Chinese leader pointedly fails to mention Mao

Press, 2 October 1979, Page 9

Chinese leader pointedly fails to mention Mao

NZPA-Reuter Peking 5 China yesterday toasted b the future at a huge banquet marking 30 years of Com- a munist rule, but there was t no mention of Mao Tse-tung, n the man who proclaimed the b birth of the people's repub- tl lie. The Communist Party c chairman and Prime Minis- c ter. Hua Guofeng, praised all d sectors of the population, \ from lumberjacks to scien- n tists, but evoked Mao only li when he said that for three f, decades “the Chinese people ii have stood up." u This phrase was used by Mao but he was given no C credit yesterday for being its h author. p The silence about Mao b compared drastically with n the banquet on the twenty- d ninth anniversary, when Mr Hua three times mentioned o the name of the late Com- t munist Party leader and told i the nation “we must hold a high the banner of Chairman Mao.” lb Mr Hua had mentioned T

Mao seven times the year before that. The chairman yesterday avoided politics and praised the people for their achievements when he spoke at the banquet in the Great Hall of the People. More than 4000 people, including the former Kampuchean leader. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and Hoang Van Hoan, the deputy chairman of the Vietnamese Parliament who recently defected to China, joined him in toasting the nation’s future. The Communist Party, Government, and Parliament held a huge rally of 10,000 people in the Great Hall soberly to recall the nation’s misfortunes over the three decades. Ye Jianying, the chairman of Parliament and as such the country’s Head of State, implicitly blamed Mao for all that had gone wrong. Mr Ye’s speech, written by the party central committee, listed some of Mao’s

contrioutions before 1949. c but did not mention any in t the years that followed, and even questioned his role in I the development of Mao I Tse-tung thought, one of the i theoretical bases of Chinese ! communism. ; “Of course. Mao Tse-tung ; thought is not the product ' of Mao Tse-tung’s personal I wisdom alone, it is also the i product of the wisdom of t his comrades-in-arms, the party and the revolutionary 1 people," Mr Ye said. I The speech criticised the [ purge of intellectuals in the [ late 19505. the Great Leap Forward years that followed, t and said the Cultural Revo- < lution was launched in error, ' then exploited by the ex- t tremist “Gang of Four" and i the former Defence Minister. ( Lin Piao, to bring calamity on the people. t Mao’s role in the Cultural i Revolution was not men- 1 tioned, although all Chinese i know he was its initiator, on t top of Which Lin had been i named as “Mao’s closest I

comrade-in-arms” at the time in 1966. Although Mr Hua ignored Mao tn his speech at the banquet, the late chairmans mausoleum in Tien An Men Square was brightly floodlit, as well as all other important buildings in the capital where large crowds strolled the streets on a balmy evening looking at the decorations. Earlier, big advertising billboards went up around the city promoting Chinese products, including grand pianos and suitcases. One big sign at an intersection that previously carried a quote from Mao was getting the. finishing touches from workmen. It now advertises, in English, Goldfish brand crayons. Apart from the week-end rally and banquet, there are no public festivities because the Government is promoting frugality and it believes the money spent on fireworks and so on would be better applied .