Weeding Time

Though Mao Tse-tung labors to establish the myth that the peasant masses provided the popular base for the Communist conquest of China, the fact is that much of Mao's earliest and most influential support came from the dedicated mandarin intellectuals--who flocked to the Communist cause. One such was pretty, zealous Chiang Ping-chih, who under the pen name of Ting Ling was regarded, at 21, as one of China's finest playwrights and novelists.

When Ting Ling arrived at Chairman Mao's headquarters in Shensi province in 1934, she had all the right credentials: literary fame, a husband executed by the Central government for treason, a year in a Nationalist prison herself. Mao was so impressed that he promptly gave her a job (as vice chairman of a Red army guard unit), then proceeded to write a poem in praise both of Ting Ling and her new job, which by poetic license upgraded the job a bit. Sang Mao: "In the past a literary miss, she is now a General of Armies."

Rollcall of Revolt. Last week, at 50, Stalin Prizewinner Ting Ling and Chen Chi-hsia, another eminent Chinese writer, found themselves under savage attack by the Union of Chinese Writers on charges of "rightist conspiracy" to establish a Western-style democratic system in China.

Ting Ling and Chen were apparently among the weeds that popped up under Mao's new policy of letting all flowers bloom. The pruning shears were hard at work last week. For more than two months Radio Peking has been airing a steady rollcall of revolts, rebellions, plots and counter-revolutionary movements. In Fukien province one counter-revolutionary group was said to have created a complete organization including shadow brigades, divisions and an army, worked out detailed plans to rob grain storehouses and assassinate government officials.

Offstage Noises. On June 28 "security forces" unmasked a counter-revolutionary group in the old Nationalist capital of Nanking. In Hanyang, the Communist radio reported, 1,000 students had demonstrated for two days, shouting, "Welcome back to the Kuomintang. Chairman Mao will come down off the stage soon."

In Kwangtung province, Peking claimed that a plot to blow up the Canton-Shamchun rail line died aborning when the chief saboteur, "caught carrying 1.5 kilograms of U.S.-made high explosives," had a change of mind and surrendered to authorities. He told Red officials he had been "coerced" by Nationalist agents in Hong Kong, and a grateful Peoples' Council decided that this full and frank confession deserved a reward: they gave him a fountain pen. Communist informers also uncovered a plot in Tsinghai "led by intellectuals and financed by capitalists" who planned to overthrow the regime. The plotters' goal, said Radio Peking guilelessly, was establishment of "government by all the people."

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