SECOND PURGE IN PEKING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31269, 16 January 1967, Page 13

SECOND PURGE IN PEKING

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) PEKING, Jan. 15. A second purge has taken place in the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department since the cultural revolution began last year, according to posters and leaflets in Peking. The party propaganda chief, Tao Chu, one of the three main targets of the Red Guards this month, has been dismissed from his post, according to the posters. Tao Chu, a Vice-Premier and originally one of the

chief exponents of the cultural revolution, succeeded the dismissed Lu Ting-yi as propaganda chief nearly six months ago, and Hsiao Wang-tung, a former Army general, at the same time took over Lu Tingyi’s Government post and became acting Minister of Culture. Chinese-speaking diplomatic sources said yesterday that Hsiao Wang-tung was one of the senior officials who have been paraded around Peking in the last week in lorries filled with Red Guards and Maoist “red rebels” members of a new Red Guardworkers’ organisation. Those driven around the city in this manner have been made to stand at the back of the truck with a placard

round their necks giving their names and details of their alleged offences—revisionism and following the “bourgeois reactionary line.” DEMONSTRATION

Big crowds of Red Guards and “red rebel” workers demonstrated yesterday in support of the cultural revolution outside the Ministry of Culture. Mao Tse-tung was quoted on posters as telling a recent meeting that Tao Chu was promoted to central committee membership on the advice of Teng Hsiao-ping, the party secretary-general. Teng, with the Head of State, Liu Shao-chi, has been described on thousands of harshly-worded posters as the chief exponents of the anti-

Maoist “bourgeois reactionary line.”

According to yesterday’s posters and leaflets, Tao Chu’s successor at the head of the propaganda department is Wang Li, a prominent member of the central committee’s cultural revolution group headed by Chen Po-ta, and deputy editor under Chen Pota of the party’s theoretical journal “Red Flag.” The posters and leaflets named two other members of the new propaganda department as Tang Ping-chu, recently appointed new editor of the party organ “People’s Daily,” and Hu Chi. Observers noted that Tang and Hu were also named in Friday’s “Peoples’ Daily” and official Chinese News Agency reports as members of the newly-organised Army cultural revolution group. But while the formation of the new Army group was given big publicity in the official press and radio, neither of them mentioned the dismissal of Tao Chu from the propaganda post and the appointment of a new propaganda department chief. But observers said the leaflets and posters reporting the changes were so widespread and consistent that they presumed them to be based on authentic information. SLOGANS SHOUTED

Most of those paraded through Peking’s streets were made to bow their heads as Red Guards and “red rebels” on the lorry with them and others in more lorries following shouted slogans against them. Also seen taken round in this way was Shih Chaunghsiang, the famous Peking nightsoil collector who has been extolled for several years as a model worker.

Many columns have been written in newspapers praising Shih, who is a member of the National People’s Congress, and only two months ago the press published a long report which spoke of his excellent relations with the Red Guards. Since then posters have criticised him for association with Liu Shao-chi.

Mines At Match.— lsrael has accused Syria of planting a mine on the Lebanese frontier which killed one man and seriously injured two others during a soccer match. A second mine discovered at the match was dismantled.—Jerusalem, January 15.