aris-

31

tocracy and the people, which served as a buffer and sometimes as a link between the two. The occupant of the throne who had need of talent chose his administrators not only from amongst the nobles, but also from the literati who governed for the ruler, but in¬ evitably represented also certain aspirations of the commoners from where they came. Through the passage of time, this political regime—the aristo-bureaucracy—became a formula of political compromise between the superstructure and the infrastructure of Chinese society. The rise of influence of the literati dated from the period of the “Spring—Autumn” (770—476 B.C.) when the little prin¬ cipalities of China began to be annexed to the bigger ones. Numerous little states disappeared one after the other, and a great number of the nobility lost their fiefs, their functions, and their titles. These orphans of the nobility became the shi, and their numbers increased with the acceleration of the annexation of the little states by the bigger ones. This was especially so during the period of the Fighting Kingdoms (475—221 B.C.). The shi, deprived of privileges, were of very great number; they refused to work on the land and had no other means of earning a liveli¬ hood except through their knowledge or specialty. They travelled everywhere to look for a new master—-jun or ren-chu. Confucius and his disciples were the early shi, then came the “hundred fam¬ ilies” of philosophers of the Fighting Kingdoms period. It was among them that the kings of China recruited the great strategists and politicians who helped the backward little kingdom of Chin gradually become powerful enough to unify China under the reign of the First Emperor. The aristo-bureaucratic system of government was reinforced by the founder of the Han Dynasty (206—220 A.D.) that suc¬ ceeded the Chin, then perpetuated under the Tang Dynasty (618 A.D.—907 A.D.) by the introduction of the government examina¬ tion system for the mandarinate. Ever since then, any person from any walk of life could present himself for the examinations held by the government in order to become a mandarin. In this way, the Chinese intellectuals obtained a social and political posi¬ tion that became firmly established. They monopolised the ad¬ ministration and the access to power, and enjoyed the support of the two laboring classes—the peasants, from whom they generally came, and the workers, who were close to the peasants. Those who were not mandarins or in retirement, fulfilled, by and large,

32

the functions of the members of a Western parliament. They were not elected, but selected by examinations and therefore had the advantage of being exempted from the heavy election costs and the none-too-pleasnt influences of financiers. Consequently, the Chinese political system had, in principle, a double advantage: a system of public service which was usually more efficient and a less corrupted “parliament.” That was one of the main reasons why the “Asiatic” social structure of the Middle Empire could have such a long existence. Its political situation was able to remain sufficiently stable, except in times of natural calamities, catastrophic economic crises, foreign invasions, or when the throne was occupied by an unreasonable tyrant who refused to heed good advice. In times of troubles, the role of the intellectuals was even more important, for the issue of the events generally depended upon the side they leaned towards. What was unfortunate was that the intellectuals, by the very nature of their social background, always had the habit of leaning towards the strongest. The movement recently started in China to criticize the fa¬ mous novel, At the Edge of the Water was exactly for this reason. In the novels the chief~oF the bandits, Song Chiang, an in¬ tellectual amongst the country people in revolt, hesitated at first to join the band. When he was forced to join it, he did not stop ever to think about capitulating and finished by doing so. Besides the traditional inclination towards capitulation, the modern intellectuals have an additional vice; since they are mostly “students returned from the West,’ they have, though in varying degrees, cultivated the habit of ‘man-Fridayism, an in¬ feriority complex towards foreigners. To them, Western things are always better. Since 1919, the radicals ol the Fourth of May Movement” preached only the gospel of two prophets: “Mr D” (democracy) and “Mr Sai” (science). Some of them even went so far as to call for complete westernization. The Chinese Com¬ munist Party, founded in 1921, was a purely imported product. During the 1925-1927 revolution, its actions were directed by telegrams from Moscow, which resulted in the disastrous defeat of 1927 and the massacre of Party members. The grave mistakes committed by Stalin in China caused the split in the Soviet Communist Party itself, the expulsion of Leon Trotsky, and the subsequent purges of party members in Russia. Among the Chinese Communist leaders, Mao was the only

33

one who did not suffer from “man-Fridayism,” which earned him the title of “peasant.’ But it was also because of this that he fi¬ nally established himself at Chingkangshan. Wang Ming, who was Stalin’s representative in China, accused him of Chauvinism, but it was Mao who eventually steered the Great Revolution to , victory. Mao often repeated: “We have won the revolution by going against the instructions of Stalin. Han Suyin wrote in her book. The First Day of the World, an interesting passage on the subject (v.p. 218): Mao recalled with humor that his Chinese physicians prohibited him eggs and chicken soup because, during these , three years, the leading Soviets judged them to be noxious.^ Then, the Russians changed their opinion and the Chinese allowed him to fall into step. In painting him next to Stalin, the Chinese painters always painted him smaller . . . under the moral pressure exerted by the Soviet Union during that time. [f The Cultural Revolution that Mao started was, in fact, the last battle he launched aginst “man-Fridayism” within the Party, of which Liu Shao-chi was a part. Mao was against Liu Shao-chi’s policy of economic reconstruction copied from the Soviet NEP (New Economic Policy) and the military reform plan of Peng Tehuai, which was based on the Russian model. Mao opined in 1950 that “the affairs of a country are the affairs of the country and not those of a sect. ...” In 1957, he remarked: “Some individuals never analyze, but are contented to follow where the wind blows . . . the study of the universal truth (of Marxism-Leninism) has to be combined with the Chinese reality!” Madam Mao and her partisans were not pro-Soviets, but were “man-Fridays.” At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Madam Mao seemed extremely xenophobic, but it only lasted for a while, for convenience’s sake; otherwise, she would not have given the impression of being “radical,” and that would not have been acceptable. But when the Cultural Revolution came to an end, Chiang Ching showed her true colours. Whereas before, she had spurned the elegant life and the “oceanic style” of former pres¬ ident Liu Shao-chi’s wife, and made her parade in the streets with a donkey’s hat, after the Cultural Revolution, she herself ap-

peared in “maxi-skirts” and a gold watch bracelet during recep¬ tions lor foreign diplomats, e.g., the one given during Mr Pom¬ pidou s visit to Peking. In public, Madam Mao always wore her grey-green uniform, her heavy rimmed glasses, and her hair tied back under a cap. Yet her biographer. Miss Witke, describes her as follows: When we were alone, she wore dresses. She liked dresses. But when she went out to the public she wore a pants-suit or a military suit. Because the masses weren’t pre¬ pared to see her in dress. It would look like a form of elitism. Most women don’t wear dresses under the present regime. M iss Witke is a Chinese expert and professor of history at New York State University. She visited China in 1972, and Madam Mao accorded her a series of interviews of sixty hours in sum during a period of seven days. She has already written a book about the Grand Lady that will be published next March. Rumors say that the Chairman was furious when he read Miss Witke’s manuscripts, which however did not prevent the latter from saying upon the arrest of Chiang Ching: I think that Chiang Ching is favorable towards the United States. She is very interested in our culture and is very impressed as well by President Nixon—more than I am. She is also impressed by Roosevelt and Eisenhower. I am convinced that these are honest opinions—perhaps not very intelligent, but honest. If the “honest” opinion of Madam Mao did not seem very in¬ telligent in the eyes of Miss Witke, how could she appear in¬ telligent to the Chinese? One of the accusations against Chiang Ching in the dazibao was the following: “To adore foreign things, cringe before foreigners, maintain illicit relations with them, allow into their hands important Party and State secrets, and practice without scruple capitulationism and national betrayal. All these accusations were certainly not entirely unfounded, although exaggerated, judging from the account given by Miss Witke. For it is evident that after Nixon’s visit to Peking, Chiang

35

Ching would have become sufficiently imprudent to reveal her hidden enthusiasm for the West and her nostalgia for the good old days in the night clubs of great Shanghai of the past.

36

4

THE AFTERMATH OF THE OCTOBER COUP

%, 7>

I5) 1

I Mao’s death and the arrest of his widow had the entire watching developments in China. Whatever happens in China will be of primary importance to world stability, being one of the determining factors in the balance of within the Washington-Moscow-Peking triangle.

world Mao’s China power

It has surprised all that Mao’s successor, Hua, has enjoyed, so far, the almost unanimous support of the country since the suppression of the Shanghai Four. Having started out in a tem¬ porary capacity, he has now accumulated the functions of Party chairman, prime minister, and president of the Military Commis¬ sion of the Party Central Committee. This is the first time in the history of the People’s Republic that a single leader has been able to command so many titles. Even Mao himself never managed a similar position. Nonetheless, the accumulation of power does not necessarily mean a concentration of authority. A year ago, Hua was nothing more than a high-level bureaucrat whose name was practically unknown in China and abroad. He made his debut on the politi¬ cal scene as Teng Hsiao-ping’s substitute, and therefore Chiang Ching’s rival, after the fifth of April riots. Mao appears to have taken the appropriate steps to avoid a confrontation between the “moderate” and the “radical” factions. However, in this event, Hua managed to step into Mao’s place when the latter passed

37

away. Shortly afterwards, with the support of the bureaucracy and the army, he crushed in a single astonishing move the “gang of four.” Presently, he appears well established. The story is certainly not over yet. The question_remains as to how long Hua’s regime will last. “The radicals will fight to get back,” said Madam Germaine Soleil, the French fortune-teller, who predicted Nixon’s downfall. Would this be as valuable a pre¬ diction as in the Watergate case? It does not seem impossible. At the beginning of the year, several of the provincial radio sta¬ tions were describing the unrests, and Peking admitted too, that “problems” persisted in many area. All disturbances were attrib¬ uted to the agitation of the “gang of four,” but the information relating to the nature and extent of the disturbances is unclear and contradictory. In a speech given on December 5, Hua reas¬ sured the population that since the arrest of the Four, not a sin¬ gle drop of blood had been shed and that calm had been restored. Yet, at the same time, he asserted that the principal task of 1977 would be the campaign against the Four. Judging from Hua’s own declarations, it appears that he un¬ derstood right from the start the dangers of his “coup”: a calcu¬ lated risk designed to skirt a crisis in the passage of power, it might, nonetheless, provoke a series of crises. By arresting the Four, Hua won a battle, not the whole war. Developments to date have not been alarming despite earlier reports of disturbances in a number of regions. A Chinese government spokesman once declared that the disturbances de¬ scribed by the provincial radio stations had in fact taken place be¬ fore October 7. A French correspondent somewhat confirmed it when he cabled the following from Peking: This unusual kind of broadcasts has been going on since the end of November (1976), since Radio Fukien of the prov¬ ince facing Taiwan set the mood by announcing that Pe¬ king had ordered that troops be sent in number to take charge of the government offices, schools and factories. If one takes into account the information received, half of the Chinese provinces appear troubled by unrest. Presently however, nothing of the kind is being reported by eyewit¬ nesses. Instead, travelers returning from China, among them many groups of Japanese, said quite expressly that no

38

matter where they went the situation seemed quite normal. But, a British correspondent in Peking thought quite differ¬ ently: “The campaign against the ‘gang of four’ has far from en¬ ded,” and Hua might well order a “great purge reaching even the lower levels of the civil service.” Some other journalists interpreted, on the other hand, that disclosures concerning unrests was a tactical pretext for repressive measures: The Chinese authorities are recalling violent incidents, most of which took place several months ago, in order to justify other stronger measures against the radicals and their sympathizers. It is a known fact that politically and crimi¬ nally motivated violence increased rapidly through the spring, summer and fall of last year. The Chinese provincial governors are trying to create an atmosphere which will allow them to justify any severe treatment meted out to the radicals and their sympathisers. At present, the Chinese leaders who have been recommending a hard and pitiless purge of the radicals and their sympathizers are holding the day.

To see things in perspective is difficult when one forgets that the past has a bearing on the future^/In the opinion of the author, the aftermath of Hua’s October coup is understandable in the light of the decade-long fight between the “moderates” and the “radicals,” which can be summarized as follows : /C—The original targets of the Cultural Revolution were Liu Shao-chi and the pro-Soviet “rightists”; but after May 1966, Chou En-lai also bore the brunt of its attacks. —The attacks against Chou did not stop until 1968. He then resumed the control of the Foreign Ministry and restored it to his minister Marshal Chen Yi, who died in 1973. A—Upon Chou’s death, the old feud flared up again; this time between Chiang Ching and Ten Hsiao-ping, the

39

reinstated vice-premier and the expected successor of Chou. But then came the April Fifth riots, the causes of which re¬ main unknown, Mao’s repudiation of Teng, and the surfac¬ ing of Hua Kuo-feng to replace Teng. —Following the trend of things, Hua took Mao’s place when the latter died and thus became the new target for “radical” attacks. Hua had to resort to audacious measures to crush Chiang Ching and her gang. To use a locution in Chinese political terminology, this is to “cut the threads of interlaced hemp with a saber blow,” that is, to “cut through the Gordian knot.” All Chinese events during the last decade must be traced back to the chaotic and turbulent Cultural Revolution, whose con¬ sequences were the source of all political affairs thereafter. The / Cultural Revolution was Mao’s decisive fight against his last op¬ ponents. During his lifetime, the Great Helmsman had never bothered with the everyday affairs of the state. He entrusted that to assistants “whom he trusted too much.” To regain power, he was forced to vanquish two groups of “rebels.” On the one hand was the “military club”—the army chiefs friendly with Peng Te-huai; they had gained status through the Korean War, and saw Mao as “rustic and outdated.” On the other hand was the complacent and somewhat bourgeois bureau¬ cracy, the high-level civil servants who did not approve of Mao’s attitude towards the USSR. Mao’s comeback after years of semiretirement in the south of the country was to launch his Cultural Revolution with the help of Lin Piao, an astute young officer and Chiang Ching, his wife, who then made her debut in politics. Mao’s success, through rigorous, gigantic, and tumultuous con¬ frontations, was due in no small way to the zeal and loyalty of Chou En-lai, which was of crucial importance. Chou was one of the twenty-eight that Stalin had sent to China to control the Chinese Communist Party. But as soon as he joined the Long March, he joined hands with Mao. It was he who, at the enlarged politburo meeting in Zunyi in 1935, sup¬ ported Mao and got him elected as chairman of the Party’s Mili¬ tary Commission, that is, as operational commander in control of the Red Army. It was he who, at the Twenty-second Party Con¬ gress in Moscow in 1961, brilliantly defended the Maoist position of opposition to Khrushchev. Kit was he who pleaded Mao’s case

40

against Liu Shao-chi during the 'Meeting of Seven Thousand, later called the “Black Assembly,” during the Cultural Revolution and widely regarded as a plot against Mao. ■ Chou is a rare character in the history of modern China: de¬ voted to his ideology, modest and thoughtful, but intransigent in combat, a tireless worker of talent and integrity which won him the respect of all. It was due to him that a greater part of the cadres, the intellectuals, and the masses rallied to the great cause of the Cultural Revolution, in spite of its excesses and the de¬ struction it caused. Though Chou himself was subjected to violent attacks by left-wing extremists, it was due to him that the Cul¬ tural Revolution neither paralyzed the functioning of the govern¬ ment nor caused too much bloodshed. Mao was thus able to count on a nucleus of very capable and tireless administrators in Chou’s entourage who managed to keep the principal services of the government working and prevent backlash from going too far to the right or to the left. It is thanks to Chou’s wisdom that once the principal objectives of the Cultural Revolution had been reached, public order was re-established without too many diffi¬ culty, in spite of Lin Piao’s last minute attempt at a putsch. / Lin Piao wanted to profit by the Cultural Revolution. He wanted to climb to the height of power and have himself desig¬ nated as • Mao’s legitimate successor. Yet he was short-sighted enough to turn in midstream against the “moderates”—first, against Marshal Chen Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who dared to joke that “Who among us has not opposed Chairman Mao? Only Lin Piao hasn’t . . . truly a great man!” (a caprice that nearly cost him his life). Later, Lin Piao turned against Chou himself. The latter had made an objection to two clauses in the draft Constitution proposed to the second plenum on the Ninth Central Committee by Lin Piao and Chen Pota. One of the clauses lauded Mao’s “genius” and the other named Mao, “Chief of State,” the leader of all the nationalities of the country and commander-in-chief of the nation and her armed forces. But this time, Lin did not know that Mao himself was with Chou. Con¬ sequently, Chen was eliminated, and Lin committed suicide the following year. Chiang Ching shared Lin’s views throughout the Cultural Revolution, but she was smart enough to break away from him just in time. Nonetheless, since her political outlook remained the same as that when she collaborated with him, and although

41

she had escaped sinking together with him, she did not forget the grudge, she bore Chou. In order to reconcile the “moderates” and the “radicals, Mao was always careful to retain Chou as his closest collaborator and at the same time to bring the very young Wang Hong-wen, Chiang Ching’s protege, up to the third-ranking position in the leadership hierarchy of the party. Mao seems clever to have pre¬ ferred two right-hand men instead of one. But young Wang, dazzled by his rapid success, failed to improve his status as number three. He remained a theoretician closed up in his ivory tower and confined himself within the small circle of his pro¬ tector, Chiang Ching. The situation was such that when Chou became gravely ill, Mao was obliged to choose Teng as acting prime minister and another Shanghainese, Chang Chunchiao, as second-in-command. _Z^When Chou died, Mao’s wife began to show her impatience and went almost immediately into action/\ Hence, from the spring of 1976 to October 7, the day the Four were arrested, there was an outburst of a wave of violence that no one could explain./C If China analysts abroad could not arrive at a logical inter¬ pretation of all these apparently “wanton” events, the Chinese themselves understood better. Mao himself, experienced and sea¬ soned in combat and struggle his whole life through, knew what to do. Having sacked Teng Hsiao-ping, he named at the last mo¬ ment, despite his sickness and the approach of the end of his long march, Hua Kuo-feng to take the reins of government, in pre¬ ference to anyone from the “Shanghai four.” Despite the fact that Chiang Ching had forced the game, she lost it. Wang Tungsing, chief bodyguard of Chairman Mao, told how Chang Chun¬ chiao became jealous of Hua when he was named prime minister in April/Wheth er the anecdote is true or false, Mao’s choice of— Hua as the eventual heir to power was a particularly judicious move. The only drawback was that Mao had left one job incoin^ plete at his death: the problem of his wife and her group, who could no longer act in his name when he passed away.' Mao could be reproached for having tolerated during the last part of his lifetime a wife, who after having benefited from her marital prestige, persisted in her political interferences without constructive contribution. This was perhaps Mao’s habitual shortcoming. Han Suyin, in her book The First Day of the World, wrote (v.pp. 33-34):

42

Slander, wickedness, calumny, harshness, and cruelty to other comrades were repugnant to Mao. His struggle against Wang Ming was also against the draconian methods the latter used in dealing with contradictions within the Party. “Save the sick by curing the sickeness ’ has been the motto that Mao put into prac¬ tice ever since 1955. Ideological aberrations are a sickness, and this should be cared for with patient teaching, persuasion, criti¬ cism and self-criticism. Never in the course of his life did Mao believe that men were not able to change, neither that they would refuse to, once they knew the truth.

Mao was perhaps not completely right. In any case, he did leave his heirs a difficult task: “curing” his wife and her “gang.” According to the Peking People’s Daily, Mao himself had already started to warn his wife on July 17, 1974: “You’d better be on your guard not to form a ‘four persons’ clique,” he was reported to have said. This was the day before the convention of the Fourth National Assembly. On November 24, he came back to the same idea with even more emphasis: “Don’t form factions; those who do will crash.” Finally, he had allegedly made the gravest of accusations against Chiang Ching, again according to the People’s Daily : “Chiang Ching is madly ambitious. She wants Wang Hung-wen to be Chairman of the Party’s Central Commit¬ tee.” On May 3, 1976, during a Politburo meeting, Mao told his wife and her friends to “practice Marxism and not revisionism; vyork for unity and not for division; show frankness and probity and don’t play at intrigues. Don’t behave like a four-person gang. Stop that. Why do you keep on doing it?” He added finally what Peking today considers to be a command: “If the matter cannot be settled in the first half of this year, then it should be settled in the second half; if not this year, then next year; if not next year, then the year after.” / Not all the remarks levied against his wife were recent. Hurhors have it that during the Cultural Revolution, Mao was al¬ ready speaking out against her in front of the Red Guards. On July 28, 1968, he admonished her for being “haughty” and “specializing in the art of criticizing others without criticizing her¬ self for anything. ”

43

If these accusations allegedly made by Mao were true, then Chiang Ching must have been an incorrigible person, and Hua would thus have been forced to administer on her his “surgical operation,” the October coup that bewildered the whole world.

IV Were the measures taken by Peking’s new leadership against Mao’s widow and her “gang” justified? The answer to the ques¬ tion will sooner or later be answered by the official documents that Peking is preparing. According to non-official information. Minister for Defense, Yen Chian-ying, the old marshal, has been appointed for the preparation of the report. While waiting for the publication of the document, which will certainly come out unless Hua’s regime is unexpectedly upset, what has been said about Chiang Ching’s past and personality will, to a certain extent, suf¬ fice to bring to light the “inside story.” But a few words about Chiang Ching’s “Duke of Ink,” Chang Chun-chiao, whom the au¬ thor knows, may be still useful. Besides Chang, both Wang Hung-wen and Yao Wen-yuan were relatively unknown. The former, aged about forty, had been a textile worker in Shanghai. He was one of the organizers of the “January Resolutions” of Shanghai in 1963, a member of the Municipal Revolutionary Committee of Shanghai, later Party vice-president, and thus the third-ranking leader in 1973. In his report of 24 August 1973 to the Tenth party Congress concerning amendments in the statutes of the Party, he declared: When it is the Party line that is at stake, when it is the entire situation that comes into question, a true communist must act without any selfish consideration and must dare to go against the current, without any fear of losing his job, exclusion from the Party, being thrown into prison or forced to give up, or put before a firing squad . . . We must be on our guard against corruption by bourgeois ideas and attacks made with sp^ar:pQatprL.boHibs, show modesty and thought¬ fulness, work hard, firmly oppose privileges and concentrate on the task of eliminating nefarious practices such as “back door arrangements” (that is, the use of influence).

