Mao's Opposition
CHINA
By DICK WILSON
initial phase of China's cultural revo- lution is over. The young Red Guards have gone back to the provinces to spread the new word of Maoism. They have been warned that argument is a better weapon than violence and they have been told not to interfere with the productive and scientific activities of the farmers, factory workers and technicians.
The latest story now being proudly retailed all over China about the 'Peking Militant School,' pace-maker among the Red Guards, is not about ransacking churches or goading ex-capitalists, but something more homely and constructive. One night this summer, when a cloudburst swamped a nearby poultry shed, its members saved 800 chickens from drowning. 'The Red Guards work- ing on the farm immediately organised a hundred students who, after two hours of intensive work in the heavy rain, rescued all the chickens. There was not a single loss. . . .' The Liberation Daily of Shanghai has firmly advised the Red Guards 'not to go to scientific research and design units to exchange revolutionary experience or to inter- fere in their arrangements.' Notes of caution are everywhere being struck. The economic baby is not to disappear down the plughole with the bourgeois bathwater.
Indeed, the economic outlook is somewhat depressing. The earlier upheavals of the cultural revolution have interfered in any case with farm and factory output, and the British Scientific Instrument Manufacturers' Association, exhibit- ing its wares in Tientsin last month, had a taste of what this disruption means in terms of com- merce and industry. The promised visitors and potential buyers from other Chinese cities never came, and less than 10 per cent of the machines displayed were sold. Statements in Peking nowadays suggest that an 'upsurge' in economic growth is planned by the Communist party's new leaders, but talk of another Great Leap Forward is avoided. • We are presumably about to witness the gradual implementation of the cultural revolu- tion throughout the length and breadth of China. It will very likely go on for the next twelve months; foreign students in China have been told that the current academic year is out, as far as they are cOncerned, but that regular studies should be resumed next autumn. Mao has given
himself a year in which to assert in the provinces the ascendancy of his men and of his policies which he has already achieved in the centre.
Already there has been fighting in some pro- vincial cities, where the established party hierarchy has resisted the brash iconoclasm of the teenagers with scarlet arm-bands who are Mao's latest emissaries of revolutionary truth. Local party leaders in the four provinces of Heilungkiang, Kiangsu, Shansi and Shensi have been particularly reluctant to take up the new Maoist line. The campaign obviously got out of hand at times, and in some places. It would be characteristic of Mao, who has always sported a strong streak of mischievousness, to play on his opponents' nerves by allowing the new generation to have its head momentarily. Widespread breakdowns in law and order are unlikely: there has been no real violence for almost eight weeks. But party discipline must be much weakened by the new uncertainties in the line of authority.
Meanwhile, the presses are working round the clock to keep up with the 'demand' for Mao's gospel. There must be almost 500 million copies of Mao's works now circulating in China, which means that some families boast two or even three sets on their shelves.
The most immediate consequence of the forma- tion of the Red Guards, and perhaps the most important as well, is the stiffening of China's defence posture. The assessment which is made in Peking of America's military build-up in Vietnam is that it portends ultimately an American attack on North Vietnam, and then on China, pleading the provocation of Chinese supplies and the presence in Vietnam of some tens of thousands of Chinese non-combatant en- gineering troops. It seems inconceivable to the Chinese that the Americans could be spending all that money and making all that effort just to suppress an ill-equipped revolution in a country smaller in area than the state of Montana and less populous than many Chinese provinces.
The Vietnamese, if left to themselves, could tie down US forces, and provoke US impatience with its mission on the Asian mainland, without escalating the war. This is the outcome for which Peking hopes. But now the Russians are in favour again in Hanoi, and the Chinese fear that Soviet advice is preparing the North Vietnamese for a continued raising of military bids until the Vietcong are obliged to take up China's offer to use adjoining Yunnan province as their 'rear area.' This would bring America and China barrel-to-barrel, and nothing would suit the Kremlin better than to have its two major enemies exhaust each other in combat. The Russians are convinced that neither Johnson nor Mao could win a Sino-American war.
This line of analysis is relatively non- controversial among the rival factions in Peking. Where they differ is in the appropriate Chinese response. Mao and Lin Piao believe that if the Chinese public is psychologically prepared, and is not demoralised by talk of appeasement, it would take in its stride American bombing of Chinese cities and would support a resistance from rural bases such as the Red Army waged thirty years ago. The People's Liberation Army would be the front line, while the youthful Red Guards would provide the reserves. Their train- ing for this military task is quite as important as their indoctrination in the inevitability of egali- tarian Communism.
This extreme, simplistic view is typical of Mao. It is more difficult to associate it with Lin Piao, who has never been much of a political theorist and whose questionable health makes one wonder if he is cast as the Douglas-Home rather than the Heath to Mao's Macmillan. Chou En-tai, still riding the fiery chariot but dispensing diplomatic words of caution and restraint, is an enigma as always. His reputed moderation has never been proved conclusively. The opposition is apparently to be found in the more conventional figures of the Party establish- ment, men who have thought about the setbacks in Africa, in Indonesia and in the other Asian Communist parties and who may be having second thoughts about Mao's bravura.
The army newspaper has admitted again, only a few weeks ago, that the debate continues to rage about the military aspect of the basic party dispute. Which is more important, high morale or a supply of revisionist missiles? The desire for modern conventional and nuclear arms is so strong in the Army that no one can sit in the Chief of Staff's seat for long without losing the trust of the party. This was the fate of Lo Jui- ching. But the other generals remain undisgraced, attending social functions and doing their normal work. Are they neutral in the debate? If so, there must be an active group of colonels and brigadiers who are lobbying against Mao from lower down. He may find them harder to dislodge than the provincial party officials.
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