THE PRESS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1976 Moderates and radicals in China

Press, 14 October 1976, Page 20

THE PRESS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1976 Moderates and radicals in China

Foreign observers generally talk about political conflict in China as pitting moderates against radicals. What is meant by these labels is not always made clear. The Chinese themselves do not make it any easier to identify the issues which are at stake in their political struggles They obscure the issues behind historical and literary allusions or by calling each other names —Right deviationist. capitalist-roader, or Left opportunist—which mean little to most outside China.

The political struggle in China after Mao’s death can be regarded cynically, as the “ New York Times ” has chosen to regard it, as a “ struggle for absolute control among individual aspirants more interested in power than in policy". But profound, and apparently genuinely held, differences of opinion over policy divide the contending groups in China. To say. as appears to have happened, that the “ radicals ” or “ Left opportunists ” have been bested in the latest round by the " moderates ” is to say that Chinese policy in certain crucial fields will follow different lines from those along which the “ radicals ’’ would have steered China.

Politically, a radical ascendancy would probably have meant continuing mass movements, like the Cultural Revolution and the more recent and more subdued campaigns against Confucius, Lin Piao. and Teng Hsiao-ping. All these campaigns were intended to keep the people highly politicised and closely engaged in making basic political decisions. For the next few years less emphasis may be put on mass political movements or on continuous discussion of political principles, personalities, and policies.

The division between moderate and radical shows up even more clearly in the field of education. The radicals have argued that political enthusiasm and background should be an important criterion for admission to institutions of higher education Their aim is to draw most students from among workers, peasants, and soldiers and so ensure that the intelligentsia remains rooted in the masses. The moderates have argued that previous educational achievement should be the main qualification for higher education and that the best learners, regardless of their backgrounds, should be selected and trained. The moderates’ first concern is to ensure that China has an adequate pool of trained scientists and technologists to further the country’s modernisation.

In agriculture the moderates and radicals disagree about the size of the peasants’ private plots and the right of the peasants to cultivate them and to raise such livestock as pigs and poultry on the side for personal profit The radicals favour encouraging the peasants to devote maximum time and effort to work on communal lands as members of production teams; the moderates see no harm in allowing the peasants to work for their own immediate, personal benefit as well. A similar disagreement is evident over the role that individual, material incentives should play in fostering industrial pro-

duction. The radicals believe that industrial output can be boosted sufficiently by the mass mobilisation of workers and by relying on moral or ideological incentives to stimulate effort. The moderates are willing to pay some workers higher wages, in the form of overtime and bonuses, to stimulate production. In industry, too, where the radicals urge national self-reliance and independence in solving technical problems, the moderates accept more easily the importing of technology in the form of equipment and expertise from outside China.

The line of distinction between moderates and radicals continues clearly into China’s defence policy. The moderates appear to favour a smaller, professional army equipped with modern weapons and able to fight a “ conventional ” war: the radicals favour a much larger but less well equipped people’s army whose forte is guerrilla warfare. In foreign policy the line between the two groups is more difficult to draw. Some moderates, eager to equip the army quickly with modern weapons, may favour better relations with the Soviet Union; but improved relations with the United States was the policy of the patron saint of the moderates, Chou En-lai. Similarly, some radicals, distrustful of the United States, appear to want closer relations with the world’s other Communist super-Power. other radicals are among China’s bitterest opponents of Soviet “ revisionism Some of the radicals are opposed to all dominant leadership by big Powers and want China to ally itself more closely with other Third World countries. In both the moderate and radical camps, the voices of those opposed to rapprochement with the Soviet Union are probably stronger than the voices of those who would reverse the course of Chinese foreign policy in recent years

But even in an atmosphere of arrests and rumours of attempted coups too much should not be made of the distinction between radical and moderate policies. The now-discredited Teng Hsiao-ping described the struggle as one “ of methods, a question of going fast or slow in socialist construction The death of Mao and the arrest of the leading radicals means a set-back to those urging that China follow a more radical path to the goals on which all Chinese Communists broadly agree. But they have not been destroyed as a political force. Since 1949, Chinese political life has seen a constant ebb and flow between moderate and radical policies. For the next few years, China may be expected to pursue Chou Enlai’s moderate programme of the four modernisations: of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology. Chou put forward this programme on the assumption that China could be both modem and revolutionary. Under this programme China will be transformed into a more powerful State with a more modem economy; it will certainly not become a capitalist State under this programme. But whether it will remain sufficiently revolutionary to satisfy the radicals has yet to be seen.