44

Yet, he hid himself behind Madam Mao’s skirts. According to the report of Mao s bodyguard, Wang Tung-shing, Mao was dis¬ appointed by Wang Hung-wen’s incompetence as an adminis¬ trator. Little information has been received about Yao Wen-yuan. He was a journalist and the one who wrote the article criticizing Wu Han s play—“Hai Jui’s Dismissal”—published by the People’s Daily on November^JOTTSBST^which unleashed the Cultural Rev¬ olution. Vice-director of the “Shanghai Commune,” he entered the Politburo in 1959. He was believed to be Mao’s son-in-law and the principal propagandist for the Shanghai firebrand, al¬ though his name was put at the end of the official list of the “anti-Party conspiracy of Wang-Chang-Chiang-Yao.” Both Wang and Yao were mere neophytes in the Politburo as well as in their political careers. The actual driving power of the “Shanghai group” came from the oldest among them: Chang Chun-chiao, the vice-prime minister who shared power with Teng Hisao-ping. The foreign press sometimes called him the “grand in¬ quisitor,” for it was he who harried hundreds of bureaucrats out of their offices and sent them to confess their “crimes.” Chang, about sixty, was Shanghainese. Before the Cultural Revolution he was a little-known writer, having been mentioned by Lu Hsiun in one of his satirical essays. His rise to the height of power dates as far back only as the Cultural Revolution, during which time he became vice-president of the group in charge of the Cultural Revolution attached to the Central Committee. He entered the Politburo in 1969 and became a permanent member in 1973. In 1975, he was named vice-prime minister and head of the political department in the Army during the reshuffling of the Cabinet. At the same time, the rehabilitated Teng Hsiao-ping held practically the same posts in the leadership of the Party, the Government, and the Army. This duo made up the leadership that had to prepare for the “period after Chou” and eventually, the “period after Mao.” It is obvious that this anomalous arrangement was an expe¬ dient measure decided at the highest level to resolve internal conflicts, but the equilibrium between the two factions remained precarious: Teng, although once attacked and sacked during the Cultural Revolution, always looked too much like a heavyweight

45

while in company with the other champion. He was a veteran revolutionary and a brilliant administrator, whereas Chang was practically unknown until his emergence during the Cultural Rev¬ olution. Teng had been fiercely attacked by the “radicals” be¬ cause, being Secretary General of the Party since 1956, he had been a close collaborator of Liu Shao-chi, the president then. Yet, he was not a follower of Liu Shao-chi and was never pro-Russian. He was also the Prime minister Chou En-lai’s “right-hand man” and a long-time comrade-in-arms of Mao himself: before the Long March, at the time of Kiangsi, Mao and Teng had once been con¬ demned together by the Party during the Luo Ming affair. Dur¬ ing the Confrence of twenty-one Communist Parties held in Mos¬ cow in November 1960, it was Teng who first expressed Mao’s Chinese doctrine and attacked the “modern revisionists,” accusing them of betrayal and capitulation to imperialism. When he was brought back to power, he met twice with Henry Kissinger and also received President Ford when the latter visited Peking in November 1975. He sat next to Mao when Mao hosted the foreign heads of state in Peking, and he seemed to be in a secure position with Chou’s personal support and Mao’s approval behind him. In December 1975, according to New York Times, Mao con¬ fided in Kissinger that Teng’s vice-prime ministership was well secured. Chang was not entirely complacent behind Teng. Refore he was named to be of equal rank with Teng, the foreign press used to consider him an uncompromising “radical” intellectual. To a good number of Western observers, he seemed a highly compe¬ tent organizer and a promising man of action because of his role in the 1966-1967 “Shanghai Commune,” where he joined his rad¬ ical ideas to practicalities. After his nomination, he did show signs that he was one of the “radicals” who shared certain sympathies with the moderates. It was perhaps because of Chiang Ching’s change of attitude that Chou En-lai was in favour of the TengChang “tandem” when he was alive. Though hospitalized since 1974, Chou deemed it necessary to attend, in person, the January 1975 Congress which instituted the Teng-Chang cabinet. The Teng-Chang equilibrium cordd not be maintained for long, however. In 1975, as soon as Teng was appointed to the Politburo, the Chinese press controlled by the “radicals” began to give indications that a power struggle was on and that cooperation between the two factions was falling apart. In January 1976, at-

46

tacks against Teng intensified, and the People’s Daily denounced the sect that preferred the capitalist way. The crisis finally sur¬ faced upon Chou’s death with the inexplicable riots of April 5 in Peking, and Teng’s fall soon after. It was following the arrest of the Four, the April 5 riots and the subsequent disgrace of Teng that the “radicals’ scheme’ be¬ came a known fact. But were all the Four schemers? Chang, at least, was undeniably one, if his past history is taken into ac¬ count. Before the war, Chang had taken part in the League of Left-wing writers led by Chou Yang, the celebrated collaborator of Wang Ming, and later of Liu Shao-chi, purged at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Chang wrote then under the pseudonym of Ti K’o, that is, “Dick in English. Lu Hsiun, the Chinese Gorky, ridiculed him as one who, living comfortably in a European concession “in the month of March,” advised others to “enrich yourselves with experience” and “use self-criticism,” Chang then claimed to be “left-wing,” but was preaching the na¬ tional defense literature of Chou Yang, that is, the Muscovite Party line. When the war broke out, he went to Hankow and wrote an article published in Ting Ling’s magazine, The Struggle, praising Chiang Kai-shek and recommending “the unification of the military high command, a single plan of action for the war, one training method and discipline, uniform weapontry and logis¬ tics and the building up of one armaments industry for the na¬ tional defense,” that is, the “right-wing” tenets of Wang Ming in opposition of the tenets of Mao, who was demanding a “united front, but “independence within the united front. Thus, Chang was then a “right-winger.” Why and how he suddenly changed colour and turned into a “radical extremist,” he never did ex¬ plain.

V Because of the troubles caused by “ultra-leftists” during the Cultural Revolution and the Lin Piao affair, none of the Chinese observers suspected that Chiang Ching and her “radical” group were but opportunists. When the October coup took place, the new leadership in Peking claimed that this was a counter-coup against a plot of the Four that had been in preparation for a long time. It is difficult for an outsider to say whether the coup was a

47

coup or a counter-coup; but there is no question that, since the beginning of 1976, the events that had taken place indicated that the general situation in China was becoming shaky again. Ev¬ erybody could see that something was fermenting beneath the surface which could lead towards a possible explosion. Following the death of Chou En-lai, there were public demonstrations against the “revisionists,” especially in Shanghai, where the headquarters of the “radicals” were. Later a wave of political and criminal violence, including “bank robberies” a la Hollywood, occured, something rather strange for a country like China, where money has not the great value it does in the capitalist world. However, these bizarre occurrences lasted throughout spring, summer and fall up to the arrest of the Four. According to an editorial in' the Peoples Daily, dated November 23, 1976, and an article published in Guangming Ribao, dated December 17, 1976, it was claimed that the Four had been preparing their “plot” ever since Hua’s nomination as successor of Teng Hsiao-ping. On April 30, after the departure of Robert Maldon, prime minister of New Zealand, who had been granted an audience with Mao, Hua presented Mao with a report about the general situation of the country and about the “unrest” in certain regions. Mao had allegedly said to him: “Go"slowly and be patient. Act according to my past instructions.”—and added, “With you in power, I am at ease.” Hua had asked Mao to put these words in his own writing and made a report to the Polit¬ buro meeting with Mao’s handwriting. Chiang Ching was then re¬ sponsible for taking the minutes, and Mao’s instructions were written into the minutes of the Politburo meeting by Chiang Ching herself. But when Mao’s words were published in the press, then under the control of the Shanghai Four, the sentence “Act ac¬ cording to my past instructions” was changed to “Act according to my given instructions.” The subtle difference in words seemed negligible, but it led to vastly divergent interpretations, especially because of the fact that when the modified text was published, the three recommendations of Mao to “practice Marxism and not revisionism, work for unity and not division, show frankness and probity and don’t play at intrigues” had been intentionally omit¬ ted. On September 16, the People’s Daily and Guangming Ribao, still under the control of the “radicals, published separately a

48

common editorial, calling the people to obey “Mao’s last will—the great appeal of Chairman Mao before his death.’’ Equivocally, the editorial implied that the Chairman had left, at the last minute, a “testament’ that had not been published. On the seventeenth, an exhortation to “obey Mao’s testament” was launched with great fanfare, broadcasted, and diffused throughout the country by propaganda organs, although only the day before, .in an appeal made jointly by the Party Central Committee, the Permanent Committee of the National People’s Assembly, the Council of State, and the Military Commission, there was no mention what¬ soever of any “testament ”. The nineteenth was the day of the official ceremonies in commemoration of the Chairman’s death, where the new chairman, Hua, was to appear and read a funeral oration in which no mention of a “testament” was made either. The propaganda organs went so far off the track from the original meaning of Mao’s last commands given on April 30, that when the Politburo met at the end of September, several mem¬ bers protested and blamed the propaganda for altering Mao’s orig¬ inal words and omitting the three recommendations. On October 2, Chairman Hua struck out the altered phrase from the official document and ordered the original text to be restored, according to the minutes taken at the Politburo meeting. But two days lat¬ er, on the Fourth, Guangming Riabo fired back with an article signed by a certain “Liang Hsiao” (which most probably means “the two universities”—Peita and Chinghua—the two fortresses of the “radicals” in Peking) urging its readers to follow “Mao’s given instructions.” The article was worded in a highly provocative and aggressive manner. Another article, even more provocative and this time signed by Yao Wen-yuan, entitled “Let’s move coura¬ geously forward and follow Mao’s given instructions,” was to have come out the following day on the front page of the People’s Daily, but did not because of the arrest of the Four. The two articles proclaimed that “changing Chairman Mao’sgiven instructions is tantamount to betraying Marxism, betraying socialism, betraying the great theory of the proletarian dictator¬ ship.” They bid the people to “stop the bourgeois fellow-travelers like Teng Hsiao-ping from trying to attempt a repetition of the old counter-revolutionary plot.” And they cried, “Anyone, no matter what kind of revisionism they practice, whatever darkstorm they may raise, we will revolt against them. . . . The re¬ visionist leaders, whoever they are, that try to tamper with

49

Chairman Mao’s given instructions, will not obtain good results.” Thus it was no longer a campaign to “criticize Teng Hsiao-ping” or something similar, but clearly a defiance of the new leadership—Hua and his Central Committee. And according to the People’s Daily and Guangming Ribao published after the arrest of the Four, at the moment of Mao’s death, the “Shanghai group” had ordered Party Committees throughout the country to report to the Central Office that they had invented, all their important problems. Thus, they planned to seize power and sever the link between the Party Central Committee and the governments of the provinces, the cities, and the autonomous regions. Beginning on the September 20, the two universities, Peita and Chinghua, were sending private letters to Chiang Ching expressing their loyalty or asking her to “step into the Chair” and “accept the heavy burden (of power) to answer the urgent desires of the entire Party, the entire Army, and all the nationalities of the country.” II these accusations are to be believed, the sudden arrest of Mao’s widow and her followers was but a measure taken to pre¬ empt a putsch, that is, according to a Chinese adage, to “act first and beat thus the opponent.” It was still a coup d’etat, but rem¬ iniscent of the Lin Piao affair ten years earlier. Lin Piao was the first “profiteer” of the Cultural Revolution; Chiang Ching had been his “closest collaborator,” his “first lieutenant,” and his wife Yeh Ch’un’s “best friend.” All the arrested Four had shared with Chen Pota, Lin Piao’s shadow, the leadership of the “Group in Charge of the Cultural Revolution." But when Chen and Lin dis¬ appeared one after another, and the GCRC faded away without even being dissolved, the Four stayed at their posts, making no attempt to step down, and continued to control the radio network and the press. Their “ideology” consisted of one pet phrase: “From now on, we must scale all the summits ... Be daring, let that be our slogan . . . Drive out fears!” These words of Mao had found a nesting place in millions of minds during the troubled years of the Cultural Revolution, and the Four^retained them as a mode of thought, a mode of living, the cred6 of their religion until the day of their reversal. Were they left-over “ultra-leftists!’ or incorrigible profiteers using attractive watchwords to “fish in troubled waters”? If it were the latter reason, Mao’s death cer¬ tainly served them with the best occasion. /) It is obvious that Madam Mao, even though she may have

50

her own right to be ambitious, had undoubtedly made a serious miscalculation by overestimating her personal influence and forgetting to consider the mood of the masses. If the Chinese were all zealously motivated to revolt against the Party cadres and the bureaucrats during the Cultural Revolution, they are not likely to today: the memories of yesterday have left them nothing but nightmares. Madam Soleil has predicted that the “radicals” will “fight to get back to power” because she read it with her crystal ball. She was not taking into account how the Chinese themselves would react. Actually, the Chinese have/rejoiced in the arrest of the Four. Why? For the simple reasonCthey don’t want their kitchen tables turned over and broken up again. If there remain “signs of agitation and unrest in China since the suppression of the Four, it is not because of the lingering influence of the Four, but be¬ cause of the fact that there are still others with their own scores to settle. For the past thirty years, events have been tumultuous: the Great Revolution, the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, the Cultural Revolution, the droughts and the earthquakes . . . they happened one after another so quickly, so brutally and so vio¬ lently that the inevitable consequences are numerous, waiting but for the right moment and opportunity to eruct and erupt. In the Party organization, the civil service and in the Army, there is bound to be lots of dirt and debris that need to be cleaned up and thrown out.

51

5

A HISTORICAL PROBLEM IN MODERN TIME

The history of modern China from the middle of the nineteenth century up to now has been a series of successive socio-economic convulsions, of which the most recent was the affair of Madam Mao and her followers, the epilog of the great upheaval that con¬ stituted the Cultural Revolution. Mao himself said: “Years will pass before anyone—including myself-—can understand the Cultural Revolution in its entirety.” He was perfectly right, for it was a revolution unique in itself; nothing else like it has ever been experienced in human history. In spite of its overflowing and excesses, it was an unprecedented experiment that put to the test human political thought from Lao-zi to Karl Marx, from the Chinese “legalists” to Lenin; it was the revolution of revolutions in the sense that it tried to change, not only the social structure, but also human nature, making it less “egoist” and more “socialist,” that is, conscious of the need to serve others—the society, the collectivity—before oneself. This was the utopia of all times and of all the people in the world; but for Mao, it was not an utopia, but a realizable objec¬ tive if one could find the way. The October Revolution in Russia had been betrayed after Lenin’s death, not because of the fallibil¬ ity of the theory of Karl Marx, but because of “revisionism”—the bureaucratization of the machinery of the party, of the administra¬ tion, and of the army. The cadres, formerly militant and full of

52

fervor, slowly became established in the privileges and “embourgeoised ; hence, the ideological corruption that leads towards the return of capitalism. For Trotsky, this was due to Stalin’s error of trying to build up socialism in a single country ; but for Mao, this was due to the insufficiency of the revolution itself, be¬ cause not only must the social structure and the relationship be¬ tween property and production be “revolutionized”, but one must also revolutionize oneself against the inherited thinking of the ancient society.^Hence, the necessity of the Cultural Revolution.^ The real aim of Mao’s Cultural Revolution was not the re¬ form of the bureaucratic command, neither the suppression of Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao, nor the change in personnel and the for¬ mal structure; his final objective was the change of human nature. It is a long-term objective that cannot be attained in a single at¬ tempt. It needs a perpetual revolution, until the change of man is complete. The perpetual revolution that Mao preached differs from the “permanent revolution of Trotsky, especially in the final objec¬ tive: if Trotsky aimed principally at material structures, Mao was instead materialistic and idealistic at the same time. “The fact that man is a social being determines his thinking. ' The moment the masses understand the correct ideas characteristic of the pro¬ gressist class, these ideas will transform into a material force that will change the society and the world,”)wrote Mao in May 1963 in his Ten First Points. According to Mao, human nature is not unalterable. Man changes, conditioned by the social system in which he lives; he has behind him the thousands and thousands of years of social life divided into classes, a very long past of bar¬ barous exploitation; but he can choose to become what he wants, which implies the realization of his own conscience, the perpetual re-modeling of self. Revolutions are conscious changes, and they are realizable only to the extent of conscious elevation of the majority of the world’s people. The voluntary act of millions of people who want the revolution is accompanied by an act of will-power directed towards themselves. The future of man is exactly this transformation of himself, suppressing consciously what is called “human nature”: greed, egoism, and inhumanity towards others. This moral dimension, understood and con¬ sciously realized, accelerates the revolutionary process and is the key to the future. Therefore, a continuous revolution is needed. The one that has taken place is but the first. It has to be followed

53

by others: “China will not change her ‘color’ in the five, ten or twenty years to come, hut in a hundred, thousand or ten thousand years.' According to Mao, this thinking should not be reserved for the elite, but should implant itself in the spirit of the people in order to become a new way of life. Thus, when the leaders are no longer present, the millions of militants nurtured under the rev¬ olution and imbibed with courage, devotion, sacrifice, and mod¬ esty become the “new breed” who, acting with foresight and self¬ lessness, will constitute tomorrow’s society. However, Mao himself did not hesitate to acknowledge the danger of demagogy: in 1965, he had already said to Edgar Snow, “I hope that the new generation will continue the revolution on the basis of proletarian principles that will need to be revitalized by an uninterrupted revolution. Otherwise, we risk a regression, the introduction once more of capitalism, and even the return to power of Chiang Kai-shek in ten years’ time. But we do not know how the young people will act in the future. It is they themselves who will have to decide.” Ten years later, in fact, Julie Nixon Eisenhower in the January issue of Ladies’ Home Journal described her interview with Mao on December 31, 1975, and said that Mao “seemed sceptical and disappointed with his own young people.” Mao was supposed to have said: “The young people are soft. They need to be reminded of the necessity to fight.” Mrs Eisenhower added that Mao “evaluated the chance of the success of a permanent rev¬ olution to be less than fifty percent.” Why this pessimism from Mao himself? When Mao spoke of the “young people,” was he referring to his own immediate cir¬ cles or the new generation? It is perhaps useful to know that when Mao received Mrs Eisenhower, he had not seen a lot of people for a very long time because of his ill-health. If he meant only the young people who surrounded him, the reason for his sceptism was obvious: he had only a handful of “newcomers,” an intellectual elite, “radical” at the moment of the Cultural Revolu¬ tion, but well established since then and esconced in their own comfort. Since the fall of Lin Piao and his partisans, they were the survivors of the ultra-left and the only ones to profit from the Cultural Revolution. Before the latter, these “newcomers” had been nothing and not one of them had any noticeable revolution¬ ary activity, either during the Long March or during the Great

54

Revolution. But they were the most fervent and passionate during the Cultural Revolution, and they were the favourites of Mao. Many others had sunk together with the fall of Lin Piao; they had escaped only because they had the foresight to leave the ship be¬ fore the shipwreck. Since then, however, they continued to ‘sing the same song as before because, in actual fact, they knew of no other tune. Moreover the tune they sung was the origin of their success. They kept on singing it not only to maintain their ac¬ quired position, but also to acquire new ones. Revolutionary perhaps at a certain time, but once arrived, they fought no longer against the current; they were preoccupied with their personal interests. Thus they become “left in form but right in essence,” according to Chinese Communist jargon. Kautsky, the famous German socialist who died in 1938, had already raised the problem of the danger of the return to the “class nature of the petit-bourgeois intellectuals: Under the im¬ pulse of the evolution of events, the elite intelligentsia could be¬ come revolutionary before, and even during, the revolution, but once the revolution was achieved, its bourgeois class nature may return and transform them into counter-revolutionaries. To pre¬ vent this eventual danger, Lenin proposed three principles to be observed by the communist party: 1) democracy within the party; 2) the election of the leaders; and 3) any leader s privileges and salaries should not exceed those of the average worker. These directives of Lenin have certainly never been strictly adhered to, both in Russia or China; hence, the “revisionism” in USSR and the Cultural Revolution in China. In the case of the first Cultural Revolution that took place ten years ago, the real positive effects are,'so far, difficult to as¬ certain, but the “counter-effects” have no doubt already been re¬ vealed: First and foremost has been the birth of a new class of “ultra-left” mandarins, among whom are the aborted “Bonaparte,” Lin Piao, and his partisans, and now the Chinese Marie de Medicis and her Concini—the Shanghai group that have been re¬ cently arrested. A n

55

II The existence of mandarins in China goes back to the seventh century B.C., when Buddha was preaching in India and when Pythagoras and Heroelitus wrote the first Greek books on philosophy. But unlike Buddha and the Greek philosophers, the Chinese literati were neither interested in religion nor in pure philosophy, but mainly in human behaviour, in ethics and ad¬ ministrative art, that is, in power. In his Dialogues with his disci¬ ples, Confucius said, “One hardly knows anything of life, how can one ofderath^U , r p * . Confucius was the first representative of the Chinese in¬ telligentsia before the Christian era: a class of ancient noblemen who had lost their own country, and therefore most of their privileges. But by tradition, they still possessed knowledge and ex¬ celled in the science of administration and military art. They dis¬ liked manual work and preferred teaching or traveling about, sell¬ ing their services to seigneurs who might employ them. Confucius was a descendant of a conquered people, the an¬ cient Shang empire, overthrown a long time earlier by the Chou. The majority of the Shang people emigrated towards the south, while the rest lived under the Chou, doing all sorts of work, especially that of merchants, hence the word shang in modern Chinese language, which means “commerce” or “merchant.” Yet, the ancient nobles of Shang formed a particular class, the shi^-t —“nobles,” a term which is translated erronously as “literati,” but which in reality can also mean “knight.” The “literati” of the Confucian school were the ju, meaning “feeble,” for just as in the teaching of Jesus Christ, they often sought to turn the other cheek when slapped. They believed reason to be the superior of force and violence: they were superior because they were learned in all the ‘ ‘six arts”: rites, music, the art of hunting, chariot-driving (used in wars and for transport), calligraphy, and mathematics. Confucius had more than 3,000 disciples and traveled throughout the continent looking in vain for a far-sighted sovereign that he could aid, and ended by remaining the “Great Master” all his life. Since Confucius, the number of literati increased rapidly with the accelerated absorption of the little states by the bigger ones. Towards the end of the fifth century B.C., there were only seven big, strong kingdoms left which bitterly struggled with each

56

other for the hegemony of the Chinese world. It was then the golden era of the Hundred Families” of philosophers. All the great sovereigns of the epoch looked among them for talent to help govern their countries and to serve their ambitions. Yet it was a little backward kingdom in the Northwest, the Chin, that had been the most successful in recruitment. In the end, it be¬ came the super-power, and destroyed the other six one after another, and unified China for the first time in 221 B.C. Under the influence of the literati, the First Emperor abolished feudalism and established an entirely new political regime, the literocracy or, more exactly, the “aristo-bureaucracy.” The founder of the Han dynasty who succeeded the Chin, disliked the literati. But once on the throne, he immediately re¬ alized that the word can be won by cavalier but cannot be governed on horse-back. ” Thus, he re-established the “aristobureaucratic” system and reinforced it by taking care to limit the ‘state doctorates of the five classics” to fifty and to honor only the Confucian school. The following dynasty, the Tang, took another step forward to the mandarinate by introducing the public examination system: all those who succeeded had the opportunity to become adminis¬ trators at all levels. This unique civil service system became so entrenched in Chinese society that it survived through all the dynasties for more than one thousand years up to the Republican Revolution at the beginning of the present century. The Chinese mandarins formed a particular social class: it pre¬ ceded all others, was heterogeneous (though dominated by the landlord minority), was made to serve the state while it also worked among the people. Despite its double-faced nature^ it was an equilibrium force in peace as well as in wartime and could serve as a link between the governing superstructure and the governed infrastructure; thus, it contributed largely to the tradi¬ tional administrative stability, and to the much longer existence of a pre-capitalist society in China. In modern times, western influence has given birth to a new category of Chinese literati: the^ “man-Fridays,” a class of urban bourgeois intellectuals uprooted from their own traditional cul¬ ture. They claim to “modernize” their country with their western knowledge, but as a matter of fact, they have done more bad than, good because, unlike their “old-fashioned” colleagues, most

57

“man-Fridays” are not rustic but urban; therefore, instead of bridging the gap between the ruling class and the peasantry, they work only to bridge national and foreign interests. 1

