RED CHINA'S BIG FOUR

Of the select few who rule Red China, these jour share the ultimate power:

Mao Tse-tung, 61. chairman of the Politburo, the Central Committee, the Government and Military Council--in short, the dictator. The son of a well-to-do peasant, he attended the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. tirelessly organized China's peasants while others concentrated mistakenly on workers in the cities, ultimately forged the great peasant army and tailored the dogma which carried Communism to triumph in China. He had the opportunism to capitalize on Japan's aggression: "Our determined policy is 70% self-development, 20% compromise and 10% fight the Japanese." He had the ruthlessness to cut down obstacles: "A revolution is no invitation to a ban quet." He had the brilliance, cunning and tenacity to win with his methods, even though Moscow, traditionally building on an industrial proletariat for years, thought he was wrong, backed other factions. Married: four times (including one wife executed by the Nationalists). Children: seven or eight, including five abandoned to peasants during the Long March. Characteristics: high-pitched voice, heavy smoker, lumbering gait. Seen in public only twice in the past four months, he has lost weight (formerly 200 Ibs.), is very likely in seriously bad health.

Chou Enlai, 55, Premier, Foreign Minister (see cover).

Liu Shao-chi, about 50, vice chairman of the Politburo, secretary of the Central Committee. Little known but very powerful. Close to Mao, and said by some to be the heir apparent. Theorist and dogmatist of the party and, like Stalin and Malenkov in Russia, the one who controls its elaborate apparatus. He was practically unknown outside the party a decade ago; his first book, How to Be a Good Communist, introduced him in 1939 as a prime dialectician. Married: twice (first wife killed by Kuomintang troops in 1934). Children: a son and daughter of whom it has been said that, when they meet with Liu, "it is like throwing together a heap of steel slabs." Characteristics: gaunt and tall, with sharp features and piercing eyes; rarely smiles, has what his second wife calls "an inexorable heart."

Chu Teh, 68, commander in chief of the army, once the brilliant strategist of the guerrilla days, now,pretty much a figurehead, but a useful one. One version of his life makes him of the landed gentry; another says he was one of a large family of poor peasants who pooled resources to educate one-Chu Teh. First a gym teacher, then a war lord's lieutenant, he learned to command troops, eventually fought himself to high fortune, a houseful of concubines and opium. About 1922 he suddenly abandoned the high life, went to Berlin to study, met Chou En-lai and enlisted in the Communist Party; in 1925 he went to Red Eastern Toilers' Institute in Moscow, went back to China to command a Kuomintang division (though a secret Communist), eventually slipped down to the Hunan-Kiangsi border to join with Mao and begin forming the Red army. Countless Chinese peasants believed legends that Chu Teh could fly, that he "stands higher than the tallest tree," could with a wave of his hand bring flood or fires on opposing armies. Married: three times (his present wife is the only "woman commander" in the Communist army). Children: "We have none," said Mrs. Chu in 1937, "because they would interfere with my work." Characteristics: thick-bodied, heavy-featured with cold, unblinking eyes. .

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