Teng takes command
David Bonavia
Hong Kong In a strange reversal of history, China's vice-premier Teng Hsiao-Ping has resorted to demagoguery to cow his political rivals and downgrade the cult of the late Mao Tse-tung, past master of the tactics of mass politics. The confusing fracas of wall posters and street-corner meetings which broke out in Peking in November clearly had elements of spontaneity, but it was touched off by reports of a high-level meeting of the Communist Party. The poster-writers had evidently been led to believe that the meeting would result in a Politburo reshuffle, and many will have been disappointed by Teng's statement that this would not in fact take place.
The fact that the posters were regarded as part of the overall political process, and not just a side-show, was made clear by Teng himself, when he stepped in to call for less direct attacks on Mao and a general cooling-off. This was taken as a sign that a decision or at least a stand-off had been reached in the Peking meeting — thought to be an enlarged session of the Politburo. The party central committee, of which Teng is the most prominent vice-chairman, was expected to be convened in full session later to endorse or carry further the results of the November gathering.
Teng himself let it be known, in conversations with foreign visitors, that the main aim of the meeting was to discuss the progress of China's ambitious modernisation scheme — originally scheduled to span the period up till the end of the century, but more recently telescoped into a mere 'decade. This breakneck pace, which Teng and some other leaders apparently consider necessary to bring China abreast of even Singapore, let alone Japan, can only have aroused misgivings in the breasts of leaders still affected by Mao's ideas of a self-reliant China. And when coupled with fears that Teng's massive reversal of Mao's policies may mean a threat to their own positions, the misgivings of such people easily turn into hostility.
The obscure people who wrote and pasted up the wall-posters near the centre of Peking evidently expected that Teng had convened the latest meeting partly in order to dump the city's erstwhile mayor, Wu Teh, from the Politburo. Wu has become an open target of mockery and vilification since his dismissal from the municipal Post he held earlier this year, and his continued membership of the Politburo is increasinglY seen as an anomaly. But the poster-writers' evidently encouraged behind the scenes hY some senior party officials, also had it in for Mao's former bodyguard, vice-chairman Wang Tung-Hsing. Wang has been identified as the man most likely to attempt another palace coup through his control of an armed guards unit in Peking, though according to some sources its command has already been placed in other hands. For the past two years Wang, who playe,d an important role in the overthrow 0f M50 clique a month after his death, has seeme" anxious to assert his own importance in the embalmed leader's past political can'," paigns. A year ago, this was still soarlu politics, but with the surging tide of criticism of Mao and his ideas which has chase' tensed the last few months, anyone NO. ° relied on his lingering aura to gain authoritY was in danger of choosing the losing side' Knowledgeable Chinese circles in I-1°.ng Kong have gathered reports from the mainland to the effect that Wang earlier this yearf staked his money on the inviolability °c, Mao, by arguing in favour of word-by-vidt adherence to his admonitions. But Wang' and others less senior who thought this a safe pitch, have been outmanoeuvred bY Teng's bold assertions that Mao was clilfte, capable of making mistakes, and that blin,‘' parroting of his sayings was an anti-mai-01 attitude and therefore, ironically, a contra" .diction of Mao himself. This sheds a dubious light on the posItit'a of Chairman Hua Huo-Feng, who at fiftY,'" eight is sixteen years junior to Teng. Hua s claim to the chairmanship rests originally on the fact that Mao allegedly picked hint for the job in 1976, but of course the whole party leadership is implicated j the appointment because it was confirmed last year's eleventh party congress. It Hua's bad luck that he rose to power aye' the head of Teng as a result of the Pell riots two and a half years ago, which spe a second spell of political disgrace for th.e elder statesman before he bounced back' 1977. And, despite massive propaganda efforts on his behalf, Hua remains a P. entity to most Chinese. One foreigner 10 China has even heard his political status compared to that of the Queen. In the. period of consolidation after the death or, Mao, Hua has been a convenient figurehea and compromise symbol for both the mod" emising faction behind Teng, and the residual Maoist faction in the Politburo, • However such a centrist position impIies that Hua can survive only by balanl different forces, and that he will go under,' he puts himself at the mercy of any strigie group. This explains why his public pin nouncements have represented a CareWl mixture of Teng's views and those of the Maoists. In referring to Maoists in today's China, it is important to recall that they are less a coherent force than a set of attitudes holding up progress along the lines Teng envisages. At the lowest level are downcast Youths whose fanaticism has fallen out of fashion. At the middle level are administrators and managers who fear a reversal of the Political tide, and at the top are four or five members of the Politburo evidently fearful of becoming victims of Teng 's revenge. Besides Wang and Wu, this group IS believed to include General Chen Hs Li nominally commander of the armed forces in the large Peking military region, and Chi Teng-Kuei, a top apparatehik. As the Chinese say, Teng seems to be tackling these forces 'a mouthful at a tune, rather than uniting them by a head-on confrontation. While he has given earnest i of his own good will by stating that there s to be no purge just now, this leaves open the Possibility of a wave of demotions and Promotions disguised as the will of a forthcorning session of the central committee. Teng is also expected to enlarge the Politburo by bringing in some of his own sup porters — for instance, Peking's new mayor Lin Hu-Chia — thus diluting the Maoist opposition.
None of this points to what bothers many foreign politicians and businessmen about China's future prospects: the possibility of a 'pendulum swing' away from Teng's proWestern, pro-modernisation policy, and back to the Maoist idea of a China going it grandly on its own. But given another year or two, Teng and his faction will have locked China so tightly onto its present course that no future leader will be able to disengage without jeopardising the country's international credibility to an unacceptable extent. Having taken seven years to emerge from the isolationist attitudes of the cultural revolution, China is making up for lost time, with its welcoming attitude to foreign capital and its increasing attempts to win American and West European friends. For the first time since the war, domestic politics in China are coming to be dominated by the country's international stance, and international opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of Teng and his outward-looking approach.
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