Among the intellectuals of his generation, Mao belongs more to the “old-fashioned” category: born in the country from a family of peasants, he had undergone very little foreign influence. He read the traditional classics like all the children of the outlying regions and wrote in a beautiful, literary, traditional style of prose and poetry. Dr. Hu Shi, the Chinese Jean Jacques Rousseau, said of the adolescent Mao at the University of Peking: “As a writer^. Mao was incomparable, nobody could equal hinu” Mao hardly knew any foreign languages and read only in Chinese. He lived in the big cities of Changsa, Peking, Shanghai, among others, only for a few years, and never left China, except once very late in his life to go to the USSR, after the Great Rev¬ olution. In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was always re¬ garded as “rustic" and “outdated, which explains the constant fight throughout his life against the “city-pri^nted”,rpqni^ers^qf his party, the^“rnan-Fjidays. ” When Mao was born, China was in a state of collapse follow¬ ing the Opium War that Great Britain forced upon the Chinese people in order to sell them drugs. The Western powers and Japan swooped down on China, jointly or in turn, to impose on her unequal treaties under the threat of gunboats. The Summer Palace in Peking was burnt, innocent Chinese massacred, and enormous indemnities and territorial concessions snatched out to enable outsiders to make new wars against China. The National Revolution had already started, and peasant revolts broke out throughout the country, but the progressives and the rev¬ olutionaries were all concentrated in the big cities, interesting themselves with “big politics” and ignoring the rural problems. Mao then appeared the only one who did not lose sight of the countryside for, from childhood, he knew the misery, the ser¬ vitude, and despair of the peasants living under the semi-feudal and semi-colonial conditions at that time. As one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao appreciated, from the beginning, the rural problems and pro-

58

posed the establishment of a secretarial for the peasants. But it took years for the secretariat to be set up because the objective of the new-born party was but "to overthrow the capitalist classes under the revolutionary direction of the proletariat thus, “the proletarian dictatorship was primary, and rural problems were secondary. The Secretary General of the CCP, Chen Tu-hsiou, said. The farmers are petit-bourgeois . . . How can they accept communism? How can a communist movement spread with suc¬ cess in rural China? One of his aides, Chang Kuo-tao, wrote that the peasants are conservative, “they wish only a good harvest and an emperor, and they are “scattered, individualist, unreasona¬ ble. Both of them, though one belonged to the right and the other to the left, agreed on their disdain of the rural population that nonetheless made up 95% of the inhabitants of the country. They were both filled with new ideas of the then freshly imported communism, that is, of pure theory, and therefore were diago¬ nally opposed to Mao, who thought like a “countryman” and who knew only his own country, for Mao held the opinion that the Party should have its own peasant members and mobilize the masses. The Communist movement should spread all over the country so that the Party might have a base in each province, and thus not be confined in urban centers dominated by government forces and at the mercy of the Kuomintang (KMT, i.e., the Nationalist party). It was then the period of the alliance between the Kuomin¬ tang and the Communists: an accord was made between them towards the end of 1923; the two parties formed a “united front” which favored largely the Nationalists. Then the Sun Yat-sen government in Canton received help and advisers from Moscow to carry out the national policy of the Kuomintang and to organize a national army with officers and cadres trained by the Kuomin¬ tang to fight against the warlords and to unify China. Moscow wished to constitute a “vast anti-imperialist alliance that included all the four classes.” Under Moscow’s directives, the CCP adopted this policy, and the Secretary-General, Chen Tu-hsiou, advocated that the Kuomintang had a historical mission and must be allowed to carry out its bourgeois revolution before the CCP undertook its proletarian revolution. Mao was then for the “United Front,” but firmly believed, though not yet a Marxist in the full meaning of the term, that only a Marxist revolution could save China. Being of peasant

stock, Mao was always for the organization of peasants, for he knew well the history of his country: the downfall of a dynasty and the establishment of a new one depended upon the support of the rural masses. Peasant armies made and unmade empires. But once order was established, the meritorious peasants were forgotten and betrayed, the power fell into the hands of the exploiters—the artistocracy, the mandarisn, and the landlords, whereas the peasant masses remained perpetually the exploited. This betrayal repeated itself again and again over more than two thousand years. The National Revolution would not be less at the mercy of the feudal powers than before. The CCP, then in its infancy, followed Jdindly the orders from Moscow and the advice of the Russian agents. The Party’s motto was thus that of Borodine: “Unity above all. The Party Central Committee was ready to do everything to satisfy the bourgeoisie, even to the extent of disarming the workers when the Kuomintang complained against the “excesses” of the unions. The Communist Party seemed to have willingly put aside its ideology, without mentioning again either the struggle or the building up of the party organization. Communists were then admitted as members of the Kuomintang, and in 1924, among the twenty-four members of the Kuomintang Executive Committee, there were three communists as full members and in addition six communists as alternates, one of the latters was Mao himself. To all appearances, the “United Front” was fighting for anti¬ imperialism, the re-unification of China torn by the warlords, political democratization, the help and support of workers and peasants, and the installation of a popular socialism. This reno¬ vated image of the Kuomintang, progressive and nationalistic, gave the Nationalists huge popularity and enthusiastic support from the masses, whereas the Communist Party’s activities were confined to workers, since the peasants were not considered as proletarian. Therefore, it was only Mao who was tukung (“bumpkin communist”) and thus looking to establish bases in the country. However, the Kuomintang did not take long to change its colors : Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925, and Chiang Kai-shek began his climb to power. The Nationalist Party became rapidly transformed: From a party containing revolutionary elements, it became now an instrument of the counterrevolution in the hands of a military dictator. Instantly, the revolution—the expedition to the North for the unification of China—became metamorphosed

60

into a military campaign destined to establish the power of a sin¬ gle party, if not of a single man—Chiang Kai-shek. Clashes took place between the two allied parties, the Kuomintang and the CCP. There were even rumours of a break-up with the Kuomintang in Moscow and in China. But the final policy of the CCP was always to keep “unity above all,” to re-adjust itself to the situation, and to look for compromises, even to the extent of checking and limiting the struggle of the workers and the peasants and forbidding the formation of peasant militia. The CCPs policy could not prevent Chiang Kai-shek from going further, however. Thus occurred the coup d’etat of April 12, 1927, with its murder of workers in Shanghai, first by local secret societies and then by Chiang’s army, which entered Shang¬ hai two days later. The massacres continued for the months that followed during which thousands of workers, Communist mili¬ tants, and sympathizers died, while thousands of others were tor¬ tured and imprisoned. The CCP’s Secretary-General, Chen Tu-hsiou, narrowly es¬ caped arrest and succeeded in slipping out of Shanghai and headed for Wuhan. There, he convoked the Fifth Congress of the Party. But the latter, instead of denouncing and preventing re¬ pression, continued its call for “unity above all,” recommended “prudence and moderation,” and blamed Mao for his support of the “excesses” committed by the peasants. But Wang Ching-wei, the head of the Kuomintang “left-wingers, ” who had attended the Communist Congress as guest of honor, did not delay a change of attitude against the Communists as a price for his reconciliation with Chiang: The Wuhan “leftist” government decided in June to expel the Communists. Thus again began arrests and killing. After the tragic incidents at Shanghai and Wuhan, the Com¬ munist Party went underground. The Central Committee held, on August 7, 1927, an “extraordinary meeting” to decide the change of those at the helm and a new policy, based on the last instructions received from Moscow: A “Provisionary Politburo” was created in which Chen Tu-hsiou was replaced by a young revolu¬ tionary trained in Moscow, Chiu Chiu-pai; and a new plan of action was adopted, this time of a totally aggressive nature. Armed uprisings took place in towns and in the countryside, of which the most important were the Revolt of Nanchang, the insurrections of the “Autumn Harvest,” and the Commune of

61

Canton. But the new CCP leadership did not seem to have for¬ gotten its old “city orientation”: their primary task was to “take the cities,” while the peasant uprisings remained secondary. Most of the Communist forces were used to attacking cities, and the troops were, for the most part, badly organized, poorly armed, and very inferior in number to the government armies concen¬ trated in cities and towns. Besides, the Communists themselves lacked the support from bases in the rural areas. Against their surprise attacks, the reaction of the government generals was as¬ tonishingly rapid and vigorous, and the uprisings of Nanchang and the Canton Commune, although conducted by hardened and heroic men, were repressed almost instantly. Only Mao was able to escape after suffering enormous losses. He came finally to understand the truth of the Chinese adage, that it is useless to “hit a rock with eggs.” He decided to abandon his attacks on Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, and took with him the remaining hundreds of soldiers and turned away. As he knew the region well, he succeeded, despite great difficulty, in establishing himself at the border of the Hunan and the Kiangsi provinces, in the area of Chingkangshan (the Crest of Wells). It was a poor and under-populated region where pro¬ visions were difficult to find, but on the other hand, the region was ideal for defense: high summits, long valleys with narrow passages, and no roads. A few determined combatants could keep, even numerous attackers at bay for a long time, just as the heroes of Liangshan described in the famous and popular novel At the Edge of Water did. It was at Chingkangshan that Mao succeeded in establishing, reconstructing, and developing his first Red Army and went through his apprenticeship for war and power. It was from this start that the history of Juichin, the Long March to Yenan, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China followed.

IV rj The Chinese Communist Party, according to the Chinese documents, was a Chinese creation, but in the West, one is used to believing that its birth was due to Russia.^Which of the two interpretations is the truth? Judging from the historical evolution of the Party, it appears that both views contain an element of

62

truth. Although the CCP is not of Russian origin, the Soviet midwife had played a part in assisting the birth of the premature child. From the beginning, the party was made up of elements of two disparate social and cultural origins: the precursors, who were intellectuals who had been converted to socialism abroad or by contact with foreigners in the big cities; and the self-taught rev¬ olutionaries formed in the revolutionary movement and in the struggle. These two origins gave birth to two factions in the Party: the kuochipai, that is, the “internationalists, ” and the tukung, that is, the “bumpkin communists.” The tukung learned Marxist-Leninist thought from their intellecutal forerunners, put it into action, and enriched it with their own experiences. The activities of the intellectuals took place in the cities and were preponderant in the “evangelical” literary and cultural domain, whereas those of the “bumpkin communists took place in the countryside, in the poorer regions. They were called tu, a pejorative which means “native, local, rus¬ tic, uncultivated’ and “low, inelegant, in bad taste”; but it was because of them that the first Red Army was formed, the Long March achieved, and the Great Revolution won. “The salvos__of the October Revolution have brought us the Marxism-Leninism,” wrote Mao once; apparently that was sup¬ posed to imply that Chinese revolutionary socialism owed its in¬ spiration to the Russians. But it has to be noted that, despite the fact that USSR and China are close neighbors, despite their strik¬ ing similarities in geographical vastness, backward techniques, rural masses, and feudal elements, it was not the October Revolu¬ tion that was the mother of the Great Revolution in China, for the culturo-socio-political history of the two countries have been so different from each other. Marxism-Leninism in China was an imported product, but not directly from Russia. To be sure, the birth of the CCP was due only to the encouragement of the Rus¬ sians: It was a by-product of the Second Congress of the Third International, of course, and Yurin, Soviet ambassador on official mission, Voitinsky, the secretary-general of the Comintern’s Fareast Rureau, Sneevleit (alias Maring, or Ma-lin in Chinese) a Comintern agent, and some other lesser known Russians, were the midwives. However, before the arrival of the Russians, Chinese revolutionary socialists already existed. The Chinese themselves had the idea to form a “Marxist studies club ’ such as had been proposed by Chen Tu-hsiou during the preliminary

63

meetings. The founding of the CCP was a premature birth, be¬ cause the Chinese revolutionary socialism existed but in theory— that is to say, in the ivory tower among the intellectual elite in some universities. The Chinese - proletariat was, if not non¬ existent, at least ill-organized. The Soviets proposed to these pr¬ ogressive Chinese the formation of a political party, and, at the same time, a “United Front” with Kuomingtang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, the “centre-left” at the time of Sun Yat-sen, who governed in Canton and with whom Moscow was planning to constitute an “anti-imperialist and anti-feudal” alliance, going against the Western powers and their Chinese agents, the war¬ lords. The Chinese socialists decided to form the party, but hesi¬ tated at the idea of a “United Front” with the Kuomintang, since the majority of them, whether from the left or the right, were reluctant to collaborate with a bourgeois party. They ended up, however, by accepting the Russian proposition because of their realization of their own weakness and the advantage of the plan: all in one go, they would be able to share the prestige of the Comintern and be officially recognized by the local government. Also, they would be able to emerge from underground and act openly, supported by a great foreign power not too far away. As the first Chinese Communists had no experience what¬ soever and had to learn everything from their Russian big brothers, their organization was dominated by Russian influence ever since the beginning. As for the “United Front,” the alliance being entirely arranged by Moscow directly with the Kuomin¬ tang, the CCP acted merely as executor of the Russian plan or agent for the Comintern; it had, therefore, to follow Moscow’s in¬ structions strictly and gradually lost all of its own initiative. The CCP Secretary-General, Chen Tu-hsiou, said, “Leave the direc¬ tion (of the United Front) to the Kuomintang’s chiefs,” the latter having direct advice from Soviet technicians sent to them by the Comintern. Thus, the CCP not only had no independence of ac¬ tion within the “United Front, but also was not an equal partner vis-a-vis Moscow; for, being a brand new member of the Comin¬ tern, its relationship with USSR was not that between two frater¬ nal parties, but more like that between a protege and protector. Instructions from Moscow were therefore nothing less than “or¬ ders.” And when Chen Tu-hsiou,was eliminated, the post passed to a young man sent directly from Moscow with Russian training.

64

Thus were planted the seeds of the subsequent disasters of the Chinese Communist movement and its interminable internal problems up to the complete break-up in Sino-Soviet party relations and the Cultural Revolution. The innumerable internal problems of the Chinese Com¬ munist movement can be summarized into a single word, “Fjidjiyism”: Moscow-trained “man-Fridays” always dominated the direction of the Party; whereas the tukung, numerous in number but lacking leadership, were the main victims of all the errors made by the “man-Fridays," and had no voice at the Party Central Committee installed at Shanghai. Mao was the only “rus¬ tic” and “chauvinist” among the Party’s founders, but his impor¬ tance was negligible because his interests were concentrated in the countryside, in guerrilla warfare, and fighting the overwhelm¬ ing influence of the “man-Fridays” among the leaders. Not only were his capability and thinking always underestimated, but he was sometimes even blamed for his support of peasant uprisings and kept at a distance. When he finished by establishing himself at Chingkangshan and, together with Chu Teh, moved to Juichin to establish a bigger red base, his independence from the Russian-influenced Centra^ Committee increased with time. Without going to open defiance, in order not to be discovered prematurely and involved in factional disputes, Mao kept away from the direction of the Party to avoid being dragged into quar¬ rels. He abstained from engaging in the adventurous putschist policy of the Party—the famous “Li Lisan line”; he did not want to overestimate the “subjective forces of revolution,” nor to under¬ estimate those of the counterrevolution, since he had no wish to wreck the foundations of his power. He refused to undertake con¬ tinual offensives against the cities because, being preoccupied with survival after the tragic events of 1927, he did not wish to risk the danger of a total wipe-out and preferred instead a flexible strategic defence. Against an enemy both greater in number and stronger in weaponry, he knew his own weakness: the Red Army was very inferior in size, dispersed over the wide region it had to defend, much inexperienced in battle coordination, and badly equipped, which prevented it from attacking well-defended places without the help of an adequately organized underground Com¬ munist force. So instead of “adventurism,’ he contented himself with working hard among the masses, organizing, arming, and helping them to become the new revolutionary forces who would

65

be the “principal instrument of the Great Revolution to come.” However, the “Muscovites” of the Party Central Committee did not have confidence in the rural action of Mao, holding the opinion that “it is wrong not to .attach particular attention to urban workers and to count only upon ‘the villages to encircle the towns’ tactics,” that the conception of simple “guerrilla” warfare was the reflection of a peasant mentality, “the tactics of guerrilla being completely incompatible with the policy (adopted by the Party) and should be subjected to fundamental changes.” Thus, the policy of the Party was exactly opposite to that of Mao. Mao was more moderate and prudent, basing his appreciation more upon reality. The ruling members of Shanghai thought there was a “new revolutionary wave” in the world, especially in China: the world situation was evolving towards a mounting crisis, with revo¬ lutionary movements in various countries and colonies ceaselessly increasing. Gigantic socialist construction works were taking place in Russia, while in China, the competition between the im¬ perialist powers became keener, the feudal classes exploited the people more and more, and this exploitation accelerated in turn a revolutionary movement whose time appeared to be approach¬ ing. This was the moment of a revolutionary flux which had to be grasped and translated into direct action on a vast scale, instead of waiting in passivity. Such was the essential contents of the resolution of the CCP Central Committee of June 11, 1930, enti¬ tled the “New revolutionary wave and the preliminary victories in one or two provinces.” In the opinion of those returned from USSR, China was the weakest link in the chain of the world¬ revolutionary crisis, and it was in China that the volcano of world revolution had the best chance of erupting. Consequently, thanks to the aggravation of the world-revolutionary crisis, the Chinese Revolution was to be the first to set off the world revolution and the decisive class war in the world. Such a conception of the world situation was far away from the realities of the moment, acceptable only for the naifs, the revolutionary neophytes trained abroad, that is, the “manFridays” too indoctrinated to see otherwise than from the view¬ point which they had been given. In fact, at the invitation of the Kremlin, the “Muscovites” decided to set upon all the big towns and attack everywhere to enlarge the Red bases at the national level, without taking into consideration the situation or their own strength. They appeared to think that a tap on the ground with

66

one s foot sufficed to bring out legions of warriors, and audacity could replace everything, including batallions, guns, machines, tanks, and airplanes. Of course, they failed miserably, their en¬ terprise being one of pure madness. Mao was against the Party line and refused to follow because he did not want to disperse his forces. He had thus avoided a dis¬ aster and his base at Juichin, secure at all times, soon became the refuge for the fleeing members of the Central Committee. A new Politburo was created at Juichin, and thus the ascension of Mao to the direction of the army and the Party: he was elected Pres¬ ident of the Chinese Soviet Republic proclaimed at Juichin on November 7, 1931. However, Mao’s ascension to power did not last long. Fol¬ lowing some incidents in the Party, and upon the arrival of a great number of members of the Central Committee, great dis¬ putes arose between the majority of the Central Committee and the leaders of the government concerning the military operations. Mao’s guerrilla theory and his “war of movement’’ were judged as no longer valid. In spite of his successes during the years 19311933 against the Nationalist attacks, Mao lost all authority in the direction of war. He was even physically kept at a distance from the ruling nucleus and retired to Yudu, south of Juichin, during the summer of 1933, where he no longer exercised any influence upon the events. The strategy adopted by the Communists on the eve of the fifth Nationalist campaign (October 1933-October 1934) was no longer that of Mao s. But the Nationalist government had also changed tactics: they had decided this time to finish the Communists once and for all. Faced with annihilation, the Com¬ munists decided to abandon the base. As the decision of evacua¬ tion was taken at the last minute and not planned at all, the re¬ treat was made in incredible disorder; it was almost a stampede over which Mao had no control. A complete disaster was avoided only when an “enlarged” conference of the Politburo was held at Zunyi on January 6-8, 1935, to re-examine the consequences of the evacuation from Juichin and the errors committed by the members of the Party, as well as to elaborate a new strategy to get out of the difficulties. In spite of opposition and after heated debates, Mao won his case and was elected President of the Party Military Commission. He became also a member of the Politburo, and with the help of his title of President of the Chinese Soviet Republic, he regained his position as head of the Party and the

67

Army. Pell-mell retreat was thus finally transformed into an ex¬ traordinary epic, the Long March. But Mao’s struggle with the “man-Fridays” did not end all at once. First, a short while after Zupyi, the final destination ol the Red Army became a subject of discord: Mao and some others opted for the North of Shensi, near the Great Wall, where there was already a small Red base; others preferred Chinese Turke¬ stan, nearer the Soviet frontier, eyeing always the help of the “Motherland of socialism.” The latter group ignored geography, as well as the real situation: the province of Sinkiang, although close to the USSR, was almost a desert and unsuitable to serve as a military base. Besides, the influence of Islam was preponderant in the province, the inhabitants multi-racial, among whom the hart, that is, the proto-Chinese, were not always in majority; be¬ sides, the long established local warlords were politically and militarily well secured and supported by the Russians themselves. Mao decided to leave for Shensi in the North to join the ex¬ isting base there, and he had a political plan: to have war on Japan declared by the Chinese Soviet Republic at Juichin in reply to the patriotic urge of the Chinese, and thus to force onward the revolutionary movement by leading the national resistance against the Japanese invasion. After enormous losses and terrible hardships, Mao managed to lead his remaining 8,000-strong army to Paoan, in northern Shensi, where they were met by that of Liu Chi-dan and Kao Kang on October 19, 1935, whereupon began the episode of Yenan. Those who chose to remain in Szechuan and then took the route for Sinkiang, passing by Tibet or Kansu, did not have the same fate: 20,000 men under the command of Hsu Hsiang-chian^ were destroyed in the strategic corridor of Kansu. Chang Kuo-tao who tried the same itinerary to penetrate Sinkiang was compelled to abandon the project midway and rejoined Mao in Yenan, the main part of his army destroyed. Only 2,000 among them es¬ caped, and they were rescued and brought to Mao’s base only in May 1937. A year after the establishment of the new base at Yenan, all other Communist troops arrived separately. Thus ended the Long March, unique and extraordinary military exploit that became the genesis of the People’s Republic of China today.

68

At Yenan, Mao was the most important personage, even if his title of President of the Chinese Soviet Republic was illusory, since the post was no longer existent. His titles of President of the Military Commission and member of the Politburo were also in name only, for the resolutions of the “enlarged conference” of Zunyi were not recognized or approved by the Party till the end of 1938, that is, after the flight of Chang Kuo-tao to join the Nationalists. Before that, Wang Ming was all powerful with his majority of “Muscovites’ in the Central Committee, and Chang Kuo-tao was the acting president of the frontier government of the region Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia; this made Mao’s position am¬ biguous, ill-defined, and precarious for he only represented an insignificant “fraction of peasants. But among the Communist leaders and the masses he enjoyed an immense popularity, which others never had, and high status as a result of the successful history-making Long March, which was the result of his accurate judgement, his foresight, his realism, his fantastic intellectual adaptability towards problems of varying circumstances^ his au¬ dacity, and most of all, his military genius, which was practical, original, and infallible. It was owing to these qualities that Mao was able, before the Long March, to maintain during six years at Juichin, a budding Red Army, which gradually expanded, although it was always numerically feeble and materially poor. The venture proved not to be in vain, for it was Juichin that provided the training ground for those who would later make up the framework of the Party and the Army. The old rank and file, physically, morally, and in¬ tellectually tested and hardened by prolonged combats, later be¬ came militant to the highest degree with the necessary qualities to support a new revolutionary movement. Until today, the majority of the political and military leaders in New China are personalities formed in Central China. During his time in Yenan, despite the fact that countless dynamic elements had been lost in the Nationalist massacres and reprisals, and in the blindfold adventures ol “Lilisanism”, during the Long March, Mao still had around him many of those oldtime combatants of Juichin and other bases; but Yenan, though a celebrated place in Chinese military history with numerous tales of heroism to its credit, was at the time impoverished and de¬ populated by the great Muslim revolt of the previous century.

