China’s military competing with economists

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 16

China’s military competing with economists

By

VICTOR ZORZA

in Washington

The most important question facing the new Chinese leadership at its recent party congress has not been resolved. It is therefore clear that the struggle over the direction China must take in its development, a struggle which has been fought in many guises and on many issues through Mao’s reign, will go on.

The main issue now is whether the military are to be allowed to grab the lion’s share of the nation’s resources in order to build a powerful war machine, on the supposed grounds that war with Russia is imminent. If they win the argument, one result of the huge arms build up could be to increase the tension between Russia and China to the point at which a jumpy Kremlin, now engaged in its own succession struggle, might decide to intervene militarily before the threat becomes too real. A debate on some such action has been in progress in the Kremlin for a long time, and in the late sixties Moscow even hinted to the United States that the two should act together on the matter before China plunges the world into a nuclear war. But the China hawks in the Kremlin have always lost the argument in the past, because China’s army, for all its strength in numbers, did not have the modern arms to make it a serious military threat. For all its fighting talk, it was a defensive army, incapable of successful aggressive action against Russia. The other side of this question is whether the funds the Chinese military are demanding are to go first of all to develop the country economically. If China’s agriculture does not get the resources it needs, the country’s population may soon outstrip the food

production of a land that has been farmed more intensively for many centuries than any other. If China’s industry does not get the resources with which to build the new production machinery that would bring it rapidly into the modern world, the country will begii to come apart at its seams, and will be forced asunder by the pressures and the needs of a population which is not far short of one billion, and still growing.

The signs of the debate on this question which have appeared between the lines of the Chinese press since the death of Mao seemed to suggest that the argument might be resolved at the party congress. But the speech by the party’s new leader, Hua Kuo-feng, evaded the issue and studiously avoided any of the sharper and more clear-cut formulas on the subject which have come up during the debate. He mentioned, but without any undue emphasis, the now ritual formula calling for the modernisation of both industry and defence, in an obvious effort to play down the whole issue, or to temporise while the policy struggle goes on. Some observers believe they can detect a victory for the' military faction, or at least an important role for it, in the composition of the new Politburo, which has nine more or less full-time military members out of a total of 23, but this is a questionable interpretation. It is the five-member inner core of the Politburo — a new “Gang of Five” if ever there was one — that holds the real power, and here the influence of the military is by no means overhwhelming. The number two man in order of precedence, Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, is certainly

the most important member after Hua Kuo-feng, and is indeed largely responsible for Hua’s survival as party chairman, having swung the army’s military support behind him. But the venerable marshal is, at 80, hardly likely or able to take an effective part in the kind of close infighting by which power struggles in the Chinese leadership are usually decided. The number three man, Teng

Hsiao-ping, overthrown by the Gang of Four and only now fully restored to power, after much delay, has regained his title of Chief of Staff, but he is primarily a political administrator. He got himself appointed Chief of Staff in the first place as a political ploy designed to secure the army’s support in his bid for power, when he was being groomed for the succession of Mao. But his primary interest is in eco-

nomic development, and he has given indications that he regards it as the most important item on China’s agenda, while at the same time paying lip service to the army’s demands. The number four man. Li Hsien-nien, is the senior deputy premier in charge of economic planning, and his institutional commitment to economic development is certainly greater than to a crash arms drive. The number five man, General Wang Tung-hsing, is an army man only in the sense that he was commander of the Mao bodyguard who, at the decisive moment in the struggle that followed Mao’s death, threw his weight behind Hua and provided the men who arrested Mao’s widow and the rest of the Gang of Four, as well as their key followers. But he is not a military leader of any consequence — not yet, that is.

The military weight of the “Gang of Five” is thus somewhat less than appearances suggest, and this is also true of the larger Politburo. some of whose members are old, not to say decrepit. They are made of the old mould of Chinese military leaders, who are primarily party men. Their divided loyalties have been evident in the past and are likely to pull them in different directions in any showdown.

But while the influence of the army faction favouring a rapid arms build-up is not decisive at present, as is clear from the leadership’s failure to resolve the debate over the allocation of resources, it could still play a crucial role in the struggle for power now. Even within the “Gang of Five,” there is obviously a good deal of tension between the two most powerful members, for Hua Kuo-feng has been largely responsible for delaying Terig Hsiao-ping’s full return to power, just as he had

earlier been partly responsible for Teng’s removal, at the time of the Peking riots last year. There is potential tension too between Hua and Wang Tung-hsing who provided the muscle for the defeat of the Gang of Four. His services then, and his elevation now, are comparable to those of Alexander Shelepin, who swung the Soviet security police behind Brezhnev in his bid to oust Khrushchev — and then went on to become Brezhnev’s most serious rival. Because Hua and Wang are the youngest members of the top leadership, the struggle for the long-term succession would have to be fought out between them.

If this is preceded by a struggle between Hua and Teng Hsiao-ping, then Wang is likely to give his support to Teng in order to weaken his more dangerous rival. This is the way power struggles and policy debates have always interacted with each other in communist leadership groups, and there is no reason to suppose that the whole system has suddenly been changed by the death of Mao.

And Teng Hsiao-ping, who has given some early signs of looking for an accommodation with Moscow, may be responsible for the comparatively conciliatory tone of Hua’s invitation to the Soviet Union to restore normal relations with China. If this materialises, then the pressure on the Peking Politburo to proceed with a rapid arms build-up could be defeated more easily by the faction which favours all-out economic development. The struggle on the arms issue is closely linked with the debate on how Peking should proceed with the Soviet Union — and, by the same token, with the United States.

(Copyright) 1977, Victor Zorza.