Are two sides lined up in China?

Press, 15 September 1976, Page 8

Are two sides lined up in China?

Bv RICHARD HARRIS, of “The Times,’’ through NZPA Peking No-one could deny that Mao Tse-tung was a big personality, a large man in every sense. He imposed himself on the Chinese people without the aid of a television screen or a loudspeaker. Though never disdaining the singular publicity attached to a sole source of righteousness, he contrived to be both a distant figure as China's ruler and an earthy understanding figure in the eyes of the ordinary peasant. Now that he has gone, could he conceivably be succeeded by someone of equal size and substance? The answer surely must be no. Mao Tse-tung founded too much, in the years in Yenan and 27 years ruling China, for any successor to go on except where he left off; but that does not mean accepting Maoism complete with its ultra-egalitarianism, its determination to force in one generation the changes that need four or five. There will certainly be considerable change. So long as the Maoist banners fly and the portrait hangs in the centre of the room, a new political style can emerge in China.

But that will take time. It is not easy to draw an outline of what the party’s present condition could throw up. The party that looked like being stabilised, acquiring its own style and momentum as an institution, was pummelled and kicked so hard during the Cultural Revolution that it has never recovered its assurance as a body with any unity. Only now can it begin to do that. If one looks back one might say that only two congresses of the Chinese Communist Party have been really representative.

Discarding the first six (1921-28) as being pre-Maoist. the first of these was the seventh congress at Yenan in 1945. which formally acknowledged Mao’s leadership and was rewarded with power for those who had fought their way through the era of “liberated areas” and the guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Theirs was a unity of experience, strong enough to transcend differences of which liberated area each had come from in the pre-Yenan era or which of the field armies they had served in or whether they had been under- : ground workers in the KuoImintang held areas The only other party congress to be representative

was the eighth in 1956, the first to be held since the new government had been formed in 1949 and thus one much influenced by the responsibilities of that rule. This was to be the party leadership that Mao attacked 10 years later in the Cultural Revolution, chiefly from his resentment of the institutional character that naturally attached to it. The two congresses since then have been in no way representative. The ninth congress followed the Cultural Revolution with almost half of the old lot thrown overboard and replaced by a strong military element, especially Lin Piao’s following together with the small radical element that had shot up to power in the Cultural Revolution, notably from Shanghai. The tenth congress of 1973 followed Lin Piao’s overthrow and the culling of his military following. It marked the return of some of the old guard, such as Teng Hsiao-ping. It seems, in retrospect, to have been a final line-up of Maoist radicals against the moderates led by Chou En-lai. In the three years since that congress, a somewhat unbalanced party Central Committee of 195 regular members and 124 alternates is the reservoir of power beneath a much more unrepresentative political bureau at the top. Are there two sides lined up in China at this moment, and can they be characterised as radicals and moderates? The trouble is that the word “moderates” puts into one bundle men whose attitudes and experience differ very widely: it might indeed be safer to label them equally broadly, but more accurately, as all those who have looked forward to a future without Mao compared with the small number of top radicals whose survival seems to have depended upon Mao’s own life. Those who think that Mao’s last 10 years did more damage than good to the party are the majority in office, or still in the corridors of power to which they were dismissed during the Cultural Revolution, who will want to get the party hack on to the rails off which it was pushed in 1966. That will take time. It will involve many shifts away from the policies that Mao’s intransigence, or his wish to further the hopes of his close followers, kept in force. But some of them directly relate to the rehabilitation of the party, such as

> the educational system and : i the career structure through- ' 1 out lire country. ; i Ever since the Cultural . Revolution the pressure has 1 > been to admit to higher edut cation those who were pro- - ducts of the right class—the sons and daughters of poor I ’ peasants and workers—and . - who had also attested their ' Maoist political fidelity. 1 ; The result was not to proJ duce the most able. Some of the offspring of poor pea- I . sants and workers were ' . able, some obviously ; not, and for the politij cal colours it was plain that , an activist, “style” and the 5 constant reiteration of the „ right slogans would have, [ qualified many who may now! > be ejected in favour of those! ", passing more stringent tests! of real ability. f This will mean a change in! 5 the Hsia Fang policy, too— ; f the sending down to the t countryside to “leant from f the peasants” of a sizeable , proportion of those who ’ graduate from middle schools j and have seen their hopes of . higher education and the s career that might follow from it dashed and their lives , brought down to a grim unJ fulfilment. I How many have “gone r down” all over China? Ten - million? Fifteen? Twenty? _ How many have sneaked . back, jobless and without rat tion cards? That the resentment at the Hsia Fang polj icy from parents and children equally has been wide-; : spread all over China may j'safely be deduced from those of their number who 3 lhave swum into the career -> I opportunities offered by J Hong Kong while they were! r !able to in the years follow-i jiing Ihe Cultural Revolution. I ji Education and a career are! ? lone side of the traditional; jjChina that has behind it so Jlong a tradition within every* Jfamily and in every pupil-i r lteacher relationship (has any! J teacher in any Chinese! jischool ever had difficulty in; (keeping order in the pre-j ti cultural revolution past?) = ;that like any spring held jidown by a great weight it -! will respond immediately the s weight is removed. e The lengths to which Chi-! - nese parents have gone to; fievade Hsia Fang for their! < I children and the struggle the! 11young have- had to keep! 1 their feet on the career lad-1 der rather than be sent outi s to a life in piggeries, or ai t long and never-ending stint I s weeding and hoeing in the I f fields is far too well docu-l i mented to suggest that the ' t pressure is now very strong, - indeed and will now make! siitself felt; i