69

The poverty of the region limited the development of the Party and the Army. The new base, therefore, opened its doors widely to all new-comers. The influx of people of different origins brought new prob¬ lems, political discord, personal conflicts, and especially, the sickness of sectarianism. First, the “Muscovites” faction which dominated the Party Central Committee was then under the di¬ rect supervision of Wang Ming (also known as Chen Shao-yu), and was soon reinforced by the “man-Friday” intellectuals coming in great numbers from the big cities situated along the coastal re¬ gions. Wang Ming was the first of the twenty-eight “Muscovites” that Stalin sent to China to control the CCP. Wang was born in Shanghai. He entered the Far-eastern University (also known as Sun Yat-sen University) in USSR under the patronage of the Kuomintang and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in November 1925. He returned to China in 1930 with no practical experience in revolution nor a real knowledge of China, especially “peasant” China, having originated from a westernized coastal town and having lived a long time abroad. Yet, upon his return, he entered the CCP Politburo immediately. When Li Lisan was recalled to Moscow following the failure of his attempt at adventurism, Wang came into power with his group of twenty-eight “returned from USSR,” and directed the Revolution. The Secretary-General, Hsiang Chung-fa, being of real pro¬ letarian stock, acted only as a figurehead, and upon his arrest in June 1931, Wang became his substitute. He returned to Moscow in 1932 and hence “directed the revolution from there in the capacity of the Party delegate to the Comintern and member of the Executive Committee. Two of his cronies from the same “Muscovite” group, Chin Pang-hsian (alias Po Ku) and Chang Wen-tian, who succeeded him in the post of Secretary-General, served as his intermediaries in the execution of his orders. After the establishment of the new base at Yenan, Wang re¬ turned from Moscow in autumn 1937 to direct Party affairs per¬ sonally. This time, from an ultra-leftist in 1930-1934, he had changed into an extreme-rightist, not on account of his previous failure, but because of the change of policy of Kremlin: in Europe, Nazism and the Berlin-Roma-Tokvo dangerously menaced the Soviet Union. For security reasons, Moscow no longer wanted to continue enmity against the Nanking govern-

70

ment, but offered instead, a friendly hand to Chiang Kai-shek. Acting accordingly, Wang proposed to the latter a second “united front,” not like the one before, but a “united front” comprising a complete union of all Red forces with the Kuomintang: “Unity of action, unified command, unified program, unified administration, unified discipline, unified armaments. . . which implied the pure and simple capitulation of the Communist Party and the Red Army. For most of the Chinese revolutionary Communists, the past bitterness with the KMT was difficult to forget; but for the “Muscovities, to follow the “only correct line” of the “international pro¬ letariat” was of prime and primordial importance. All deviation from it was “opportunistic,” whether of the “right” or the “left.” Even when Stalin signed the non-aggression treaty with Japan, he was right, as the “safety of the Soviet Union” was primordial, al¬ though the treaty would have greatly encouraged Japan in its ad¬ ventures in China. For the Chinese “Muscovites”, national interests were but secondary in their consideration. Despite the “Mukden Affair” and the successive invasions of China by Japan, their immediate reaction was not for their own national interests first, but for those of the “Internationale. ” “The Chinese Communist Party considered Japan s offensive in Manchuria as an imperialist offensive which was only the prel¬ ude to the next great imperialist offensive against the Soviet Union.” Such was the CCP’s resolution of September 1931, ac¬ cording to the book by R. Magnenos entitled From Confucius to Lenin. The Red Army created by Mao did not emanate from the idea of Kremlin or the Party Central Committee, and was thus not “authentic”; when Mao refused to follow the adventurous line of Li Lisan, to throw himself into attack, the “internationalists” reproached him for “preferring propaganda in the villages to the destruction of the enemy in combat.” Even in the use of terms in their rhetoric, the “inter¬ nationalists” insisted upon an “internationalization” carried to its most extreme, without considering whether it was comprehensi¬ ble to the ordinary Chinese. For example, instead ot using an ex¬ pression like “council of workers or of peasants in Chinese, so as to make it easier for the Chinese to understand, the Muscovites preferred to use the Russian word soviet, which was not trans¬ lated, but transcribed into sou wei ai, resembling more the name

71

of a person than that of an organization. Consequently, the Nationalist authorities, who badly understood the whole thing, offered a reward for the capture of this “red bandit, Sou Weiai, dead or alive”! Mao found it all ridiculous. He did not like the rapturous slogan and the bombastic rhetoric of the Politburo, which was exactly the westernized language of the “man-Friday in¬ tellectuals, and proclaimed: “We must finish with the stereotyped foreign style, spend less time in empty loquacity on abstract no¬ tions and cast aside dogma for an air and style that are Chinese, full of freshness and life, that pleases the ears and the eyes of our simple people.” But the “Muscovites were preoccupied only with propaganda, publishing, and translating Soviet books, as well as executing the Comintern instructions in their literal meaning. Mao, on the contrary, insisted that/ior the sake of revolution, it was necessary to know not only Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin, but also, “our historical heritage . . . One has to know how to apply Marxism-Leninism according to the specific conditions of China herself.”/! Besides the “Muscovites” who controlled the Party, the Army was also a problem. During the period of Yenan, other than the old, devoted, and resolute militants, there was a new ten¬ dency towards the birth of budding “new warlords” among highranking officers. High political officers were invested with the power of military command; they sometimes centralized, by force of circumstances, all authority without excluding that of the Party of which they were generally secretaries of their regions. This concentration of power was necessary because of the nature of the guerrilla warfare and the unforeseen creation of new bases in faraway places. Though the taste of responsibility and initiative developed amongst many, it created for others, a tendency to want independence from the Party Central Committee, which re¬ sulted sometimes in the abuse of authority, occasional poordiscipline, and the making of important decisions without prior consultation with the Central Committee. Typical of these new “warlords” was Chang Kuo-tao. Chang was one of the founders of the Party, representing then the ultra¬ left. He had studied Russian and represented the Party at the Executive Committee of the Comintern in 1930. Upon his return to China the following year, he was elected Vice-President of the Soviet Republic of China when it was proclaimed at Juichin.

72

Later on, he served as political commissar for the “Fourth Front,” under the command of Hsu Hsiang-chien. During the Long March, he established a base at Maokung in the western part of Szechuan, where Mao joined him after the conference of Zunyi. When they separated to march northwards, Mao led the right column and Chang, the left one. Arriving at Koho, a tribu¬ tary fo the Yellow River, Mao who was leading, crossed, whereas Chang, who arrived later, found it impossible to cross and so made a roundabout turn southwards, taking with him the fraction of Mao s men who were with him. He ordered his own men who were with Mao to join him. His plan was to make for Tibet and Sinkiang, where he would create in the western regions a new base to await in peace the better days to come. He wanted to prof¬ it by the low spirits of his soldiers and officers, tired with bat¬ tles, hunger and uncertainty about the future, by making them follow him, instead of risking confrontation with the Nationalist forces, which he judged too strong for the Communists. It was said that Chang, leftist until then, became pessimistic following the defeats suffered by the Communists. He was against the idea of going north to fight the Japanese and said of Mao: “That one, speaking of defying the colossal military might of Japan!” When he made his roundabout turn southwards, he even had an ambi¬ tious plan. He had all the trump cards in hand: Chu Teh and Liu Pocheng were with him, and he had about 35,000 recruits of Szechuan amongst his men, who detested leaving their native prov¬ ince. One suspected, therefore, that Chang might have had the intention of launching a military coup to seize Mao’s Politburo and proclaim himself chief of the Red Army and the Party. Yeh Chien-ying, who watched clearly the events, warned Mao of the danger of an eventual surprise attack from Chang, Mao’s army of the “First Front” being much inferior in number and illequipped. Nobody knows for sure what really happened, as documents on the subject are lacking to date. But we know that Mao agreed to the departure of those of Chang’s men who wanted to join him, while he himself left for the North, prefer¬ ring to be massacred by the KMT forces in combat rather than to retrace his steps and perhaps fight a fratricidal war. Chang, however, was not so generous. He was “indignant at the sudden departure of Mao and decided that he would no longer obey orders from the “false Central Committee. He or¬ ganized in the western region of Szechuan a provisional Central

73

Committee with himself as Secretary-General and sent a cable to the base of North Shensi, explaining that Mao’s Central Commit¬ tee was no longer recognised, but that “he would continue to carry out planned military operations to safeguard unity. A mili¬ tary council was created with Chu Teh as commander in chief and Chang himself as president. The new base thus created was called the “base of Szechuan-Sikang.” The new base was in a poor region where the population was scattered and the local agricultural production insufficient to maintain a large army. Chang’s troops could not live except by trafficking in opium as the local warlords did. However, deser¬ tions and sickness reduced the number of Chang’s men enor¬ mously. He was finally made to accept the proposition of a recon¬ ciliation with Mao and left for the northeast of Shensi. But along the way he decided again to go to Sinkiang, where he could es¬ tablish a base near the Soviet Union. In a battle in the corridor of Kansu, he lost his whole army and was the only one to escape alive. Rescued by another surviving group, he ended up joining Mao at Yenan. Chang arrived at Yenan at the end of 1935, more than a year after Mao, but became the interim president of the frontier government of Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia. He soon entered in collu¬ sion with the “Muscovites” against Mao and began to dispute with the latter over the leadership of the Army and the Party. They advocated a new “United Front” with the KMT on the basis of a new Russian formula worse than that of Chen Tu-hsiou’s time: turning over the “red zones” and the command of the Red army to the Nationalist government without any reservation. It was an application of the “Popular Front” movement launched by the Comintern in Europe, and the Chinese “Muscovites” simply transposed it to their own movement, forgetting completely the lessons of their previous experience of 1925—1927. This call for “capitulation” found an echo amongst the pessimists, tired from battles and worried about the future, but was against the spirit of the revolutionaries and the masses, indignant with the policy of non-resistance of the KMT to imperialist invasion by Japan. Chang finally lost his position and, in April 1938, profiting from the arrival of a government mission at Yenan, he fled and went over to Chiang Kai-shek. Thus was ended the political career of one of the first Chinese Communists, who had overcome all tests until the Sino-Japanese war.

74

Chang’s escape weakened all Mao’s enemies. At the end of 1938, the majority of the members of the Party and the Central Committee, including the “Muscovites” (such as Liu Shao-chi) who were on the side of Wang Ming, joined Mao. The Chinese and the world situation both turned in Mao’s favour. In Europe, after Munich, Moscow’s attitude became more and more confusing as a result of its national security situation. The Nationalist government, resisting the Japanese invasion, took refuge at Chungking after the fall of Wuhan and had practically stopped fighting the invaders, but once again began its hostilities against the Communists and other patriots. Only the Communists troops were able to develop rapidly in front and behind the Japanese lines, which justified Mao’s forecastsj‘A lot of people, inside and outside the Party . . . fail to recognize the important strategic role of guerrilla warfare and put their hopes in a single classical war . . . Only the Communist Party is able to bring the final vic¬ tory to the resistance against Japanese imperialism. MarxismLeninism is the only way to lead the Chinese revolution to vic¬ tory.” A Mao became gradually the undisputed chief of the Party, but he still had a long way to go before his ideological authority was fully established: Meanwhile, the German attacks upon the USSR and the dissolution of the Comintern dealt a mortal blow to the faction of Wang Ming. At the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, Mao found himself at the peak of his authority at the Seventh Congress of the Chinese Communist Party when the new statutes of the Party were passed, wherein the value of the practical experience of the Chinese Revolution was acknowledged and, for the first time, a direct reference was made to Mao’s thought in the statutes: The Chinese Communist Party takes as its guide in all its works, the Marxist-Leninist theory and the union of the practice and the thoughts of the Chinese Revolution—the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung—and opposes all tendencies of dogmatism and empirism.

75

V Dogmatism and empirism, however, were not slow in mak¬ ing their return after the victory of the Great Revolution because of internal as well as foreign factors. The internal factors were, as in the case of Russia after the October Revolution, the bureau¬ cratization of the Party apparatus and the “embourgeoisement” of the administrative and army cadres. The foreign factors were prin¬ cipally the economic, technological, and military needs that the new China had, the Korean War, the death of Stalin, and the “revisionist” movement in USSR. Dogmatism was a characteristic trait of Marxism in China, for it was above all an imported doctrine. The precursory theoreti¬ cians as well as the later revolutionaries were but exegetes, and so was Mao at the beginning. However, Mao was able to break away and form his own thoughts through his personal experiences of continued struggle in the course of his life. He had often been accused, whether directly or by allusion, of being “vulgar.” It was not until the Seventh Congress that Mao’s thoughts were recog¬ nized as guiding ideas. But this was the birth of a new dog¬ matism: if Lenin and Stalin were in the past regarded as Popes, while the Chinese “Muscovites” considered themselves as their apostles, now it was the turn of Mao to become the Pope and the Maoist leaders, bishops and priests. In 1964, when China exploded her first atomic bomb, the People’s Daily declared on October 22 that China had at her disposal a weapon more power¬ ful than any nuclear arms: “Mao’s thoughts, the leadership of the great, glorious and just Chinese Communist Party, and the superiority of the socialist regime.” Obviously, Mao’s original concept that “the decisive factor is man (that is, the people, the masses)” had begun to be transformed into the “infallibility” of the leaders. Bureaucratization of revolutionary leaders after a revolution is an inevitable phenomenon everywhere. In the 1920’s, Lenin had fought against the rising tide of arbitrariness and bureaucracy in USSR, but he did not succeed because of his death. Mao launched the same battle, first in Yenan with his theory of “New Democracy” and his “rectification movement,” as opposed to the despotism of Wang Ming and the Party; then, after the Great Rev¬ olution, he started up the “Hundred Flower movement, which

76

ended in practical failure because of the overpowerful reactionary forces within the Party. Finally, he came upon his personal tool for a purge: the Cultural Revolution, whose effects are still felt today. ^ The Cultural Revolution was not a power struggle between individuals, but an “ideological” confrontation against the inevita¬ ble birth of a new class amongst the veteran soldiers and the Party rank and file: the neo-Confucian and man-Friday bureau¬ crats. These bureaucrats were “neo-Confucians” because, accord¬ ing to them, the Party was nothing but an elite of good and honorable men aspiring to probity, holding the command of an efficient and honest bureaucracy, and treating with an objective paternalism the “illiterate” and “backward” population that needed “leadership.” Their viewpoint was not all new, for the old Chinese “literocrats” and the KMT mandarins had exactly the same ideal; the only difference was that the communists were tinted “red and therefore tended towards Moscow, for Russia was much more advanced in her revolutionary history and in her economic, technological, and military development, China could not pass over her material and spiritual assistance. Where the Party organization is concerned, the Chinese Par¬ ty’s structure was not only based on the Rolshevik model, but particularly on the Stalinian type of the 1930s. The great purges of Stalin influenced Wang Ming so much that when he returned to China, his way of treating dissidents or “Trotskyites” did not differ at all from that of Moscow at that time, if it was not worse. After Wang Ming, the same practices went on despite Mao’s new “democracy” and the “Hundred Flower” movement. Before 1966, no one would have supposed that a “high-level” directive could have anything bad in it. The grass-root militants imagined that the “deviation and the errors could only come from the lower levels of the hierarchy, but never from the top. Mao, however, felt, that “the Party officials are not necessar¬ ily always right!” The Party could be wrong, it should always fight against itself and integrate itself with the people which it has to serve. If it becomes an elite organisation cut off from the masses, it betrays the revolution^ “It is in the interests of tyrants,” said Mao, “that the people remain ignorant, whereas our interest is that the people be intelligent.” The system of single direction was the root of bureaucratization of all political parties; in the case of

77

communist parties, this system was always camouflaged under the “collective leadership” of the Party’s Central Committee, but in reality, the collective leadership is only based on an elite of man¬ aging technocrats. Without the people being aware of the power that is in their hands, the Party leadership, separated from the masses and entrenched in its privileges, can only become bureaucratic, conservative, and even tyrannical, slowing down and impeding development and progress. /^After the victory of the Great Revolution, one of the major contradictions in the society of the new China was the survival of a great part of the urban bourgeoisie//Certain bourgeois nationalists, progressives or simply anti-Kuomintang, were on the side of the CCP ever since the beginning. When the Revolution ended, the country was in ruins, and the Korean War soon fol¬ lowed. There was need for rapid reconstruction, thus for knowl¬ edge and technology of industry. Apart from the bigger busi¬ nesses which were nationalized, certain others continued to re¬ main in private hands or under semi-private management, de¬ pending on their size and the propitiousness of their exploitation. This sector of private capitalism soon became a problem that was political as well as social, because the Party cadres began to grow comfortable with the return to peaceful times and became trans¬ formed under the “sugar-coated bullets.” The bourgeois in¬ telligentsia coming out of the universities was rapidly promoted to the higher administrative posts in the new government. The sons of the bourgeois and the landowners became accountants and managers of the cooperatives. The Army officers were mainly re¬ cruited from among the intelligentsia, because the “intellectual standard” required for their work had to be high enough so that the latest scientific techniques could be easily assimilated.^In short, new bourgeois elements were constantly born within the new society, and they gradually rose in the Party organization, the government, the economic structure, the cultural and educa¬ tional institutions, and even the Army. The Party leadership was so preoccupied with economic growth and production in the country that when the private sector complained about the “strangulation process” that “hinders production,” Liu Shaochi and Kao Kang both demanded, in Tientsin and in Manchuria, re¬ spectively, that steps be taken to “limit the workers’ demands” in order to favour “production.” In general, the Soviet industrial model was, in the eyes of

78

the man-Friday leadership, the most “socialist,” which meant that ideology was to be pushed aside and production and economic growth be taken care of first. Socialist “management” was not much different from the capitalist one, except in the use of jmanual labor. Each working unit was watched over by two different administrations, that of the Party and that of the ad¬ ministrative cadres, which led to a waste of manpower as disastr¬ ous as that in the Soviet Union. But waste was secondary to the fundamental problem: Who would benefit from production and growth? Workers remained workers, while a new class of exploit¬ ers was born: a techno-administrative elite grafted upon industry, a bourgeois bureaucracy whose nature did not correspond to the real need, but constituted, on the contrary, a menace to the very objective of the revolution itself. In theory, the struggle for economic construction should be a “war of liberation” to free China from her constant reliance on foreign powers and give value to China’s own resources and un¬ tapped potentials. But as soon as there was progress, there was new exploitation; economic growth was separated from the wel¬ fare of the masses, the welfare that cost so dearly to win. As for economic independence, this meant only cutting off relations with the Western world, while it was the turn of the Russians to fur¬ nish machines, plans, technicians and advisors. Based on the model of the USSR, all efforts were concen¬ trated on developing heavy industry to the detriment of basic commodities and agricultural developments, in spite of the fact that to raise the standard of living was imperative for the purpose of encouraging the rural population’s enthusiasm for socialism. In order to have a healthy heavy industry, it was necessary to have a well developed light industry and agriculture, so that there could be a steady accumulation of capital for heavy industry. On the other hand, restriction of products for basic needs would only provoke discontent and lower working morale and pro¬ ductivity. Without the total participation and the awakening of the masses for national reconstruction, the accelerated develop¬ ment of heavy industry at the cost of public welfare could only create an economic and social imbalance; for it would make only the urban population rich and comfortable, while the majority in the backward countryside would remain neglected and at a disad¬ vantage. This would widen the gap between the city and the country and break the worker-peasant alliance on which the new

79

regime was based, a return to the situation in China before the Revolution, i.e., the domination of the city over the country, the exploitation of the rural majority by the urban minority. The leadership thus seemed to have' forgotten that the Revolution triumphed because of the peasantry and their credo was nothing more than the Soviet model, the NEP (the “new economic pol¬ icy”), which had been applied in the USSR with brilliant “suc¬ cess.” The motto of “production first,” a patriotic one during the Korean War, rapidly turned to the advantage of private business. In the name of encouraging production,- certain controls on the use of raw materials were removed, which assured big profits to the private sector. Private businessmen dealt directly with the peasants to buy their agricultural products, and above all with the rich peasants, and from there it was but another step towards the return to power of the managers, to a regime of corruption and venality. Those who profited most from the Korean War were the “warlords” ennobled by their exploits. The military leaders were the greatest enthusiasts for the Soviet modeh—although none of them had been trained in the Soviet Union. Kao JCarigb the “lord’’ of Manchuria, was named first vice-president of the National Planification Commission, created in November 1952 to draft the First Five-Year Plan, a body which held the same rank as Prime Minister Chou En-lai’s Council of State. Kao was important in the planning process because, out of the fifty projects of cooperation signed between the USSR and China in February 1950, thirty were to take place in Manchuria. In 1953, 80% of Russian aid and 40% of Soviet experts were sent to Manchuria before the First Five-Year Plan had even begun. Kao was at that time one of Mao’s closest “comrades in arms,” for he was one of the two local chiefs of the base of North-Shensi before the arrival of Mao in the region. In 1951, Kao became vice-president of the Military Commission of which Mao was chairman. The relationship be¬ tween Kao and the Soviets were so good that, as president of the Association for Sino-Soviet Friendship, he lauded that friendship to the point of suggesting that Manchuria be joined to the Soviet Union. “The new patriotism is internationalism, there should be no borders between us.” Manchuria, the biggest industrial centre ol China, had always been eyed by Russia, from the time of the tzars to date. Kao’s predilection was so appreciated and encour80

aged by Moscow that Stalin made him a present of a special car for his personal use. He was a rising star in the Chinese political sky; but, too confident of his power and too patronized by Krem¬ lin, he went so far as to openly defy the Party leadership. In Feb¬ ruary 1954, Liu Shao-chi, who was his personal enemy, com¬ plained about “certain officials who consider the region that they govern as their personal property. Kao was divested of his func¬ tions and arrested. He finally committed suicide in prison. Another military man, seduced by Soviet military power like him, was Peng Teh-huai, the Minister for Defence. He was born and raised in the same province as Mao, Hunan. A professional officer out of the military academy in Hunan, he served in the Nationalist army until 1928, when he rebelled and joined Mao in Chingkangshan. It was he who beat the army of Ho Chien in July 1930 and occupied Changsha for an entire week before pulling back. A member of the Central Committee, he was Commander in Chief of the People’s volunteers during the Korean War (1950-1953). He was so impressed by Soviet military power that he thought Mao’s opinions on guerrilla warfare, on the “com¬ mune,” and on the “Great Leap Forward” to be “rustic and outof-date.” He was more than anything else against the device of “politics in command,” political instructions in the army, the political commissars, and the popular militiaAt that time, thousands of Chinese officers were being sent to the USSR to receive training, and five thousand Soviet advisors of all kinds were in the military academies and industries in China. The new doctrines and practices that were being learned by the Red Army were no longer those of Mao’s. New discipli¬ nary rules were being applied, strict obedience of orders was the order of the day, and the officers became a distinct and superior caste. In January 1955, Peng invited high-ranking Russian officers to observe some big maneuvers of land, air and naval forces. Dur¬ ing the maneuvers, ten Chinese generals with the rank of marshal were in their new uniforms, which had been exactly copied from those of the Soviets: large helmets, medals, and gold stripes. This kind of “servile imitation of foreign things ’ produced almost im¬ mediately a remark by another veteran of the Long March, Mars¬ hal Yeh Chien-ying, who said during the conference held at the high military academy that the study of the latest Soviet experi¬ ence” should be intelligently combined with “our excellent na¬ tional traditions.”

