CHINESE ARMY SPLIT REPORTED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31279, 27 January 1967, Page 11

CHINESE ARMY SPLIT REPORTED

Slogan Of ‘Mongolia For Mongolians’

(N Z. Press Association—Copyright)

HONG KONG, January 26.

China today officially confirmed for the first time that its Army had intervened in the country’s power struggle to help capture 300 opponents of Chairman Mao Tse-tung in Manchuria, the “New York Times” News Service reported.

At the same time, Peking-based Japanese correspondents quoted wall posters which said that armed forces in Inner Mongolia had turned against Mao.

It was the first claimed instance of Regular Army units being used against the Chinese Party chairman, who has ordered the two-and-a-half million strong Liberation Army to use guns to help him crush his enemies, led,by President Liu Shao-chi, the Associated Press said.

The wall papers said the Chinese Vice-Premier, Ulanfu, who is first secretary of the Communist Inner Mongolia autonomous Region Committee, had turned his forces against Mao with the slogan "Mongolia for the Mongolians.”

Peking Radio today said that the Army helped capture and disarm 300 people opposed to Mao in Manchuria. The incident took place on Monday. ‘With The Gun’

The Army was publicly instructed yesterday to defend, “with the gun,” the political supporters of Mao, even though they may be in a minority. Peking Radio quoted from the Liberation Army daily newspaper to describe the alleged incident in the Manchurian city of Harbin.

The broadcast said, that counter-revolutionary elements had gathered and armed about 300 people and tried to attack a pro-Mao “Red rebel detachment” at the Friendship Palace in Harbin.

The newspaper said that when the revolutionaries and “Army units” in Harbin heard the news they surrounded the “reactionary” elements and disarmed them, the radio reported. The Peking broadcast did

not make clear whether there was any real fighting. Ringleaders were taken into custody by the security police and other people in the anti-Mao band asked for forgiveness, the radio said. Yesterday’s editorial calling for Army intervention in the present crisis was regarded by many political analysts as the most serious admission of political weakness yet made by the Communist Party faction led by Mao and the Defence Minister, Lin Piao, the “New York Times” news service said. The broadcast disclosed that Army troops had seized control of the entire province of Shansi, near Peking, earlier this month and crushed a plot to overthrow Mao.

Experienced China watchers in Hong Kong described the China situation as extremely volatile with strong possibilities of severe fighting.

There was speculation about full-scale civil war, United Press International said.

Opponents of the Maoist line have attempted to turn Shansi province into their “independent kingdom,” according to the New China News Agency, N.Z.P.A.Reuter reported. 10,000 Workers The agency quoted the official “People’s Daily” which said a handful of Shansi party officials had gravely damaged the province’s finance and economy and corrupted revolutionary organisations before Mao’s supporters overcame them on January 12, seizing many hidden weapons, ammunition and “black list” information.

The “People's Daily” added: “These gangsters acted like cornered dogs and went to the length of inciting about 10,000 workers to at-

tack the revolutionary rebels, with the result that production was seriously affected and shocking traffic accidents occurred.”

It claimed the officials colluded for a long time “in an attempt to turn Shansi into the independent kingdom to restore capitalism.”

Japanese correspondents today quoted a wall poster put up in Peking last night as saying Tao Chu, China’s propaganda chief, had died in hospital of a heart disease. According to the Japanese national daily, “Asahi Shimbun,” the poster also said Wang Jen-chung, a member of the group running the cultural revolution and former deputy chief of the Party Propaganda Department, was critically ill with cancer of the liver.

Another wall poster said Yang Hsiu-feng, president of the Communist Chinese Supreme People’s Court, has been stripped of his party membership and dismissed from his post, a Japanese report from Peking said today. First Stripped

Yang was the first highranking official reported to have been stripped of his party membership since the current “proletarian cultural revolution” began the A.P. said.

Yang earlier was reported to have attempted suicide recently and had been denounced as an anti-party element who had connexion with Peng Chen, the disgraced former Mayor of Peking. The Japanese report said the deprivation of party membership is the most severe punishment- for a Communist Party member. It means at the same time an automatic discharge from every official post he holds.

Yet another wall poster signed by 27 members of a

Group’s Title

Red Guard group yesterday sharply criticised Chiang Ching, wife of Mao Tse-tung, the Associated Press reported. Put up in the busy central district of Peking, the poster attracted swarms of Chinese eager to read this almost unheard of attack on China’s First Lady, regarded by some as one of the most powerful figures in China, the Associated Press said.

The correspondent of the “Asahi Shimbun”, reporting the criticism today, said it was signed by a group with the title of “If We Die We Can Do Nothing, If We Live We Can Do All.” Although the Red Guards are nominally pro-Mao, this sentiment is one attributed to his chief enemy, President Lieu Shao-chi, the Associated Press said.

The poster accused Chiang Ching of having failed to criticise the “excesses and mistakes” of the Air Academy and the Number Three Head quarters. Saying the Number Three Headquarters was actually against the masses and in favour of the bourgeois reactionaries, it asked: “Comrade Chiang, have you considered that many of the people you criticise may have formerly been reactionaries but are now carrying out correct “revolutionary action? “You oppose them but do not listen to them. This is why they do not trust you. Trusting Masses “They will successfully resist your efforts to defeat them. They will not give in. If you want to have the trust of the masses, you must trust the masses, too. “We do not think that your actions conform to Mao’s teachings,” the poster said.