Steady On

At the windup of the National People's Congress in Peking last week, a new Chairman of the Republic took office: dour, self-effacing Liu Shao-chi (see box). With the announcement, Peking's vast Square of Heavenly Peace resounded to the beating of gongs, the clash of cymbals, the rataplan of exploding firecrackers. Demonstrators marched 110 abreast in a swirl of red banners and colored scarves. The usually gloomy and provincial streets blazed with electric lights strung on eaves and curving roofs; red stars and neon signs shone against the night sky; big, pumpkin-shaped lanterns dangled from the gates of the Imperial City.

So far as the outside world could judge, Red China's leaders were in the process of providing for the succession, and doing so with an apparent unity that--whatever else might be said about his regime--was a tribute to the organizational skill of Mao Tse-tung. They acted at a most delicate time, with a revolt in Tibet, with economic disorder at home, and with the nation exposed abroad as a truculent aggressor with no regard for Asian opinion.

"Foul Hogs." It was easy for a dictatorship to fill the streets of China's cities, from Nanning in the south to Harbin in the subarctic north, with marching thousands, who obediently shouted the identical tongue-twisting slogans: "Smash the foreign interventionist plot to undermine China's reunification!" and "Oppose the rebellion in Tibet instigated by the imperialists and foreign reactionaries!"

Since the Tibetan revolt against Red rule could not be explained away, it had to be shouted away. The horror expressed by neutral nations at Red brutality was answered by strident threats; even India's docile Prime Minister Nehru was pictured as an archvillain who is holding the escaped Dalai Lama "under duress." Now India joined the list of monstrous enemies: Formosa, Britain, the U.S., even tiny states like Thailand and Nepal. "We will never allow those foul hogs to poke their snouts into our beautiful garden!" shouted a Congress delegate.

Plainly, Red China's leadership had concluded that if its smaller neighbors could not be deceived by propaganda, they must be quieted by fear. Red China's truculence also served another classic function: at the moment, Peking needs internal pressure more than it needs external friends.

Useless Pig Iron. At Wuhan last December, the Central Committee of the party had to recognize that 1) the frenzied bombardment of Quemoy had failed to shake the nerve of either Formosa or the U.S., and 2) the ruthless jamming of peasants into rural communes had disorganized the nation. Ships lay for as much as two weeks at Shanghai docks awaiting loading and unloading. Textile mills lacked raw material; exports fell off; production was declining everywhere. Thousands of tons of pig iron were turned out by backyard furnaces but then proved useless without further costly refining; there was not enough cement to build barracks in the communes. Lacking transport, harvests rotted in the fields while food was scarce in the cities.

Time to Pause. In this crisis. Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi talked of extending the commune system to the big cities. Mao, determined to see real Communism in his lifetime, shrugged off the economic problems just as he did in 1955, when he sneered: "Certain of our comrades are tottering along like old women with bandaged feet, constantly moaning that others are going too fast." The desperate Red managers and administrators protested. It was not their intention to reverse the course set by Able Theorists Mao and Liu, they said. No, indeed. They only wished to pause briefly, to tidy up, to plan more carefully before plunging ahead with urban communes.

Firm intelligence about the Chinese leadership is hard to come by, but China specialists believe that at Wuhan Premier Chou En-lai had the support of the army generals in urging a go-slow, and that he carried the day for the managers. Mao Tse-tung said, in effect, that he was tired of all this wrangling and wished to go away and think the whole matter through in terms of dialectical materialism. To this end, he stepped down as President (in Communist jargon. Chairman of the Republic), but kept his all-important post as head of the Communist Party.

The government bureaucrats, led by Chou. may have hoped to grab the presidency. Instead, Mao last week handed it to his fellow doctrinaire in the party apparatus, Liu Shao-chi. There was only one dramatic, tension-filled moment at the Congress. It occurred when new Chairman Liu rose to nominate the man who would be his Premier. There was a hush, and then a roar of applause as he named his longtime rival and the favorite of the army-manager group: Chou Enlai. The triumvirate was intact, and its pecking order made clear.

The 1,157 delegates were dismissed with orders to return home to tidy up the communes, to stand vigilantly on China's borders and repel all invaders whether they be Chiang Kai-shek "bandits," U.S. "imperialists" or Indian "expansionists," and to prepare for an even greater "leap forward" than in the past. But as they moved through the crowded streets, all the placards, banners, balloons and slogans served to underline a significant point: they singled out only Mao Tse-tung by name to praise.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.