81

In April 1959, Peng left Peking to attend a meeting of the signing of the powers of the Warsaw pact as an observer. For several weeks, he travelled the USSR and in the Eastern Euro¬ pean countries, in order to learn about “modern, advanced techniques. In Tirana, he met Khrushchev and other Soviet lead¬ ers and informed them of his criticism of and opposition to Mao’s policy and ideas. It was just at this juncture that tension between Russia and China was building up concerning Russian demands for military, naval, and nuclear bases in China; and Mao, in the face of these unacceptable demands, resigned from his post of Pres¬ ident of the Republic, to avoid a brutal conflict. On June 13, Peng returned to China; on the twentieth, Krushchev suddenly announced the annulment of the Sino-Soviet agreement, signed in October 1957, for the “sharing of nuclear knowledge.” On July 14, Peng wrote his famous open letter to Mao and the Party, criticizing Mao’s ideas and, more importantly, his refusal of the Soviet’s military demands. (Loi Dougan Tretiak noted, however, in the Far Eastern Economic Review of November 1967, that “Peng’s letter was not simply an innocent exposure of his opin¬ ions, for he had written to the Soviet Communist Party three months earlier to criticize the policies of the Great Leap.”) Shortly after the letter, on August 1, the holiday commemorating the founding of the Chinese Red Army, the Soviet Press in Mos¬ cow, poured praises on Peng. Khrushchev’s decision to back up the dissident elements in the Chinese Communist Party began to arouse the suspicions of the Chinese leadership, for despite the fact that it was a “family affair” with the “Motherland of socialism,” it was difficult to swallow: Despite the existence of “Fridayism” and “man-Fridays” in China, neither the whole lead¬ ership nor the whole people were among the “man-Friday” crowd. The attack against Mao, launched by Peng during tbe Eighth Congress held in August 1958, was thus completely checked. Peng disappeared from the scene. Soon afterwards, he was appointed to a fairly important regional post and continued to be a participant in the Central Committee. In December 1966, he was arrested by the Red Guards and led through the streets as an object of ridicule for the public in July 1967. The Sino-Soviet rupture and the elimination of Peng seri¬ ously weakened the position of the “Muscovites” and the “manFriday” bourgeois intellectuals of the Party. Mao himself had also fallen into minority, through the failure of the “Great Leap,” the

82

serious drought, the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations, the American "containment, and most important of all, the influence of accusations that Khrushchev was flinging at Stalin after his death. Liu Shao-chi, who replaced Mao at the presidency of the People’s Republic, was representative of the new mandarins: bureaucratic, conservative, elitist, concentrating on their sup¬ posed ideological supremacy and on their seniority in the Party, but secretly backed by the “Motherland of socialism,” with which the bridges had never been broken. This new mandarin move¬ ment began its struggle for power against Mao in an underhanded campaign to discredit Mao in literary and philosophical works and by refusing Mao’s words and writings any access to the public. Mao decided then to start his own unique revolt: the Cultural Revolution. Mao, already expelled from the executive, explained what was happening in October 1966: “I think that for seventeen years one thing has been badly done.” Out of fear of the birth of Stalinist dictatorship in China, two working channels had been created in the administration. “I was in the second channel and did not take care of the daily routine. Other comrades were in the first ... I trusted the others too much.” During the Cultural Revolution, those “others” who were running the government became subjects of attack, and they soon reacted in camouflaged counterattacks, using the same method and the same slogans: “^avjng^the, red flag to strike down the red fl^g,” according to Mao. Thus, all were usinglhe'same words without speaking the same language. It was no longer possible to distinguish between the red and the black or vice versa. A purge within the Party turned thus into a horrifying chaos of excess, perversions, sabotage, pointless attack, and even terrifying bloodshed. But the Great Helmsman had not lost his compass: Khrushchev’s followers were opposed to three movements : the Hundred Flowers, the Communes and the Great Leap Forward. We have to use them to edify the world, including the opponents and the sceptics within the Party. . . . It is completely inadmissible that anyone should plot with a foreign country behind the back of our fatherland. ... I wish to warn those comrades guilty of collusion with foreign powers and those belonging to anti-Party

83

cliques, that if they explain themselves completely and loy¬ ally, they will be welcomed . . . and we will not resort to execution. In the First Ten Points, Mao explained that the specific goal of the directives was the revocation of “all those holding authority in the Party who followed the capitalist road. . . . The socialist edu¬ cation movement is a great revolutionary movement ... It is a struggle that calls for the re-education of man . . . the new man. ” Since the Party organization was dominated by the wrong ones, Mao could no longer make use of it. He called upon the Army to put a stop to the troubles. Meanwhile, events turned in his favor: first, the Sino-Indian border war, during which the USSR took sides with India; then Camp David, where Khrushchev capitulated. On the other hand. Kremlin became more and more aggressive towards friendly countries, and armed incidents took place on the Sino-Soviet borders in Chinese Turkestan and in Manchuria. The Americans began their bombardment of North Vietnam, and China succeeded in exploding her first atomic bomb. Helped by these occurrences, Mao finally won over his adversaries and put an end to the reign of the last of the “Musco¬ vites”: Liu Shao-chi and his followers were eliminated, although none of them had any finale like those purged in Stalinist Russia. Liu, stripped of his functions, died of cancer in 1974. Some profiteers of the Cultural Revolution also ended up badly. Lin Piao, who became Mao’s “crown prince,” was exposed plotting with the other “warlords” to hurry along a more rapid succession to power. When the secret was revealed, they fled, but their plane crashed in Siberia en route for Outer Mongolia.

VI Other shrewd profiteers of the Cultural Revolution did not immediately meet disaster after the upheaval. This was Madam Mao’s “Shanghai Group.” Close collaborators of the Chairman, they were, of course, more apt in sensing the change in the di¬ rection of wind. Hence, they changed boats in the nick of time and became, after the death of Lin Piao, real profiteers: Wang Hung-wen, ranking third among the Party leaders; Chang Chunchiao, sharing executive power with Teng Hsiao-ping when Chou

84

En-lai was in the hospital; Chiang Ching, seated sixth from the Chairman; and Yao Wen-yuan, controlling the press and prop¬ aganda. [\, But they were neophytes in politics, coming to power by chance rather than by anything else. They had neither experience nor ideology nor capability. Their entire background depended on Mao, who needed some lieutenants at his side. Their primary tools were only the Little Red Book and their radical jargon, which they picked up during the Cultural Revolution. Since it was only thanks to that event that they climbed to the top, they had neither the desire to abandon these precious appurtenances nor the intelligence to alter their ambitions. Encouraged by their rise, they wanted only to climb higher. Immediately after Chou’s death and Mao’s feeling ill, they began to yearn after Chou’s posi¬ tion and Mao’s legacy. As a matter of fact, the Four did not have the necessary capi¬ tal for their proposed enterprise. Yet they believed themselves to have an infallible magic wand: their “radicalism.” They were so accustomed to brandishing it that when Chou went into hospital, they launched the multi-pronged campaign of “critique of Lin Piao,” “critique of Confucius,’’ “critique of the novel At the Wa¬ ter’s Edge,’ and, when Chou died and Teng was removed, the “critique of Teng Hsiao-ping.” However, too enrapt with their own complacency and cut off from the masses, they did not re¬ alize the public’s repugnance for the endless politicking and quar¬ rels. When they met with any open and frank criticism—which was rare, let it be said—they simply thought it was retrogres¬ sion from an incurable rightist opponent, because they were on the “right” path, since they kept on speaking the same language: the jargon of the “radical” line. The word “j"argon^’ may not be fully understood by foreign observers, for it'wasnot a simple linguistic problem, but a typical socio-political problem in China, as in all formerly colonized and semi-colonized countries: the “man-Friday” types dominated the so-called modern trend of thought, and very often, state affairs, if the country had committed itself to modernization. These petitbourgeois, westernized intellectuals did, without doubt, make their contribution to progress in their motherlands, but at the same time they worked as much good as bad, if not more bad than good. What was worse was that the second generation stemming from their movement comprised odd creatures: Similar

85

to the siblings of the wild animals surgically transformed into “human beings” in H.G. Wells’s novel Doctor Moreau’s Island, they are truly “neither figs nor grapes ”; they had no cultural foundation whatsoever, they knew only how to manipulate some half-translated and half-transcribed foreign words, and they always believed themselves superior to the other natives. As the preposterous creatures of Doctor Moreau’s Island were sterile in the novel, the second generation of “man-Fridays” in China are sterile as well in literature, the arts, and politics. The People’s Daily of January 30 noted a typical Chinese phenomenon after the arrest of the Four, namely that “the Chinese people no longer want to read ‘long stereotyped articles’ which were pub¬ lished during the heyday of the ‘gang of four,’ and preferred that the press publish from then on good, short, animated articles.’ ’ The editorialist of the paper asked the people and the journalists to publish articles “devoid of suffixes and prefixes of MarxistLeninist jargon, and to get straight to the point, putting things simply.” According to the same paper, the Hunan Daily, as quoted by the regional radio station of the province, was publishing readers letters which took the same stand. The paper reminded its read¬ ers that when the “gang of four” were around, the articles pub¬ lished in the press were “reactionary, long, unpleasant and always said the same thing. ” “The gang of four” style had to be swept away and thrown into the trash-can of history. Why suddenly this problem of “writing style” during a period of grievous political torment? This would trouble a nonChinese mind who lacked understanding. But for those who know what the “ultra-westernized” Chinese and their preternatural offsprings are, the clue of demystification would not be difficult to find: anybody would soon be fed up with a repetitious monologue, especially when it comes through the high-pitched voice of an overzealous propagandist who tries indefatigably to convince you all the time. For want of sense of this elementary point of psychology, the Four became a public nuisance, and therefore, the general satisfaction when they fell.

86

6

WHAT NEXT?

Since the arrest of Madam Mao and her gang, everything has been, at least to all appearances, calm and quiet in China up to now, except for a few sporadic, insignificant incidents in some parts ol the country. The only outward signs of upheaval were the occupation by the military of some important factories and office buildings in certain cities, military control of certain strategic points along the railways, and the transfer of some government servants to certain provinces. Essentially, there was no chaos to speak of, and even the wave of public confrontations in various cities since the death of Premier Chou had suddenly stopped. What does this silence mean? The calm before the storm or a modus vivendi between the different competitors for the throne? Nothing can be ascertained without precise information. Meanwhile, Hua is continuing to rule with the little prestige that he had before, and his authority is, for the moment at least, almost unanimously recognized by the Party, the administration, and the Army, while his nomination awaits ratification according to Party statutes and the Constitution. In fact, neither his nomi¬ nation nor Teng Hsiao-ping’s cashiering have been made legal and official. Rumors had it that the outbreak of a civil war was wisely avoided by the precautionary step taken by Hua. By an astute ar¬ rangement, when the “four” were secretly arrested on October 7, Hua convoked a conference of provincial and regional leaders in

87

Peking, with the accord of the Party Central Committee and the backing of the Army. Not knowing what it was all about and in complete ignorance of their leader’s arrest, even those who have pledged allegiance to Madam Mao’s group obeyed the order and betook themselves to the capital. During the conference, Hua announced the arrest of the Four and presented in detail the reasons which brought about the Party’s decision. The “radical’’ leaders, principally, the three commanders of the Shanghai militia, of course, were surprised. Yet when they tried to com¬ municate with their headquarters in the provinces, the telephone and telegraph lines had already been cut. Meanwhile, their prin¬ cipal lieutenants were arrested, and their non-commissioned officers, suddenly without leadership, had no idea of what to do. The arrest of the Four was then officially announced throughout the country, and gigantic demonstrations organized by the government acclaimed the measures taken by the successor to the Great Helmsman throughout the country. There was no protest, and the grass-root followers of the radicals were suddenly thrown into confusion, for they could not understand why the propaganda and the mass media, before controlled by their own faction, should now turn suddenly against them and their leaders. They were paralyzed, and the possible insurrection of the partisans of the “gang of four,” which they had taken so much trouble to pre¬ pare for more than ten years, with an important base of opera¬ tions in Shanghai and a strong city militia of about a million men on the way to be fully armed—an insurrection that would have plunged China into an abyss of long civil wars and perhaps beaten the young neophyte Hua in the struggle for power—was miracu¬ lously averted. The major headquarters of the “radicals” in Shan¬ ghai was demolished in the wink of an eye by demonstrators act¬ ing “spontaneously. 7s According to the research of a foreign correspondent who was digging in the ashes of the lightning-like putsch, a middle ranking official had stated in Peking: The Band of Four thought that they had the Shanghai militia with them. They tried to start an insurrection. If they had succeeded, a civil war, localized if not general, would have taken place. We thought that the cohorts of the Four would have created trouble. Big trouble perhaps. But it was just the opposite that happened. They (the “radical”)

88

were incapable of starting any trouble, neither major con¬ flagration nor minor incidents. You’ll see that yourself in Shanghai. The Four were at work there for ten years trying to build its influence, but the population, instead of follow¬ ing them, rejoiced when they fell. This journalist went to the scene to make an investigation of the actual reactions of the people. He found the confirmation of this jubilation first in the declaration of a Western businessman: “You can see the difference between the spontaneous pre¬ fabricated demonstration and a real demonstration. I have never seen a Chinese crowd so happy as on that day ” And a Western diplomat also told him that “We were all wrong. The people of Shanghai were quite prepared to turn against the ‘Gang’.” How is it that a solid foundation built up over a period of ten years by the Four crumbled away like a house of cards? This may not be generally understood but for those who wish to know the true Chinese situation and mentality without any preconceived ideas stemming from prefabricated devices of “Sinology / 1) First of all, contrary to the current interpretation of the term, the so-called “radicals” were only radical in name: They were not radical at all before the Cultural Revolution; they be¬ came radical because it was propitious, and remained radical be¬ cause they were actually at the'lielro and Mao was always of the opinion that “all contradictions . . . are beneficial”; what is right becomes clear only through its fight with what is wrong. 2) Logically speaking, radicals can be radical as long as it has to do with a “state of mind” in opposition to the government; they are no longer radical once among those that govern. And this is exactly the case of the Four when they were in opposition to the government, but in the control of the press, propaganda, and the arts and literature. They never tolerated any free expres¬ sion by anyone who did not tow their line, particularly in the field of “theatrical reform,” where Chiang Ching herself domi¬ nated. Then, “radicalism” was nothing more than “absolutism. That was the reason for their sterility and the discontent- of the general public. 3) There is no gainsaying that the Four were “tyrannical” in their way of managing the press and cultural activities. They were sometimes audacious in their criticism of the ruling authorities, but mainly because they had the backing of the supreme author-

89

ity, Mao. Once Mao was gone, the house was without the main beam and collapse became imminent. () 4) Besides the supreme authority’s support or tolerance, the “radicals” did not have any weapon of their own: there was no record of them in the Great Revolution, and they had no experi¬ ence nor had they made any tangible contribution to the national construction, but the people were, since the Cultural Revolution, already fed up with dogmatic harangues and endless struggles for nothing more than “ideological purity.” I 5) They did know Mao’s saying that “power comes out ofLa. gun,” but lacking professional officers in the ranks, they never could build up a military foundation, despite their efforts. Wang Hung-wen was proclaiming for a long time that young people in their thirties had to be nominated to posts of the vice-presidents of the Military commission, he could not be named Marshal with¬ out being a warrant officer. If they did succeed in establishing friendly relations with the military (who were never very trustworthy at the last minute), they did also make a certain number of enemies. For example, in July 1967, Wang was demanding “Let’s pull out those capitalist fellow travellers in the Army.” And in 1974, he complained “As far as the preparation of successors are concerned, the obstacles in the provinces are not great, but those in the Army are.” Wang was perfectly right for, if it was Hua who upset them, Hua would never have dared to attempt his surprise coup without the back¬ ing of the Army, and now it was Yeh Chien-ying, the old Mar¬ shal, who was number two in the power hierarchy. 6) The backing of the army was certainly not all the backing there was behind Hua. There were veteran revolutionaries among the cadres and especially the masses. Mao, while alive, was never out of sight of the last two factors. Yet the Four could never see further than their own interests and their idol, Mao. When the April Fifth riots exploded on Tian An Men Square, the slogan that the “radicals” cried out was typical: “Defend Mao! Defend the Center! Apparently “the Center” meant no more than them¬ selves! And why was Mao put before the “Center,” if it did not mean the cult of personality before the “organization”—if the am¬ biguous term Center was not used in reference to an “organiza¬ tion. ’ Clearly, the “radicals” belonged to the same school as Lin Piao who wanted to deify the Chairman, that is, himself, since he was then the recognized heir. But the people in the street were

90

not easily deceived, and they had no need tor religion, being atheists since the time of Confucius. What they wanted was life, a better life, policies that corresponded to their idea of satisfactory living conditions. Lin Piao fell because of quarrels over a clause concerning Mao’s “genius,” in the proposed draft of the Constitu¬ tion; the Four’s exaggerated attachment to the Chairman’s prestige was the reason for their success and of their failure as well.

The immediate fall of the Four after Mao’s passing perplexed world opinion so much that one French Sinologue said that Chinese affairs are “a-causal.” This assertion, although boldspirited, does not seem to be entirely senseless, for, by and large, the Western scale does not seem to be always usable when things Chinese, chinoiseries, are concerned: Things happened in such a surprising manner in China behind the bamboo curtain that the turn of events often surpasses the onlookers’ imagination. First, the great Revolution; two years later, it was the Korean War against the major world power at that time; then the Cul¬ tural Revolution; the sacking of the crown prince named in the constitution; the criticism of Confucius, who assumed to be in¬ separable from the Chinese soul; the death of the charismatic Chou En-lai, the April fifth riots at Tian An Men Square; new confrontations between “moderates’ and “radicals,’ resulting in the second removal of Teng Hsiao-ping and the unexpected ap¬ pearance of the brand newcomer Hua Kuofeng; the death of Mao and the arrest of his widow . . . and all these things took place in close succession to each other in a very short time. China watch¬ ers were bewildered and everyone began to wonder what next would happen to the gigantic Republic, for nobody was in a state to judge whether the problem of succession to the Helmsman has at all been resolved, nor whether the new power structure is via¬ ble. However, Hua continues to rule, though “unconstitution¬ ally.” And the seats in the Politburo, as well as in the Party’s Central Committee, remain unfilled as if nothing had ever hap¬ pened. How are the two supreme power bodies going to continue functioning? During Mao’s time, everything was decided by the great leader himself, through his incontestable authority. Now that the great leader is no longer there, the internal conflicts will

91

certainly not allow such an easy and simple arrangement, since there appears to be no personality with such incontestable author¬ ity as Mao. Lots of things need thus to be ironed out. It is already a miracle that 'Hua has been able to maintain himself in the seat of power left him by the Father of the Revolu¬ tion, a seat too big, however, for anyone but Mao himself. If Teng could be brought back, Hua would be able to keep himself there longer, for there are no other more qualified candidates. Mao had accumulated for himself alone the role of arbitrator and executive; this double role could well be divided. Hua was cer¬ tainly the ideal man to exercise the executive power, for he was little known before Mao’s choice fell upon him and belonged, for all intents and purposes, to no faction in the Party; thus, he be¬ came more or less acceptable to everyone. While a second Mao was rising to the top, Hua would be able to take on the role of arbitrator if he left the executive role to others and held himself above the conflicts. In such a vast country, with a population equally as large, the reality cannot permit one person to assume all the power alone. The First Emperor (221—210B.C.) wanted to establish an autocratic system and his system survived him by only seven years. Since the Cultural Revolution, Mao held the supreme power of the country in his hands alone. But this was due to the force of circumstances. And he was not Stalin: even when he was governing with his supreme power, he never bothered with routine or state affairs, which he left to others. And he was sec¬ onded by an all devoted “right hand,” the no less respected inf¬ luential and capable Chou. Hua has not yet accumulated Mao’s full power, and he is not Stalin either-—in fact, not even Malen¬ kov, because the situation in China is so different from that of Russia. The geographic immensity is similar in the two countries, but major industrial development is concentrated in a certain re¬ gion in Russia, which permits administrative concentration, while in China, the major part of the provinces are developed to about the same extent in general, which does not permit a supercentralized system. Moreover, the bureaucratic elitist class persisted in the two countries after the revolution, but that in China was put out of commission in the Cultural Revolution while in the pro¬ cess of taking shape. And on the other hand, the Chinese peas¬ ants, though docile and subservient before, are no longer meek for the most part, and the general condemnation of “urbanoriented” politics had no doubt a certain effect of restraining the

92

growth of the elite class of petty fore Stalin s death, the USSR did of continued struggle for power; perienced a power struggle ever public.

bourgeois city intellectuals. Be¬ not have too long an experience China, on the contrary, has ex¬ since the foundation of the Re¬

The Chinese masses were so fed up with the turmoil that they celebrated the arrest of the “gang of four” in the hope that they would experience no more debates and ideological and polit¬ ical mudslinging. The Hua-Teng regime could become relatively durable if they succeeded in maintaining a temporary balance between the different forces and the diverse opinions, even if it is nothing more than a temporary truce of modus vivendi. But stability can not be maintained unless certain basic conditions are satisfied: 1) The legal system must resume operation. Since the Cul¬ tural Revolution, Mao had, by the force of circumstances, put aside normal procedures—Party statutes and the Constitution—in his most important political decisions, especially in choosing new leaders or dismissing others. This went along with neither his concept of “New Democracy” nor with any concept of legality. Such a way of doing things might seem necessary and inevitable at the time, but this does not make it any more justified. It is all the more imperative that Hua and Teng get the legal procedures working again because neither of them enjoy the prestige and au¬ thority that Mao was entitled to claim. Only a strictly observed legal system can guarantee the effective functioning and stability of any government. 2) De-Stalinization of the Party structure and the civil ser¬ vice. When the “gang of four” was purged, the last of the elitist leaders within the Party were put out of commission, but a re¬ sidual of the “Fridayism” sickness certainly persisted below the surface. The Chinese Communist Party was essentially an im¬ ported product, its organization a copy of the Soviet model, par¬ ticularly that of the Stalin era. The “man-Friday” spirit exists throughout it and is manifest even in the smallest things, for example, in the choice of the presidential palace. Just as the Rus¬ sian communists choose to rule from the Kremlin, the Chinese communists maintain their seat of power in the old Imperial Palace, in spite of the fact that the imperial palaces of Peking were converted into public gardens open to the people even dur¬ ing the epoch of the warlords. This palace problem is obviously a trifle, but there are other

93

more serious problems, among them the problem of democracy within the Party. Lenin equates “dictatorship of the proletariat” with “democratic dictatorship.” Yet during his lifetime, and to a greater extent after his death, the Russian “democratic dictator¬ ship” has always been more dictatorial than “democratic,” and often quite totalitarian and despotic. This was due to the neces¬ sities of national security in the beginning. Yet during the Stalin epoch, absolutism became a system unto itself, and the secret police grew into a super-power within the Party. This was at the root of the great purge of the thirties and the Stalinist measures against political dissidents. The CCP was founded during Stalin’s time, and its structure was an exact copy of that of the Stalinists. Wang Ming “purged” suspected “Trotskyites” or simply anyone who did not agree with his policies in at least as cruel a fashion as Stalin, or worse. It was precisely because of this that Mao brought out the slogan of “New Democracy” in Yenan—and later, the movement of “Hundred Flowers” and his Cultural Revolu¬ tion. To re-establish democracy may not be difficult, but getting rid of the residual influence of the Stalinist sickness is certainly a much tackier problem. Mao said in 1966, “Don’t throw ‘hats’ (in¬ criminating epithets) on others gratuitously; some of our comrades are used to crushing people with ‘hats’ as soon as they open their mouths. With ‘hats’ flying all over, others dare not speak any more . . . you must let others talk, the sky will not fall because of it, and you will not be slaughtered for it. And if you do not want to let others talk? You yourself will inevitably be slaughtered one of these days.” 3) Shortening the distances betiveen the city and the coun¬ tryside is a prerequisite to putting democracy to work in a back¬ ward country. It is common sense that a poor country cannot have much chance of keeping alive the merest pinch of true democracy. In order to bring about a real democracy, the stan¬ dard of living in the countryside has to be brought up to the level of that in the cities. Red Flag, the doctrinal magazine of the CCP, published in its February issue an article titled, “It is imperative to take care of the welfare of the masses,” which called for a “more comfortable material existence” and a “more varied and cultural life for the Chinese. This marks a profound change to¬ wards more realistic policies and a move away from the “hollow prattling of the “radicals.” Individuals may live like trappists if

94

they wanted to, but a continual puritan life is certainly not for a whole nation. The new leadership in Peking promised to keep on Chou En-lai’s program of bringing the national economy up to the highest standard in the world by the end of the century; they will certainly not fail in their task, given the inexhaustible vitality of that ancient country, the natural resources that it has, its large, hardworking and inventive labor force. But one essential point must be heeded: accelerated modernization and industrialization must above all serve to shorten the distance between the coun¬ tryside and the cities, and not otherwise. The desired welfare must be equitably distributed; the provinces must no longer suf¬ fer from insufficient railroad transport; electricity must be made generally available; the progress of the agricultural sector must not be held back because of a lack of fertilizers; traditional ag¬ riculture must be gradually mechanized; and those innumerable blue ants working in the fields must be gradually replaced by tractors designed according to the needs of the earth.

