Chinese Attack Split In Ranks

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 17

Chinese Attack Split In Ranks

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 1. The Chinese leadership has discovered a Khrushchevite opposition to its policies at the party’s highest level in Peking, the “Guardian” said today. The only man so far named as deliberately acting on behalf of the revisionists is Yang Hsien-chen, a member of the central committee and principal of the Higher Party School which is supposed to train the new generation of party leaders.

An article in the party’s chief magazine “Red Flag” said yesterday that he has “employed all available means” to spread his ideas in lectures and in articles written by two of his associates, Al Heng-Wu and Liu Ching-san.

Although the charges against him are couched in obscure dialectical terms, the language used by “Red Flag” suggests that his ideological disagreement with the party leadership covered the whole range of its home and foreign policies. A man in his position is hardly likely to have tried to challenge Mao Tse-tung without allies at the highest party level, but no indication of their identity has been vouchsafed so far by "Red Flag.”

The “Guardian” said some indication of the Chinese leadership’s concern at the effect of Yang’s work was given In a recent letter to the Soviet leadership. The letter spoke of the “training of successors for the revolutionary cause,” that is, the successors to the Mao leadership. It raised what is described as “the extremely important question of whether or not we can successfully prevent the emergence of Khrushehevite revisionism in China.” Not Given In Yesterday’s “Red Flag” says the error of Yang’s ways has been recognised by “the great majority” of students and staff at the Higher Party School, thus implying that some of his followers have not yet given in. The political issue seems to be that Yang’s interpretation of Marxist theory would justify Khrushchev’s rather than Mao's policies on both the home and foreign fronts.

Thus, according to “Red Flag,” Yang’s theory would lead to “the elimination of the class struggle” at a time when the party had called for an attack on bourgeois and feudal remnants in the coun- ■ try. The "Guardian” said Mao

Tse-tung had stressed, “Red Flag” recalled, that it was necessary to use the “divide one into two” theory in the struggle to oppose "modern revisionism.” That is to say, Khrushchevism and the attitude of Yang and his associates gave “direct help” to the revisionists in propagating their theories of class peace, “Red Flag” said, and thus intimating that he was trying to adapt Khrushchev’s internal policies to Chinese conditions.

The article also suggests that in seeking a “compromise between contradictions” that divide East and West, Yang was trying to provide a Chinese base for Khrushchev's foreign policy. The claim that he and his associates had transferred their “anti-Marxist views” from the sphere of theoretical activity at the Higher Party School “to the field of broader social activity” suggests that they sought a fol-

lowing in other party organisations as well. The article is presumably intended to identify the potential “conspirators” publicly in order to facilitate their elimination.