Mr Mao’s Successor

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 16

Mr Mao’s Successor

Last week’s Peking rally, on a scale spectacular enough to make it appear as a contrived climax to the current “ cultural revolution ”, appears to have had one major purpose above and beyond its doctrinal aim —that of resolving, for the Chinese people and for the world at large, the riddle of the succession. The 72-year-old Mao Tse-tung himself appeared unprecedentedly in military dress. He did not speak, beyond introducing his “ close friend in combat ”, the Defence Minister. Marshal Lin Piao, who addressed the rally on Mr Mao’s behalf and apparently sounded again the call for Marxist militancy in every country. The occasion, with its plainly indicated revision of precedence within the hierarchy, left no doubt as to who is to assume the leadership when Mr Mao steps down. Indeed, the presence of a nurse at the Chairman's side hints that, for practical purposes, Marshal Lin may already have taken over, to confirm and direct the future course of the revolution—though presumably under Mr Mao’s guidance, while he remains. It is too early yet to read into this development more than appears on the surface. Marshal Lin is known as a revolutionary and a Marxist conformist after Mr Mao’s own pattern. A year ago he published his designedly provocative thesis, “ On People’s War ”, which proclaimed the central objective of Chinese foreign policy as the encirclement of imperialism in both hemispheres. The aim would be to use guerrilla warfare in “ the countryside of the world ” for the destruction of the imperialists in “ the cities of the “ world ”, It is to be supposed that Marshal Lin has patiently directed army thinking towards this end. The purge of senior officers, as part of the revolution, has certainly made it clear that no questioning of the militant principles laid down by Mr Mao is to be tolerated within its ranks.

China has problems enough of her own to make It appear that world revolution belongs Currently in the realm of theory rather than of practicality. Yet Vietnam provides an illustration of what could happen if no effort were made to put a brake on Communist expansionism. Chinese Communism may find it completely impossible to do what Mr Mao and Marshal Lin would like to do before, as seems inevitable, revolutionary ardour cools in China as it has done in the Soviet Union. In the meantime, however, the new exposition of revolutionary principles in Peking should make United States policy in Vietnam more intelligible to those who question or criticise it. As the “ Economist ” has suggested, it should increase support for President Johnson’s basic premise that it is America’s job to try to keep China’s evangelism under control. If Vietnam were to be submerged, where next would aggressive Communism appear?' In Thailand? Burma? India? Marshal Lin’s thesis does not even exempt the Americas—a fact that by itself makes Washington’s dramatic broadening of the Monroe Doctrine of vital importance to Western security as a whole. If Maoist orthodoxy is not only to stand in China, but is also to be massively reaffirmed as a deliberate act of faith, the West must look to its own salvation.