Foreign observers are keeping watch with particular atten¬ tion on the position that the military has taken in the present power struggle in China. Some foresee that the conflicts within the Party will finally bring about a direct confrontation between the Party and the Army. Others fear that the endless fights be¬ tween the different factions will end in bloody civil wars between regional military leaders, that is, a return to the China of old, then torn apart by the old warlords. In fact, the dismemberment of China after Mao was being predicted long before his death. The crushing of the “gang of four immediately after his death, only added weight to the oftrepeated prognostication that the eventual “de-Maoisation in China would be a tough and prolonged struggle between the fanatic Maoists and the Maoists less loyal to Mao than to their own interests. Civil wars would only then be logical. Such a result is not at all impossible, if one looks at the China of today with the view of fifty years earlier, when China was no more than a geographical name whose economy was so lit¬ tle developed that certain regions could practically exist indepen¬ dently of the rest of the country. Then, China was divided into

95

spheres of influence between several imperialist foreign powers ruling behind a curtain drawn over respective spheres of influ¬ ence acquired by treaty or otherwise; then, Chinese soldiers were mercenaries and thus officially “pirates” under the banners of au¬ tocratic and all-powerful warlords; then, the masses wished for no more than a good harvest and a good emperor, could not read or write, did not listen to radio and did not watch television, which, in any case, did not exist at that time. China, however, changed enormously quite a while ago: the Republic Revolution, the civil wars, the foreign invasions, eight years of war against the Japanese, and thirty years of revolution¬ ary struggle towards the foundation of the People s Repub¬ lic .. . all that was a baptism of fire for the people and the coun¬ try. Certainly the military still occupies a preponderant role in political affairs: Ever since the crushing of the empire, military men were governing China until before the Great Revolution. A “central” government existed, either in Peking or in Nanking, but its power and authority fluctuated with time, and it was often de¬ fied by provincial governors. The Japanese wars helped the Nan¬ king government to unify China, for the Nationalist Army was able to penetrate and hence station itself anywhere, including the most remote provinces of the northwest and southeast. Even Mao himself has been able to arrive at the zenith of power thanks to his military strength. According to the “Memoirs” of Chang Kuo-tao, “Of all the diverse (Red) armies, only three are worth mentioning: Mao Tse-tung’s forces, account¬ ing for a total of about 15,000 rifles in the province of Kiangsi; the Fourth Army in the border region of Hupei-Hunan-Anhuei, about 10,000 rifles; and Ho Lung s Army to the west of HunanHupei, about 7,000 rifles.” Thus, it was Mao who had the strongest of those Red armies. It was Mao who was able to re¬ pulse the first large-scale Nationalist attacks with the famous guerrilla tactics which he first invented. It was finally in Mao’s territory that the Politburo and military leaders that had been be¬ aten by the Nationalists took refuge; it was also in Mao’s territory that the Chinese Soviet Republic was proclaimed and of which Mao was elected the President. Pushed aside by the majority of the Central Committee, Mao only recovered his leadership of the Party when the Long March broke down and he was elected to the chairmanship of the Military Commission. From there on¬ wards, there was one success after another, from the finish of the

96

Long March to the victory of the Great Revolution. Since then also, Mao never left his post of chairman of the Military Commis¬ sion which Chou En-lai gave up to him. It was the secret of his success, and he openly affirmed it: “Power comes out of the gun.” The Cultural Revolution—whether one likes it or not—was started by Mao in defiance of the President of the Republic, Liu Shao-chi, and the President of the National Assembly, Chu Teh. Mao had been forced out of the seat of power, but he was able to reconquer it and beat his adversaries with the support of the mas¬ ses; still, he was able to stop the chaos of 1967 by resorting to the Army, and again became the head of government without having any official or constitutionally valid title. Mao actually destroyed the structure of the Party through the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in augmenting the impor¬ tance of the military, for on the one hand, when the Party lost the absolutism that it had during the rule of Liu Shao-chi, the Military was less inhibited by other controls; on the other, out¬ side threats, such as border incidents in the north and elsewhere, and internal security necessitated that the Army be powerful. But Mao was able to maintain control by his ingenuity; i.e., by his astute use of the policy of “divide and rule” (divide up the mili¬ tary regions), by his slogans of “politics in command” and “democ¬ racy in the Army,” even by the creation of completely indepen¬ dent worker-peasant militias, and finally, by keeping himself chairman of the Military Commission, a post he never left during his lifetime. Chou En-lai was Mao’s second-in-command and his indis¬ pensable right-hand man, not only because of his influence among the military, but also because, like Mao, he was one of the foun¬ ders of the Red armies. He was the political director at the Mili¬ tary Academy of Huangpu during the era of the First United Front with the KMT. He directed the “Revolt of Nanchang, and later became president of the Military Commission during the Kiangsi era before yielding the post up to Mao in Zunyi. Most of the Communist military chiefs of today were his old pupils or his subordinates. Chou, in his turn, chose Teng Hsiao-ping as his eventual successor, not only because Teng was among his oldest comrades, but also because Teng was one of the generals fighting before and during the Great Revolution. Liu Shao-chi’s failure in his battle against Mao was because

97

of the fact that, although he controlled the Party, Mao had the Military Commission and Chou, who controlled the government, was with Mao. Lin Piao’s suicide was due to the fact that he was too ambitious in insisting that a clause be inserted in the new Constitution which would create a supreme chief-of-state, a de¬ signated successor to Mao, the supreme power in the Party, the government and the Army, something which was not acceptable either to Mao or to Chou. /. Chou never fell from power during his lifetime, not only be¬ cause he had resilience, but also because he was never ambitious: when he was serving as chairman of the Military Commission he was the highest leader neither of the Party nor of the govern¬ ment; when he was prime minister, he was at the summit neither of the Party nor of the Army. His influence in the latter existed only because of his connections and his prestige. When Wang Hung-wen was shouting in July 1976 “Let’s get that ‘handful of capitalist fellow travellers’ out of the Army,” and his impudence provoked an incident in Wuhan which amounted to practically a revolt in the Army, it was Chou who had to go to the scene to study the matter and avert a disaster. When Teng was elected vice-chairman ot the Central Com¬ mittee in January 1975, and later first vice-prime minister and chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, Mao attended neither the meeting of the Central Committee nor the conference of the National Assembly. It was claimed at that time that Mao had not taken part in the decision. This anecdote does not seem reliable, for decisions of such importance could not have been taken without Mao’s sanction. Teng’s supporter Chou and Mao were never in conflict, and Teng himself was a long-time fol¬ lower of Mao: in 1943, speaking during a holiday celebration, Teng had declared, "Since the Zunyi conference, venomous op¬ portunism has been wiped out of our Party. We are proud to have Comrade Mao at the head of the Center of our all-seeing Party, which knows how to lead the people towards the right path.” In consequence, despite the fact that Teng was eliminated a second time after the fifth of April incident, Mao said at the beginning of 1976, “Hsiao-ping is not the same thing as Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao. . . . this has more to do with the con¬ tradiction among the people. Based on this, the Central Com¬ mittee’s April 7 resolution was to dismiss Teng from his official functions, without however expelling him from the Party. Teng

98

might perhaps not have been divested at all if he had not created a few enemies by transferring simultaneously eight military com¬ manders in 1973, an act meant to dislodge military leaders that had become too well settled in their regions, but a foolhardy one nonetheless, for it spread a good deal of discontent among highranking military men. His second “rehabilitation” after the stamp¬ ing out of the radicals was thus a bit more lukewarm than it could have been.

IV The abnormal tendency of the military’s domination since the Cultural Revolution reached its peak during the Ninth Plenum held in April 1969, when 112 of the 170 elected members of the Central Committee were military men, ten of the twenty-one members of the Politburo were officers, and many of the provin¬ cial revolutionary committees were also presided over by military men. The Lin Piao affair happened in September 1971, at the same time as the cashiering of the chief of staff. General Hwang Yung-sheng, and internal quarrels among the military leaders, all of which greatly weakened the influence of the military. Yet the commanders-in-chief of the large military zones have but rarely been changed since the ousting of Lin and Hwang. The simulta¬ neous transfer of eight of them by Teng was an act without prec¬ edent, but a step that could have been taken only when Mao and Chou were still alive. With the sanction of Mao and Chou, the military again be¬ came the essential factor in any power dispute. For if the strug¬ gles within the Party were between ideological currents of politi¬ cal lines before and during the Cultural Revolution, this was no longer the case after the Lin Piao affair. There remained only conflicts of personality, since there remained only one Party line, that of Mao. The different factions could claim to represent cer¬ tain tendencies, but they really did not, for there was no more other “line” than the same “Maoist Red Flag.” All disputes would actually be a battle between two opposing groups: the veterans, including the revolutionaries, the military leaders, and the mili¬ tary rank-and-file and government cadres of tangible distinction, against the “newcomers,’ who had come to power so to speak by “helicopter. The former were, in general, of a down-to-earth

99

style, and therefore usually considered as “moderates”, and many of them had suffered at the hand of the “radicals” during the Cul¬ tural Revolution, when everyone had the opportunity of being roughly handled by the “little red guards”; even Chu Teh, the President of the National Assembly, the old Commander in Chief of the Red Army and number one among the Communist military leaders, was not able to escape it since the “radicals,” though rad¬ ical, were always clever enough to make a distinction between hierarchy and real power. The “moderates” were not organized, since they were sectarian and had even lost their representatives at the Center when Chou died and Teng was ousted, becoming thus “dragons without a head” as the locution has it in Chinese. The “newcomers” on the other hand were well organized. They had constituted their little circle around Madam Mao and even seemed to be somewhat encouraged by Mao when he was alive; all the Four were made members of the Politburo, and Wang Hung-wen soon became vice-chairman of the Military Commis¬ sion in order to help Mao form an army made up of workerpeasant militias outside of the regular Army. Reing a member of the Military Commission is a highranking post, and being vice-chairman of the Commission is gen¬ erally reserved for a military leader with the rank of Marshal. Of the commanders in chief of the eleven big military zones, with the exception of Yeh Chienying, the ten others are not all mem¬ bers of the Commission. Wang’s nomination, was extraordinary, but his incompetence kept him from being effective and useful except for the creation of a large militia in his hometown of Shang¬ hai, which proved to be worthless at the crucial moment when the Four were arrested. On the eve of the arrest of the Four, the balance of forces between the two groups was as follows: Chiang Ching dominated the executive committee of the Politburo, and two of the four remaining members were under her wing, Wang Hung-wen and Chang Chun-chiao. She also had the control of the whole Polit¬ buro if all the newly-elected members could be counted as being on her side, for Chiang Ching would then have nine of the thir¬ teen members with her. (But the five non-Shanghainese betrayed her at her arrest.) On the other hand, the Central Committee had the right to elect the chairman and vice-chairman of the Central Committee, the members of the Politburo, the President of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, and to pass any possible

100

amendment to the Constitution. That was the reason why the Third Plenum’s calling was difficult even when Mao was still alive, the battleground being bound to the Central Committee. While awaiting for the Plenum to convene, the “radicals” had however, a formidable weapon at hand; propaganda. With the press and the mass media, the "radicals were counting on being able to mobilize the whole nation against their enemies. They put a challenge to Chou as soon as he made Teng Hsiao-ping, vicechairman of the Central Committee, vice-premier and chief of the staff of the Army during the Second Plenum held in January 1975. From then on, the pi-lin pi-kung (“criticize Lin Piao, criti¬ cize Confucius”) movement, started a year before, completely changed direction and became a campaign against the "rightists within the Party, that is, against Chou and Teng. The heat of the campaign and the harshness of the attacks were such that there were fears of a repetition of the Cultural Revolution. Once the fight had begun, the “radicals” launched two more campaigns successively: the campaign criticising the popular novel At the Water s Edge and that against the “rightist reverse of ver¬ dict,” obviously aimed at the rehabilitation of Teng by Chou. The latter, still alive but hospitalized, found himself cornered and compelled to take precautionary measures. First, while bringing back Teng, he also tried to win over the young “climbers” so as to prevent them allying themselves with the Shanghai group. He got Hua Kuo-feng elected the sixth vice-premier and concurrently minister for National Security. Then, he did his best to rehabili¬ tate old comrades and get them civilian and military posts, which contributed greatly to the consolidation of the moderates position in the civil service as well as in the Army. Through a tactical error, however, the Shanghai group knew only how to make noise and troubles. Following the incident of Tian An Men, Teng was cashiered; but the “radicals’ had ob¬ tained nothing either, for the Great Helmsman had made an as¬ tonishing choice: the almost unknown Hua Kuo-feng was named prime minister and vice-chairman of the Central Committee, to the chagrin of the ambitious Chang Chun-chiao. A tough struggle took place soon afterwards, but it was a ghost of a struggle put on by the “radicals” only, without any ap¬ parent objective, lor no one knew exactly what the noisy attacks were about nor whom they were directed against, since there were no ideological battles nor political disputes going on at the

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time. Madam Mao mobilized the entire propaganda apparatus to make music, and everyone above all, those who held power and responsibility, felt themselves to he the target, for no one forgot the turmoil during the cruel years-of the Cultural Revolution that Madam Mao unleashed. Hua finally decided to put an end to that dangerous “mad dog’s ravings”: with the backing of the Army, he had the Four arrested under the accusation of plotting to usurp power. Months have gone by since then. Nothing serious has taken place against Hua yet: no large scale agitation and no open rebell¬ ion. Hua is busy “legitimizing” his position, and meanwhile the return of Teng Hsiao-ping is being spoken of, a greatly useful or even necessary return for Hua’s sake, for although Hua has sup¬ posedly succeeded Mao by Mao’s own designation, and putting aside the question of whether he has got the personality and pres¬ tige of Mao, Hua cannot serve in the persons of Mao and Chou Enlai simultaneously. He is young, but in accumulating for him¬ self all the responsibilities and the authority of the Party, the State and the Army, he must have a second-in-command, pref¬ erably one of much experience, who has talent and, if possible, a strong and forceful character; who above all has historical con¬ nections with the veterans of the war of liberation, especially those political and military leaders in the capital and in the Provinces. Madam Mao’s fall itself should be a lesson for Hua: She lost because she became bewildered. Neither at the death of Chou nor at that of Mao did she succeed in grasping power. She abused the propaganda weapons at her hands, firing at random in her campaign against the “bourgeoisie within the Party,” a campaign which frightened everyone. Thus, instead of making friends and allies, she made enemies. Thus even the new “climbers who came to power by “helicopter” have finally turned their backs on her, such as Hua himself, Wu Teh, the mayor of Peking, and Chen Hsi-lien, the commander-in-chief of the capital garrison. Hua did profit from the lesson: in contrast with Chiang Ching, he wanted everyone’s support. He relied on Marshal Yeh Chien-ying and re¬ tained the veteran Li Hsien-nien. Now he has the problem of the second rehabilitation of Teng. The official announcement of Teng’s return appears slow in coming. Rumors have it that the matter is not solved yet, for the leaders of the CCP are not in agreement. Some of them are said to be still hostile to Teng. There are still wrinkles to iron out.

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All these stories might not be without reason; but one point which could not be mistaken is that Teng’s rehabilitation is a matter of cardinal importance: It is not like purchasing a custom-made suit in a departmental store; on the contrary, it is a state affair, which involves reversing a decision Mao made, i.e., reversing the former verdict on the Tien An Men affair, which involved Chiang Ching and company. For all that, at least the Third Plenum must be convened, and the very convocation has been dragging on ever since Mao was alive. According to the statutes of the CCP, in order to convene a plenum or a new congress, vertical and horizontal discussions have to be held, and a preliminary accord reached, particularly when the issue is to select a president and vice-presidents, the chief of state, high commanders of the land, naval and air forces, i.e., to undertake the distribution of power. As long as an unani¬ mous agreement has not been reached, the convocation will drag on like the way it did before Mao’s death and the way it is now. Reaching an agreement of Teng’s return involves the conse¬ cration of Hua and the whole affair of Chiang Ching, which means the winding up a chapter and opening a new one. Tremendous efforts and patience must be needed before a compromise can be worked out in a way that will satisfy the various strata, factions, and stands of opinion. But if the onlooker knows something of the past and modern history of China, he will not overlook the fact that China is several thousands years old and her people are well experienced in politics; the Great Revolution has not been a sudden occurrence, but a long and difficult struggle that lasted more than thirty years. The veterans who have passed through the turmoil and are still alive will certainly not let the great cause they have been fighting for down, to allow the regime they built up and under which they are now well installed to be threatened by disintegration on the inside under the ever-present watchful eyes over the border. There are obstacles to surmount, but since the Cultural Rev¬ olution, the last “anti-Party elements have practically been wiped out. Today’s China does not really have important idological quarrels. Rather, what she needs is a solid plan of action to clear up the dregs and remnants of past disputes, and to set to work in order to put into execution the programme recommended by the late Chou En-lai: “Modernization of agriculture, moderni¬ zation of industry, modernization of defence, and modernization of scientific research. ”

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The new leadership of Peking has promised to follow the last directives of Mao to “practice Marxism and not revisionsim; work for union and not division; show frankness and probity and do not play at intrigues. By force of circumstances, they will keep their word, for after so many years of disturbance and successive dis¬ appearance of leading personalities, no leader today is secure if new trouble arise.

V / \What then about the future of China’s foreign policy? The answer to this question seems obvious: Diplomacy is but an ex¬ tension of the domestic politics of a country; if China remains un¬ changed in her family affairs, its foreign policy will not change much either, at least in the foreseeable future. Whether Hua or anyone follows Mao in power, none would match Mao’s force of personality, and thus no one would dare take the initiative for any radical reform. Since the Shanghai Four crisis, China has been much de¬ valued abroad; but being pragmatist by nature, the Chinese themselves will not mind it too much. Because of the extinction of “internationalists” within the Party, in foreign policy at least, practical politics would count for much more than ideology in Peking today. That was and surely will remain the leading “line” of China’s diplomatic dealing with any foreign country, no matter whether it is a state of the Third World or one of the two super¬ powers. Since Nixon’s visit, China’s position in world politics has greatly changed, her “closed door” has been re-opened and the “bamboo curtain practically exists no more. But after the initial success of Chinese diplomacy in 1972, the picture started to change again: more and more preoccupied with her internal con¬ flicts, Peking began to turn back upon herself. In 1976, Mao re¬ ceived the two new conservative prime ministers from Australia and New Zealand, as well as the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. But shortly after, no more visitors were received, Mao going into his last agony. When Mao died, Moscow at¬ tempted a new approach in her relations with China by sending Leonid Ilyich, a vice minister for Foreign Affairs, to re-start negotiations on border problems between the two countries. The

104

Soviet vice-minister stayed three months in Peking, apparently without reaching any success, and returned to Moscow. In view of the fact that the Soviet Union and China are the two most powerful Communist countries, both of them the most populous, immense, and influential in world politics, their dis¬ pute over a strip of territory along their borders amounts to a rivalry that is a threat to the security not only of the two coun¬ tries concerned, but also the entire world. For a while, after the deaths of Chou and Mao, there was speculation that the new ruling group in Peking would try to facilitate an eventual rapproachement between the USSR and the People s Republic. Rut Ilyich’s return to Moscow seems to indi¬ cate that no betterment in the situation is to be expected soon, and tension will persist along the common borders of the two countries, where dozens of divisions armed to the teeth eye one another across the disputed zones. Some analysts see in the continuation of the Sino-Soviet ten¬ sion one of the reasons for the intensification of the Soviet arms build-up; but most of these analysts have neglected the influence of the dissident movement in Russia itself: the more the dissident movement spreads, the more aggressive will become the au¬ thorities in the Kremlin. So far the Russian dissidents’ activities were all concentrated in the European part of the country; il they spread towards the East and made contact there on the other border, it will not be impossible that “pre-emptive’’ attacks might be discussed again: then it will not be a question concerning the two Communist powers, but the entire planet.

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EPILOG

Ten months after the arrest of Chiang Ching and her cronies, the ruling authorities in Peking announced officially that the Third Plenum of the Tenth Congress and the Eleventh Congress had, respectively, been held July 16-18 and August 18-21. The Plenum is preparatory to the Congress, while the latter is, in theory, the supreme organ of the Chinese Communist Party which endorses or rejects the executive leaders’ policies in Party and State affairs, and names the Central Committee and its Polit¬ buro. The published resolutions of the new Congress include, above all, the endorsement of a new set of Party statutes, super¬ seding the previous one issued from the Tenth Congress, held in August 1973, and the confirmation of the de facto ruling triumvi¬ rate of Hua-Yeh-Teng. The triumphant comeback of Teng was most spectacular, being preceded by the announcement by wallposters and celebrated, when announced, with spontaneous firecrackers in the capital and elsewhere, so much so that it gave one the impression that Teng should actually be the number one in the troika, along the Chairman Hua and Marshal Yeh; but he was restored only to his former posts of vice-premier, vicechairman of the Party, and the chief of staff of the Army, and was not appointed Prime Minister as most people had expected. Chairman Hua still controlled the premiership, sitting in the middle with the seventy-eight-year-old Yeh at his left (which is equivalent to the “right' seat in Western custom), who formally remains China’s number-two man, and Teng at his left, the number three. This formal order might be a well meted out ar-

106

rangement based on a compromise between all concerned to avoid the cutthroat course ol the Cultural Revolution-type politics and to tmTsTTThe eradication of the “gang of Four” and the follow¬ ers. Apparently, the compromise thus reached has been very suc¬ cessful: gathering together 1,511 delegates (representing more than thirty-five million Party members), the Congress lasted for only three days in all to finish its work and arrive at its conclu¬ sion. The proceedings were extraordinarily smooth because of well carried out preparation regarding the choice of delegates, the drafting of amendments, the preparation of the list of candidates for election, etc. All these were not easy matters, especially after the death of Mao and the arrest of the Four; a single spark of dissension could have clouded the issue and delayed the conven¬ ing or brought the meeting to a standstill. The Eleventh Congress was a success: there was no visible sign of discord either over the distribution of powei or over the general programme of the After-Mao policy. Since the foundation of the People’s Republic, the CCP’s na¬ tional Congress has been held four times, that is: the Eighth Con¬ gress in 1956, the Ninth in 1969, the Tenth in 1973, and the Eleventh in 1977. According to the Party statutes, the Congress has to be held once every five years, but due to circumstances, there were cases of delay or advance. The Ninth Congress had been delayed for eight long years because, following Stalin’s death and the Sino-Soviet split, Mao lost his control of the Party; then the Cultural Revolution took place and lasted three years. The Tenth had been held one year in advance because of the Lin Piao incident; the most recent Eleventh was also one year in ad¬ vance because of Mao’s death and the arrest of the Four. Each time the Congress takes place, a new election of the Party Central Committee and its Politburo takes place, that is, a change of personnel following the changes of political programme. But this time, with the death of the Great Helmsman, the Con¬ gress had not only to deal with the reorganization ol the Central Commitee, but also to solve the problem of the supreme leader. When Mao passed away, many other veteran leaders had also been lost, including Chou En-lai, Chu Teh, Kang Sheng and Tung Piwu. Patriarchal rule set up by Mao was difficult to pass to another, for want of such an ideal inheritor invested with similar historically and politically proved prestige and authority. There

107

was but one reasonable solution: Be wise and practical in keeping the house “in order” first, before attempting to find a final ar¬ rangement; do not let China disintegrate into “fighting kingdoms” such as what had often occurred'in the millenia of Chinese his¬ tory after the death of a powerful ruler. That seems to be just what those 1,511 Communist delegates had been able to realize at their Congress. There was no evidence of any high-handed dealing, but the members arrived easily at their consensus: Quench first the flames of internal conflicts that have been per¬ petually flaring up ever since 1957; call for more stringent Party discipline and a tough line on law and order; set in motion a prag¬ matic, production-oriented programme of political stability and economic growth; terminate for the time being if not, “once and for all,” the erratic course of the decade since the Cultural Rev¬ olution and stand ready to deal with the outside world. The new course set out by the Eleventh Congress was possi¬ ble owing to many factors: -—the lessons of the past events of the last two decades; —the disappearance of the last remnant of dogmatic oppor¬ tunists, that is, the self-styled “radical” profiteers of the first Cultural Revolution; —the massive come-back of veteran revolutionaries with known and recognized records, many of them rehabilitated only after the arrest of the Four.

II In his four-hour-long speech at the Congress, Chairman Hua announced unexpectedly the “triumphant conclusion” of the first Cultural Revolution, but at the same time declared that the “per¬ petual revolution” will continue in “stability and unity and great order” to make China a “powerful, modern and socialist country” by the year 2000. Many an analyst of Chinese affairs saw in this that the new Chairman, taking the advantage of the current sta¬ bility in China’s leadership, was determined to maintain a strongly entrenched and resolutely pragmatic government, while practising a “de facto de-Maoisation” under the auspices of Mao himself. In other words, the Eleventh Congress would be the

108

mark of the end of Maos era, and post-Mao China would be the reverse of Maoism/^ ffiis is what was feared by many former Maoists and acclaimed by the whole lot of anti-Maoists. This kind of conjecture is evidently an abuse of the term “Maoism What is actually so-called “Maoism”? Mao was above all not a theoretician but a determined practician, or more exactly a practician-theoretician: His thought developed and matured along with his lifelong revolutionary action. As a person he was nonconformist; as a militant, he was unorthodox, and thus his thinking was original. His friends and enemies gave him various different names and epithets, and very often took certain words of his out of their context in time and place to apply to matters of different contexts. That was the origin of the misused radical zeal of the “gang of four,” and now of the misinterpretation of the political programme issued from the Eleventh Congress: Since the disappearance of Mao, high-level politics in the Party has died and will continue this way at least for some time in the fu¬ ture; and, because of the elimination of the last remnant of pro¬ fiteers of the Cultural Revolution, the everlasting domestic quar¬ reling has been quelled, and the new regime should thus be able to set in motion and put into effort the Party’s nation-building pro¬ gramme in accordance with the “Ten Preliminary Points” preached by Mao in 1957, the f^Four, flecommendations” of Chou En-lai, and the three famous treatise!; &f Teng Hsiao-ping on how to develop Chinese economy, science and technology. To judge by published documents, the new Congress indi¬ cated no major change either in China’s domestic political issue or in her foreign policy, except perhaps in the work style; and it evolved from the epoch of “dare to revolt!,” which provided a confusing rationale for upheaval, although a famous dictum of Mao during the period of Cultural Revolution in order to instigate the masses against the bureaucrats and Party cadres. The new leadership in Peking seem to be determined not to tolerate any more strikes and other civil disturbances, such as those during the first half-year of Hua’s rule. Hua and other senior leaders declared openly their intention to crack down on disruptive elements and to keep on the purge of “radicals” as¬ sociated with the “gang of four” entrenched in government posi¬ tions, in the armed forces, in local Party branches and factories. They took care to avoid any semblance of attack on the memory

109

of the revered Mao, but even their unstinting praise of Mao’s political philosophy did not sometimes prevent them from quietlyscrapping Mao’s cherished policies. The new leaders are, how¬ ever, not dogmatists: not long after the Eleventh Congress, on the first anniversary of Mao’s death on September 9, the Chinese press came out with forthright statements that ideology has to be adjusted in accordance with the need of the times. In a Red Flag article broadcast by Peking radio. Marshal Nieh Jung-chen, a Politburo member, declared that/Klao’s thoughts should be used as a general guide to the solution of China’s problems and not fol¬ lowed slavishly. “All correct ideas,” he said, “are subject to changes on the basis of time, location and conditions; otherwise they will become metaphysical ideas. This flexible or open-minded preaching is undoubtedly a new feature of the Chinese “proletarian dictatorship”; it reflects perhaps the need for the new regime to be more accommodating than its predecessors. In parallel with the continuing purge of “radicals” the Party presided over by Hua, usually regarded as “lackluster” or “colorless,” surprisingly annulled at a stretch the ignominious attacks endured by a legion of accused during the Cultural Revolution and reinstated them to their merited posi¬ tions; he has thus accomplished and reinstated them to their mer¬ ited positions; he has thus accomplished a job once undertaken by the late prime minister Chou En-lai in 1973-1974. The late Chou has done that for the Teng Hsiao-ping and others, but not for many, because of his stand on scruple under the well opened eyes of the “Shanghai radicals”; now that the latter have been wiped out. Chairman Hua would enjoy a free hand, as well as bet¬ ter support from a unified ruling college.

Of the four CCP Congresses held after the Great Revolution, the Eighth of 1956 was dominated by the “Muscovites” and “pro-Soviet” elements; the Ninth of 1969 by the military; the Tenth by the “radical splinters” of Lin Piao’s group in charge of the Cultural Revolution; and the Eleventh by the veteran rev¬ olutionaries, plus a budding third force composed of meritorious bureaucrats and others. The new Central Committee voted in by

110

the Congress comprises 201 full members and 132 alternates, amounting to 333 in all, against the original 195 full members and 124 alternates, 319 in total, showing thus an increase of only 14 members in comparison with the previous Committee. Over half (110) of the original full members, but only fiftytwo alternates have been carried over from the last Commitee. Of the 1973 full members, sixteen have died, as has one alternate; that is, seventeen in all do not count any more, while more than half (162) ol the original seats remain unchanged, including some who, once known to be associated with the “gang of four”, have made an about-turn against them during the October coup. Entirely new full members come up to seventy-one, while eighty alternates are new appointments (including five demoted from full membership). Only twenty of the previous Committee’s alternates have been promoted to full membership, while five full members have been demoted to alternates. From its composition, the new Central Committee looks more down-to-earth than the 1973 one, the majority of its mem¬ bers being selected from among experienced veterans, responsi¬ ble executives, and professional experts, in contrast with the de¬ posed ones of the previous Committee, most of whom were ac¬ tivists of trade unions, youth leagues, and women’s federations, and various people connected with education and culture; pro¬ moted at the Tenth Congress in 1973, like all the radical “climbers,” they arrived at their posts “by helicopter.” But owing to the fact that since the Ninth Congress, the Ple¬ num of the Congress has rarely been held and held only at long intervals, the real supreme power remains always with the Polit¬ buro and its Permanent Comity. The new Politburo comprises twenty-three full members, of which two have been raised from the alternates and eight have been newly elected. The eight al¬ ternate members remain at three in all, two of which are new men. The total Politburo membership remains at twenty-six as in the previous Politburo, five of the original members having died and four others—the “gang of four”—under detention; all the re¬ maining sixteen have been carried over except one alternate who has been dropped outright. The Politburo Permanent Comity is presided over by Hua, seconded by four vice-chairmen, who are Yeh, Teng, Li Hsien-

111

nien, and Wang Tung-hsing. This new nomenclature indicates that the top-level leadership in China has now been shared by the veteran leaders and Mao’s own former closest collaborators in the porportion of 3:2; the two are Chairman Hua, who “ascended to the throne” by Mao’s own designation, and Wang, Mao’s bodyguard and commander of the elite 8341 military security unit. They formed in fact the “Palace group” attached to Mao himself, more or less independent from the “ gang ol four” under the protection of Madam Mao. Foreign analysts of Chinese affairs used to distinguish the Chinese leaders into civilians and military men, but as a matter of fact there are so far no military professionals among the Chinese military strongmen; most communist military commanders came from the ordinary rank and file of the Party. Change-overs from political commissar to commander and vice versa were frequent and natural, and the motto in the army was, and still is, ‘‘politics in command.” If the leadership was sometimes divided because of historical, political or personal reasons, the primary cleavage be¬ fore the Cultural Revolution was that between the “Muscovites” and “pro-Soviet” elements on the one hand, and the tukung on the other. Since the sinking of the former and the disappearance of Lin Piao, the internal conflict came to be that between the veteran revolutionaries and the remaining “radical climbers” clinging to the slogans and dogmas of the Cultural Revolution. Thus, between the two sides, a third force emerged, repre¬ sented by Chairman Hua and the newly appointed vicechairman Wang Tung-hsing, the main actors of the October coup, with previous connections with Chiang Ching, but who turned against her and then took the side of the veteran leaders. Hua succeeded to the chairmanship apparently with the ben¬ ediction of Mao himself in his now famous last minute instruc¬ tions; ‘Hf you (Hua) are in charge I am at ease.” But Hua’s suc¬ cession to Mao has not been mentioned in the new Party statutes which have been confirmed by the Eleventh Congress. On the other hand, Wang’s emergence as one of the four vice-chairmen was not a surprise: he had played a decisive role in the arrest of Chiang Ching and her cronies. Without his collaboration it might have been impossible to effectuate the arrest of the Great Helmsman’s widow, nephew, daughter and closest proteges all in less than a month after the Helmsman’s death. He was rewarded

112

thus by becoming not only vice-chairman, but also minister for Public Security. In addition, he was commander of the elite 8341 military security unit, and director of the general office of the Central Committee, a post that is almost equivalent to that of the secretary-general of the party; it had been once occupied by both Mao himself and Teng before their attaining of the summit. It is not impossible that Wang will be following the same path. The ruling authorities in Peking seem, however, not to be keen on finding a new strong man to replace the dead hero, but are rather preoccupied with bringing back first the former leaders who have endured so many attacks over the past years on their position and personalities. The rehabilitation must have given grim satisfaction to the Party leaders who had been successively humiliated and threatened over the last decade. To judge by the results of the Eleventh Congress, the new regime appears to be making a tremendous effort to enlarge its bases of representation; all the twenty-nine provinces, autono¬ mous regions, and municipalities now have their respective first sec¬ retaries named as full members of the Central Committee. Seven provinces and autonomous regions which did not pre¬ viously have full Central Committee members as their first sec¬ retaries now enjoy that honour. State Council ministries have enjoyed similar promotions. A high rate of change-over has also taken place among mili¬ tary officers, especially among the alternate numbers of the Cen¬ tral Committee. The overall military representation remains al¬ most the same as before, except that it has actually been rein¬ forced at the Politburo level. ^All these pew^appointments show clearly that the new lead¬ ership in Peking is determined to go on bringing in capable and experienced cadres at the base of the Central Committee, while removing all self-styled “radicals” who are in fact “climbers” and “newcomers” arrived by “helicopter” since the Tenth Congress in 1973.

IV The most striking issue of the Eleventh Congress was of course, the radiant re-surfacing of Teng. He had not been named

Prime Minister but the seventy-three-year-old, five-foot-tall man said of himself:£l wish to remain an assistant. The job of premier is very hard; there are younger people than me and I want to live twenty years more.?j But foreign onlookers keep on speculating that the title of premier is not important to Teng, who is so sol¬ idly entrenched in power, being in charge of China’s economic plan, a Politburo member with the majority packed in his favor, and Chief of the General Staff. Actually, he does have the power without the title., removing thus the need to go around fulfilling all the tedious protocol functions of a Premier, traipsing out to the airport to meet or see off visiting heads of government, presid¬ ing over negotiations with foreign diplomats, and making speeches at banquets and meetings. Putting aside personal ambition and vanity is, in fact, the key to all operations to restore sanity and stability to the leadership of China today. Most admirers of Teng who are fascinated by Teng’s blunt no-nonsense style of speaking and acting, his fabulous “three ups and three downs”—the vicissitudes in his political life—his age, prestige, experience and popularity, and they are anxious to see the eventual deployment of his powerful political influence in the Red Empire. But almost all of them have ne¬ glected an important point, namely, what Teng has really repre¬ sented in the past and present political struggle in China. >\ Since the beginning of this century, with the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and the abolition of the ko-chu (the government examina¬ tion system) in 1905, the central political struggle in China was to overthrow the old regime. The Republican Revolution easily suc¬ ceeded because of the universal support of the “literocracy,” in¬ cluding the mandarinate. The westernised urban intelligentsia and the village intellectuals were heartbroken by the abolition of the ko-chu system, which deprived them of the access to man¬ darinate and privileged social status. But under the regimes which followed the empire, the condition of the country did not change much: The economy remained backward and subject to haphazard development, mainly designed to suit foreign interests more than Chinese needs. Then, soon after the Japanese war which ruined the country, the Great Revolution took place.' Under the Communist regime after the Korean war, the same problem came back: national or foreign interest? Thus came conflict between the “man-Fridays” and the tukung, and in be-

114

tween the two lines, a “third force mainly composed of those re¬ turned from France, the former “part-students, part-workers.” They were a kind of queer product of the First World War: the Chinese government, then an ally of France, recruited labourers to work in France, and later sent poor students there as skilled laborers to work and study part time. These “part-students, part-workers had different social background and aspirations than full-time students coming from better-off families, and were more interested in politics than in pure academic studies. Thus the cre¬ ation of a “Chinese section” attached to the French Communist Party almost at the same time as the foundation of the CCP, if not earlier. The FCP’s Chinese section was later integrated into the CCP. Among the early Chinese communists returning from France, many were those killed during the revolutionary years; some became ultra-Stalinists, such as the famous adventurer Li Lisan; some were murdered in Russia as “Trotskyjtes” during the great purges; many'bthers remained as big names in the history of Communist China, such as the late Chou En-lai, the late Marshal Chen Yi, the late Hsu Teli,’ the late Kang Sheng, the surviving Li Fuchun, Teng Hsiao-ping and Marshal Nieh Jungchen. Chou was the first secretary of the CCP branch in France, and Teng his successor when Chou returned home via Moscow. Teng was called “Hsiao-ping,” which was not his original name (“hsiao means small, little); he had taken that name because he was the youngest of the group, only sixteen years old at his arrivaTTn France. Many of these “made in France” Chinese Communists were later sent to Moscow or returned home via Siberia. But influ¬ enced by French liberal thinking, they found difficulty accommodat¬ ing themselves to Russian things. Teng had even acquired a per¬ manent distaste for the Soviets later exacerbated by the internal conflicts within the Party and the Sino-Soviet dispute. Many people know that Teng had been twice disgraced by Mao, but they ignored also the fact that Teng was one of Mao’s earliest “close comrades-in-arms.” Teng said himself that he had had “three ups and three downs”: The first “down’ took place during the affair of “Luo Ming line,” when he had supported Mao in his struggle against the Wang Ming-controlled Party Central Committee in the 1930s. He had fifty-five years of work for the

115

Party to his credit and his organizational skills were well honed and brilliant; therefore, he was one of Mao’s trusted and effective guerrilla commissars. From the early days through the Long March and the Great Revolution/ Teng remained personally close to the Great Helmsman and held a bewildering variety of posts, including Party boss of south-west China, vice-chairman ol the National Defence Council, finance minister, and secretary-general of the Party. By the end of the 1960s he was sixth in the line in the Party hierarchy, just as Madam Mao was before her arrest. Teng was sharp-tongued, outspoken, unreserved and some¬ times even aggressive. He described himself as a “country bumpkin.” a “clod of earth” in Chinese, meaning he did not like circumlocution, a typical trait of the headstrong people from whom Teng was a descendant. He said that Mao had once as¬ sessed him as “seven parts achievement^ three parts shortcoming/’ He seemed exactly the opposite of the late Chou: Chou was the symbol of flexibility, while Teng was stubbornness itself. To make a comparison with the Chinese diagram of the cosmological scheme, Teng was of yang type, whereas Chou was of d/in/type. Both of them complemented each other, but Chou’s death brought disaster to Teng; his second fall into disgrace cost him the actual permiership. Now Teng has come back from the “dust-bin of history,” evi¬ dently crowned with triumph. He was a tough, unyielding, and straightforward die-hard, really daring when he went against the tide. His resurfacing is surely a palpable contribution to a much needed “rectification” campaign to be launched in the country that was reduced to mealy-mouthed obeisance to the official line of a ruling class of high-handed “radicals,” where rarely people dared show basic honesty. But since the supreme power of the new regime does not re¬ side only with a chairman as before, and since the two vicechairmen—the seventy-eight-year-old Yeh and the seventythree-year-old Teng—both are senior not only in age, but also in Party history and revolutionary records, the two gerontocrats may not be easily contained in subservient roles. Hua may not be able to count on unquestionable loyalty from them. Under such cir¬ cumstances will the present stability and unity in China last? It is perhaps still too early to make a long-term prognosis on post-Mao China, but the majority of the cut-throat political fight¬ ers have disappeared since the arrest of the Four, so that a rela-

116

tive calm may prevail for a certain time (although sudden drastic changes may result from unforeseeable factors). The political and “ideological” line quarrels seem to have been finally put down and subdued; the only potential threat is a return of naked per¬ sonal ambition and jealousy. Perfect sanity never existed either physiologically or politically; but, facing millions of well-opened eyes watching everyday across the borders, the Chinese surely will not be so foolish as to let themselves fall down again into the abhorrent turbulence of the last two decades, /j

117

APPENDIX I

Principal Peasant Uprisings in Chinese History 2,000 BC 1,500 BC 1,000 BC

200 BC

500 AD

XIA (about 21st-14th century BC) SHANG (about 14th—11th century BC) ZHOU (about 11th—221 BC) Spring-Autumn period (770 BC—476 BC) Liu Xia-tuo uprising (about 500 BC) Fighting Kingdoms period (475 BC-221 BC) Chen Sheng/Wu Guang uprising (209 BC-208 BC) Xiang Yu/Liu Bang uprisings (209 BC-207 BC) WESTERN HAN (206 BC-24 AD) Lu Lin Uprisings (17-25) Chi Mei uprising (18-27) Tong Ma uprising (17-24) ORIENTAL HAN (25-220) Yellow Turbans uprising (184) THREE KINGDOMS (220-265) WESTERN JIN (265-316) ORIENTAL JIN (317-420) DYNASTIES OF THE SOUTH AND THE NORTH (420-589) SUI (581-618) Li Mi and Dou Jiande uprisings (611— 621)

118

1,000

AD

1,300

AD

1,500

AD

TANG (618-907) THE FIVE DYNASTIES (907-960) Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao uprisings (874-884) SONG (960-1279) LIAO (916-1125) JIN (1115-1234) Song Jiang and Fang La uprisings (1119-1121) Zhong Xiang and Yang Yao uprisings (1130-1135) YUAN (1271-1368) Red Turbans uprising (1351-1363) Zhu Yuanzhang uprising (1352-1368) MING (1368-1644) Liu Liou/Liu Qi uprising (1509-1512) Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong upris¬ ings (1629-1646) QING (1644-1911) Uprising of the Celestial Empire of Peace (1851-1868) Nian uprising (1853-1868) Boxers uprising (1900-1901)

119

APPENDIX II

Chronology of Chinese Events Since 1900 1900 June/Aug.

1901 1902 1904 1905

Sept. Sept. Jan. Aug. Aug.

1908 Sept.

1910 April Aug. 1911 Oct. Dec. 1912 Jan.

Feb. July

Boxer attacks on the foreign legation quarter in Peking. Occupation of Tianjing and Peking by the allied armies of the eight foreign powers. Occupation of Manchuria by Russia. Signature of the 1901 Treaty (on Boxer affair). Return of the Empress Dowager to Peking. Japanese-Russian war in Manchuria. Foundation of the Chinese Revolutionary League in Tokyo. Deaths of Emperor Guangxu and of the Empress Dowager. Accession to throne of Emperor Xuantong. Massacre of the 72 martyrs at Huanghuagang. Annexation of Korea by Japan. Wuchang revolt on the tenth; beginning of the first National Revolution. Occupation of Nanking by the Nationalists. Return of Sun Wen in China. Proclamation of the foundation of the Chinese Republic. Sun Wen elected provisional president of the Republic Abdication of Emperor Xuantong. Yuan Shikai became president of the Republic. Death of Japanese emperor Meiji.

120

1913 July/Sept. 1914 July

Nov. 1915 Jan. Dec. 1916 Mar. 1917 Aug. Nov. 1918 Aug. Nov. 1919 Jan. March May June Oct.

1921 July 1923 Jan. 1924 Jan. Nov. 1925 Mar. May

July 1926 March July

Second revolution (against Yuan) and its failure. Setting-up of the Chinese Revolutionary Party by Sun Wen in Tokyo. Outbreak of the first World War in Europe. Occupation of Qingdao by Japan. The 21 demands of Japan to the Chinese government. Proclamation of the Imperial Restoration of Yuan. Third national revolution. Suicide of Yuan and re-establishment of the Re¬ public. Declaration of war on Germany and Austria by Peking. Communist revolution in Russia. Attack on Siberia by Japan. End of the World War in Europe. Peace Conference in Paris. Foundation of Comintern. The Fourth of May Movement in Peking. The Chinese delegation refused to sign the Versaille Treaty. The Chinese Revolutionary Party changed its name into Nationalist Party (Kuomintang—KMT). Foundation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Joint declaration of Sun Wen and Joffre. Proclamation of the KMT-CCP United Front. Foundation of the Mongolian Republic. Death of Sun Wen in Peking. Incident of the May 30: University students demonstrated against British firing on Chinese workers, beginning of the Thirtieth of May Movement. Proclamation of the foundation of Nationalist Government in Guangzhou (Canton). Incident of the Zhong Shan gunboat. Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) named commander in chief of the Nationalist ar¬ mies; Start of the Northern Expedition by the Nationalist forces.

121

Occupation of Changsha by the Nationalists. Occupation of the Jiujiang and Nanchang by the Nationalists. Transfer of the Nationalist Government to Wu¬ 1927 Jan. han. Feb./April Shanghai workers insurrestion, massacre of revoApril lutionary workers and coup d’etat of April 12. April Split of the KMT in Nanking and in Wuhan; Execution of 28 Communists in Peking. May First occupation of Shandong by Japanese army. Wuhan government expelled the Communists. J«ly Aug. Revolt of Nanchang. Sept. Revolt of the Autumn Harvest. Reconciliation of Wuhan and Nanking. Oct. Foundation of the Soviet Government of HaiLu-Feng. Expulsion of Trotsky by Moscow. Mao Tse-tung established at Jinggangshan. Dec. Commune of Guangzhou (Canton) 1928 Jan. Jiang Jieshi re-named commander-in-chief of the Nationalist armies. Feb. Chinese problem resolution at the Ninth Comin¬ tern Congress. April Second occupation of Shandong by Japanese army. Aug. Nov.

May June

Restart of the Northern Expedition by Nationalists. Jinan Incident. Third occupation of Shandong by Japanese army. Assassination of Marshal Zhang Zuolin by Japanese army. Occupation of Peking by the Nationalists. Manchurian army joined the Nationalist govern¬ ment.

1929 June

Recognition of the Nationalist government by Ja¬ pan.

Oct. 1930 Julv Dec.

Beginning of world economic crisis. Occupation of Changsha by the Communists. First Nationalist campaign against Communist bases.

122

1931 May Jul./ Sept. Sept. Nov. 1932 Jan./ Mar. March June Dec. 1933 Jan. March May Oct. Nov. 1934 Oct.

1935 Jan.

Nov. 1936 Dec. 1937 July August Sept. Dec. Oct. 1939 Feb. Sept.

Second Nationalist campaign against Communist bases. Third

Nationalist campaign against Communist bases.

Mukden Incident. Invasion of Manchuria by Ja¬ pan. Proclamation of the Soviet Republic of China at Ruijin. Japanese attacks on Shanghai. Foundation of "Manzhouguo” in Manchuria by Japan. Fourth Nationalist campaign against Communist bases (until March 1933). Russia established diplomatic relations with Nanking. Invasion of Rehe province by Japan. Japan quit the Society of Nations. Sino-Japanese cease-fire agreement at Tanggu. Fifth Nationalist campaign against Communist bases (until October 1934). Revolt of Fujian (Fookien) province. Evacuation of Ruijin by the Communists, begin¬ ning of the Long March (until October 1935). Zunyi conference, Mao elected to the chairman¬ ship of the Military Commission to direct the Long March. Establishment of the Oriental Hebei Autonomous Government by Japanese Army. Sian Incident, arrest of Jiang Jieshi by the two rebellious generals. Lugouqiao Incident on the seventh, SinoJapanese total war. Japanese full-scale attack on Shanghai. Second United Front between KMT and CCP. Occupation of Xuzhou by Japanese army. Occupation of Wuhan by Japanese army. New restriction measures of KMT on dissidents’ political activities. Second World War in Europe.

123

1940 Mar. Aug./ Dec. Siept. 1941 Jan. Dec. 1942 Jan. Feb. 1943 May 1944 Nov.

1945 April Aug.

1946 Jan.

July 1947 March

1948 Oct. Dec. 1949 Oct.

Dec. 1950 Feb. June Oct.

Organization of the “Quisling” government ol Nanking by Wang Jing-wei. Communist “Hundred Regiments” offensive in Shanxi. Japanese invasion of Northern Indochina. Nationalist attacks on the Communist Fourth Army. Pearl Harbor. Military alliance between Germany, Italy and Ja¬ pan. Rectification campaign at Yanan. Dissolution of Comintern. Visit of the American Ambassador Hearley at Yanan. Death of Wang Jingwei at Nagoya, Japan. CCP’s seventh Congress. Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Rus¬ sia’s declaration of war on Japan; Japan sur¬ rendered. Talks between Jiang and Mao in Chungking. Cease-fire agreement between KMT and CCP; KMT and CCP conference in Chungking Civil war between KMT and CCP re-opened. KMT attacks on Red bases in the Northwest, where the Communists were entrenched during twelve years since 1935. Occupation of Yanan by Nationalists. Beginning of Mao Tse-Tung’s counter-attack campaign. Occupation of Mukden by the Communists. Col¬ lapse of KMT forces in Manchuria. Occupation of Peking by the Communists. Proclamation of the Chinese People’s Republic. Recognition of the Chinese People’s Republic by Russia. Mao’s visit to Moscow. Treaty of friendship and alliance between China and Russia. Korean war. Arrival of Chinese volunteers in Korea.

124

1951 July Nov. 1953 Jan. March Feb. 1954 June Sept. 1955 April Dec. 1956 Feb. May Sept. 1957 June Feb. June Oct. 1958 March Aug. Dec. 1959 Jan. April

June July

1959-1961 1960 July 1961 Jan.

Cease-fire negotiations in Korea. “Three-anti and “Five-anti” movements. Application of the First Five Year Plan. Death of Stalin. Purge of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi. Chou En-lai’s visit to India; Sino-Indian joint dec¬ laration on the five principles of peace. First National Assembly meeting. Promulgation of the Chinese Constitution. Bundung conference. Taiwan-USA defense treaty. Criticism of Stalin in USSR. "Hundred flowers” movement in China. CCP’s Eighth Congress. Chou En-lai’s tour of Russia and Asia. Mao’s speech on “How to handle correctly the contradictions within the people.” Anti-rightist rectification campaign. Sino-Soviet agreement on new military technol¬ ogy. “Great Leap Forward” campaign. Popular Commune movement. Mao’s resignation as Chairman of CCP. Liu Shao-qi’s succession to power. Revolution in Cuba. Second Congress of the National Assembly. Liu Shao-qi elected President of the Chinese People’s Republic. Annulment of the military-technical treaty with China by Russia. CCP’s conference at Lushan. Peng De-huai’s criticism of Mao. Peng’s dismissal and Lin Biao’s succession to the Ministry of Defense. Three consecutive years of severe drought all over China. Break-olf of Sino-Soviet relations and withdrawal of Soviet technicians from China. Publication of Wu Han’s play The Dismissal of Hai Rui.

125

1962 Oct. 1964 Oct, 1965 Feb. Nov. 1966 Feb. June 1967 Jan. Feb. April

July 1968 Sept.

Oct1969 March April

1970 Oct. 1971 Sept. Oct. 1972 Jan.

Feb. 1973 July

Sino-Indian frontier war. Revelation of Sino-Soviet split and quarrels. First test of Chinese atomic bomb. Outbreak of the American war in Vietnam. Outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in China. Peng Zhen’s defence of Wu Han. Dismissal of Peng Zhen, the mayor of Peking. Shanghai Commune. Chinese students attacked in Moscow. Revolutionary committees gradually established all over the country. Criticism of Liu Shao-qi. Trial of Wang Guangmei (Liu’s wife) at Qinghua University. Wuhan Mutiny. Establishment of revolutionary committees in the 29 provinces and autonomous regions over the country. Elimination of Liu Shao-qi. Sino-Soviet frontier war in Zhenbao Island. Ninth CCP Congress. New Party constitution named Lin Piao as “Comrade Mao Tsetung’s comrade-in-arms and successor.” Establishment of diplomatic relations with Canada. Failure of Lin Piao s coup d’etat. Lin Piao’s plane reportedly crashed over Outer Mongolia. United Nations recognized Peking’s right to rep¬ resent China. The New Year’s Day editorial of the “People’s Daily” introduced the “Three Fundamental Principes” or the “Three Do’s and Three Do Not’s” of Mao. (Thus began the year of moderation following the Lin Piao affair: Chou En-lai became the Party’s number two, and the year was generally referred to by the “radicals” as the “bad year” where “the bourgeois elements have got their freedom of hand” within the Party.) President Nixon’s visit to China. Issue of the Sino-USA Shanghai Communique. Reception in honour of Prince Sihanouk by Chou En-lai.

126

Mao received the Nobel price physicist Dr Yang Chen-ning. Aug.

Sept.

Oct. Nov. Dec. 1974 Jan.

April May Oct. Nov. 1975 Jan.

Feb.

Tenth Congress of the CCP. New Party Con¬ stitution, expulsion of Lin Biao and Chen Boda, Wang Hongwen named vicepresident of the party (the four other vicepresidents were Chou En-lai, Kang Sheng, Ye Jian-ying and Li De-sheng). Pompidou’s visit to China. Visit of Tanaka to China and establishment of diplomatic relations between Chinaand Japan. Mao received the vice-president of Egypt. Anti-Confucius campaign. Mao received Trudeau. Kissinger’s visit to Peking. Mao received the King and Queen of Nepal. Pin-lin pi-kong (“criticism of Lin Biao and criti¬ cism of Confucius”) movement. Expulsion of five Soviet diplomats accused of es¬ pionage activities. Naval conflicts between China and SouthVietnam in Spratley and Paracels waters. Deng Xiao-ping’s speech at United Nations. Establishment of diplomatic relations with Malaysia. Mao received the Prime Minister of Denmark. Kissinger’s visit to Peking. Mao received the Prime Minister of Malta. Second Plenum of the Tenth Congress. Fourth Congress of the National Assembly (first convocation in ten years, since before the Cultural Revolution). Deng Xiao-ping named vice-president of the Party and first vice-premier. The

editorial of the ninth, published in the People’s Daily, controlled then by the “rad¬ icals,” said that the country “is sliding back surreptitiously towards bourgeois capitalism. ”

On the twenty-second, the People’s Daily and the Red Flag jointly preached the doctrine of severe restriction of “bourgeois rights ”, i.e. that workers must not ask high salaries

127

and everybody must tighten up the belt to maintain ideological purity of the proleta¬ rian dictatorship. March In the Red Flag review, Yao Wen-yuan spoke of the “bourgeois-roaders who want to seize power” and warns that a “bloody revolu¬ tion” will then be the result. Mao’s letter to Chiang Ching in 1966 published. April In the Red Flag, Zhang Chun-qiao attacks those who “mislead the inexperienced young men and encourage them to ask for material incentives.” Mao, Zhu De and Zhou En-lai congratulated jointly Prince Sihanouk on the occasion of the liberation of Phnom Penh. Mao received the Belgian Prime Minister. Peking condemned the annexation of Sikkim by India with the help of USSR. May Visit of Deng Xiao-ping to France. 1975 June Mao received President Marcos of the Philip¬ pines. Hangzhou Incident. Jul./ Aug. Criticism of the popular novel At the Water’s Edge and attacks on Deng Xiao-ping. Sept./Oct. Dazhai Agriculture Conference. Nov. Visit of President Ford to China. 1976 Jan. Death of Chou En-lai on the eighth. Feb. Hua Guo-feng named acting Prime Minister. Vio¬ lent campaign against “rightist revisionists”. On the seventeenth, the People’s Daily, controlled then by the “radicals," recog¬ nized that the Party’s Central Committee was split by the political crisis, there was a “gigantic test of strength between the pro¬ letariat and the bourgeoisie.” Visit ol Nixon to Peking, received by Mao on the twenty-third. On the twenty-sixth, launching of official attacks on Deng Xiao-ping by the “radicals.” April Tian An Men Incident in Peking. Dismissal of

128

July Sept. Oct. 1977 Feb.

April

June

July August

Deng Xiao-ping and nomination of Hua Guo-feng as Prime Minister. Violent earthquakes in the Northeast, impor¬ tant damage at Tangshan and Tianjing. Death of Mao on the ninth, not seen in public since May. Arrest of the ‘gang of four” on the seventh, ac¬ cused of conspiracy against the regime. Visit of Madam Deng Ying-chao, widow of late Premier Chou En-lai, to Burma in the capacity of vice-president of the Chinese National Assembly. Visit of Madam Margaret Thatcher, leader of the British Conservative Party, on invitation of the Chinese government, at the beginning of the month. Towards the end of the month, official visit of the Burmese President Ne Wen. One-month visit in China of Imee Marcos, daughter of the Philippine President Mar¬ cos. Official visit of Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese De¬ fense Minister, followed by seven other Vietnamese Politburo members including the Prime Minister Truong Chinh. Visit of the first secretary of Laotian Revolution¬ ary Party, Kaysone Phomvihane. 3rd Plenum of the Tenth Congress of CCP. Conference of the CCP Eleventh Congress; crea¬ tion of a new Politburo of 23 persons and a new Central Committee of 201 full mem¬ bers and 132 alternate members. Rehabilitation of Deng Xiao-ping. Visit of Cyrus Vance, American secretary of state, to Peking, considered as a partial fail¬ ure about the Sino-American rapproche¬ ment. Visit of the Yugoslav President Tito to Peking among the rumors of Sino-Albanian cool¬ ness.

129

Sept.

Oct.

Nov. U Hall

On the ninth, inauguration of Mao’s Memorial Hall in Peking and revelation of the ex¬ istence of a grandson of Mao, named Mao Xin-yu. Visit to France of an important Chinese military delegation. Visit to Australia and New Zealand of a Chinese delegation Visit to China of the Cambodgian Prime Minis¬ ter, Pol Pot, first secretary of the Cambo¬ dian Communist Party. Visit to China of the West-Germany Prime Min¬ ister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, accompanied by important financial personalities. For the first time in eleven years, a Chinese Foreign Minister attended a reception given by the Soviet Ambassador in Peking for the 60th anniversary of October Revolu¬ tion. Rumor of the suicide of former cultural minister, Yu Hui-yung, accused of being attached to the “gang of four.” Rumor of the suicide in prison of Mao’s nephew, Mao Yuan-xin, accused of being a follower of the “gang of four.” A senior Albanian official attacked Peking’s “three worlds” policy in a speech marking the an¬ niversary of the Russian October Rev¬ olution.

130

APPENDIX III ON ROXANE WITKE’S COMRADE CHIANG CHING Invited by Chiang Ching herself, Miss Witke was supposed to write a personal history of the Great Lady, but she has given us instead a collection of narrated memoirs of Madam Mao, peppered with the author’s own interpretations. It is a report on today’s China based on valuable first-hand materials, of course, but not comparable with the memorable work of Edgar Snow or that of Agnes Smedley, both of whom have years of experience and study of China. Miss Witke has visited China but once, and for a couple of weeks at that. “I chose to present her (Chiang Ching) in the style which the experience of being with her seemed to demand, ” wrote Miss Witke in the prologue of her book, “complementing her narration and my close observation of her person and her world with distanced judg¬ ments. For I was, as she remarked confidently several times, not a journalist but a historian. ” As a university professor of history, Miss Witke may claim to be a historian; but insofar as Chinese history is concerned, she is certainly not an ideal one, being incompetent in the exploitation of original documentary sources: when she interviewed Chiang Ching, she was unable to converse with her without inter¬ preters. There are other instances. On the frontispiece of the book, she produced a poem copied for her by Chiang Ching, “Han Yang Peak at Lu Shan,” and the legend reads : Poem, probably written by Mao Tse-tung in the early 1960s when he produced several comparable pieces.

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Soaring at riverside, the wondrous peak Locks herself in river mist And shows no morning glow. Suddenly her majesty is bared. Miss Witke further added, “She copies what is most certainly an unpublished poem by Mao. (The style and substance match other poems of his of the early 1960s.)” How did she arrive at this conclu¬ sion? She did not say that she was told this by Chiang Ching, or, if it was Chiang Ching who told her, that might be a “secret”; but she writes: “In the tradition of poems that are ostensibly about nature, but actually about politics, he compares her (Chiang Ching) to a wondrous peak that is usually locked in river mist (the Chiang of Chiang Ching means ‘river’). Only rarely—and here may be the motive for her presentation—is her ‘majesty’ bared.” Miss Witke’s interpretation is certainly interesting if the poem is authentic. Mao did compose allegorical poems, but to a Chinese of my generation, the poem in question is so immature and childish that it certainly cannot be an unpublished one by Mao, and that is perhaps the reason why even Chiang Ching herself dared not pretend it was. Sinologists equipped with adequate knowledge of the modern Chinese language are rarely qualified to venture into the field of literary Chinese writing as well. The reason is simple: even a native can hardly master—so to speak—his own mother tongue, how could a Sinologist became an adept in Chinese with just three to four years of study at an university, and then an “internship” in Taiwan or main¬ land China? Certain bold ones did, of course, pretend. The author of L’Empereur de Papier, Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), wrote in his article about Mao: II changing tactical imperatives sometimes made his policy difficult to distinguish from that of his successive rivals and scapegoats, his style remained unique and incomparable. We can clearly grasp the character in his artistic creations. His calligraphy (one of China’s major arts) is of striking originality, showing a flamboyant ego that touches arrogance, if not extravagance: at the same time it betrays a total contempt for the discipline of the brush, and this boldness as regards techni¬ cal requirements condemns at the end his work, although so vigorous, to remain as a kind of stuttering.

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His poetry, so well defined by Arthur Waley as being “less bad than Hitler’s painting but not as good as Churchill’s painting,’’ seems pedantic and pedestrian, successful in marry¬ ing obscurity with vulgarity. In the framework of the antiquated form, however, it remains, even in its clumsiness, remarkably relieved of all conventions. But what is most revealing is the fact that he consecrated part of his energy to the uncertain practice of this elegant pastime of the traditional literate gentry. The remarks of both Arthur Waley and Simon on Mao’s poetry are definitely not authoritative, partly because of their political bias, partly because of their insufficient knowledge of that “antiquated” form of this “elegant pastime of the traditional literate gentry,” but quite useful to help us recognise that Miss Witke’s evaluation that “the style and substance (of the poem in question) match other poems of his (Mao’s) of the early 1960’s’ is all wrong. Miss Witke promises in the prologue of her book not to “function merely as Chiang Ching’s mouthpiece” and to “report what she said, but to evaluate that with outside sources and include (her) own interpretations.’ Without being Chiang Ching’s mouthpiece, Miss Witke has clearly admitted to be a fascinated admirer of the Great Lady and therefore, she writes: ^ Chiang Ching should be remembered as a person of extraordi¬ nary courage, as a woman leader in a time of transition, and as a leader in the revolutionary avant-garde . . . Although Chiang Ching’s route to power was matrimonial in its first step, the autonomy she won subsequently beckoned other women to political authority, regardless of their husbands or family con¬ nections ... In her middle years she broke away from the Chairman’s dominance by using other powerful men and the performing arts to restore her ties to the masses. Only they offered the political legitimacy and the security possible for a life of perpetual revolution ... As Chiang Ching shifted from fighting one central government (of the Nationalists of the 1930s) to defending another (that of Mao Tse-tung), she became the anima of the spiritual realm, the doyenne of the superstruc¬ ture, the chief of national syndication oFa proletarian cul¬ ture . . , Comrade Chiang Ching, as all knew her in China, had a special magic, which I experienced up close but found dissi-

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pated by distance and missing from her writings. Regardless of her age, she exhibited the special attractiveness—some might call it sexiness—inherent in great power. Her formidable monologue was paced by theatrical swerves of mood, from fury to tenderness to .(hilarity, like the public face of the Cultural Revolution she guided. The “star quality” that marked her political leadership was not simply the residue of a brief acting career long past, but appeared to be rooted in a consciousness of her place in .history and was persuasive in private as before the masses. . Chiang Ching . .—once the most influential and durable revolutionary leader of the modern world . . . and the most powerful woman in the world . . . spoke far less of being Mao Tse-tung’s wife than of her thirty year struggle to become a leader in her own right. ' But Miss Witke actually published Chiang Ching’s stories— including tall ones—without confirming them first with outside sources. An excellent example is Chiang Ching’s story of noctur¬ nal flight from the city under hot pursuit of a nationalist detec¬ tive: “She slipped her secret document,” wrote Miss Witke, “the application form from the Shanghai Party organization, out of the corner of her waistcoat. As far as possible, she stuffed it into her mouth, chewed it vigorously, and swallowed.” The story is dra¬ matic, but an evident fabrication, for at that time (in the 1930s) the Communist Party was an underground organisation under constant and grievous persecution. No member could have with him or her any written documents, neither a membership appli¬ cation form nor a membership card, such as has been mentioned in Miss Witke’s book. Only the official Nationalist KMT has ap¬ plication forms and membership cards even up to now. The CCP did not have them before the Great Revolution, and we don’t know what their practice is today. Miss Witke fully understood that Chiang Ching’s narration was replete with her own dreams and fancies, but she was unable or unwilling to check them out, and therefore her general evalua¬ tion of Madam Mao will be inevitably contradicted by the fact that despite her “special magic” and “star quality”, the Chinese masses, including the overseas Chinese outside China, rejoiced when she fell.

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simple: China has a millenary history of civilisation. Its people cannot tolerate that their universities and colleges, once closed down for five years at a stretch, .are ^ now functioning more like factories and farms than seininaffes of learning; that their thousands of theatrical groups were pent up and forced to per¬ form for more than ten years a single uniform repertoire of “model plays” (no more than a dozen in all), where the Chinese violin was replaced by the piano and the traditional acting by a variant of Russian ballet/^ Miss Witke has, however, described also the other side of Chiang Ching, such as her “mercurial moods,” “her ambitions,” “her stance as a persistent adversary in a community of supposed comrades, and her ruthlessness in the service of faith in the rev¬ olution’s ultimate beneficence.” It seems that she quite agrees with Chiang Ching’s matter-of-fact belief in the justification of the means to the end as she wrote: Gradually she perfected the art of eliciting absolute loy¬ alty from confidants and advisors, who in turn co-ordinated those beneath them throughout the political system. But her enjoyment of their loyalty was always edged with fear of be¬ trayal. No more than Mao could she afford qualms about abandoning of even publically disgraced comrades whose political utility had expired. In a world where the notion of serving all the people takes priority over serving individuals, no friendship was impervious to judgements of “class stand.” Because of her lofty political standards, she spoke of— indeed, “dissected”—far more enemies than friends. It is true that Chiang Ching did have far more enemies than friends during her life, but was that due to her “class stand”? In other words, did Madam Mao really fight for the “revolution’s ul¬ timate beneficence ”? Miss Witke was, of course, not in a position to tell, but her book did answer this question indirectly: In her painstaking narration of youthful days of sufferings and fancied “leftist” activities, Chiang Ching had not even a word on real Chinese political problems before 1937. She was not actually in¬ volved in politics at that time at all. The book revealed that Chiang Ching did not even know the Long March and Mao’s ar¬ rival at Yenan was before the “December 12, 1936 affair,” when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by two of his rebellious generals.

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On the other hand, the book’s revelation of Chiang Ching’s pen¬ chant for eating in restaurants that catered to the rich and that "she'always preferred riding first class’’ contradict her pretended poverty while in Shanghai, and confirm rumors about her ex¬ travagant life as an actress in Shanghai. ^Personally, I like especially the unimportant and not easily /tfeticeable details given in the book. Many of them reveaPirm known facts about Chiang Ching’s personality, such as her differ¬ ent modes of dress, depending on whether she happens to be in the public eye or in private, her unbelievably palatial yilla in Canton, her enthusiasm for Western films and things, the origin of her change of name into Chiang Ching, which confirms what I have written in my book ... all these details are, in my opinion, the only valuable information in Miss Witke’s laborious work on “Comrade Chiang Ching.”

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■

t

About the Author As a Chinese who participated in his coun¬ try’s years of revolutionary Singko

is

uniquely

capable

struggle, Ly of

piercing

through conflicting reports and the veil of propaganda to reveal the truth about recent events in China. More than a close student of Chinese affairs and history, he has been a personal acquaintance of three members of the “gang of four”: He met Yao Wen-yuan through his friendship with his father; he contributed, with Chang Chun-chiao, to the magazine The Struggle; and he knew Chiang Ching herself in Yenan, before her marriage to Mao.

V.

LYSINGKO

•