Appalling & Alone

Even before Mao Tse-tung unleashed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Red China had managed to isolate itself from most of the world. The weird rampages of the Red Guards made the alienation virtually complete. As no other major nation in modern times, Red China stands alone, with other Communist countries possibly even more appalled by its actions than anyone else.

Even the Communists of Eastern Europe, who in the past were content to condone China's aberrations in order to gain more leverage from the Sino-So viet split, are now roundly denouncing the Red Chinese as "insane." Hungarian Communist Boss Janos Kadar calls the events in China a "national tragedy." East Germany has accused the Red Chinese of "encouraging the cult of Mao to boundless excesses."

"Winds of Madness." There was speculation last week that Red China's last friend in Europe was having second thoughts. Albania's party press has avoided any mention of the Cultural Revolution--perhaps because it could not bring itself to say anything good about it.

The Russians were almost breathless in their shock at the events in China.

Pravda and Izvestia were providing some of the most detailed--and accurate--reports as the Red Guards continued their odd operations. The whole Cultural Revolution, charged Izvestia last week, is "a monstrous discreditation of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism."

Communist parties in the free world also bitterly denounced the events in Peking. The Japanese Reds, reportedly ordered by Mao himself to risk their cherished legality by initiating a campaign of terrorist attacks, responded by purging pro-Peking leaders and tearing down pictures of Mao. The French Communist newspaper l'Humanite said the new wave is "stirring disquiet and stupefaction in our ranks." Asked a Spanish Communist spokesman: "What winds of madness are these, sullying the authentic Chinese revolution?"

The West's China-watchers awaited with fascination the reaction in Hanoi. The pickings were slim, because Ho Chi Minn's propagandists were largely silent. Yet Hanoi's official newspaper last week obliquely endorsed the concept of a united front of the world's Communist parties for aiding North Viet Nam in the war. Since the united-front concept represents the Soviet view, some experts interpreted Hanoi's statement as a tentative attempt to escape Peking's go-it-alone policy. North Korea's latest statement was more direct: it ripped the Red Chinese for "leftist extremism" and "dangerous Trotskyism."

Internal Alienation. Peking has reacted to the criticism from abroad with hysterical cries of delight. "We love precisely what the enemy hates," exulted Peking's Red Flag. "It is an honor for the Red Guards to be attacked wildly by enemies abroad." Just to show their total disregard of world opinion, the Red Guards razed a European cemetery near Peking.

Nor did the Guards limit their scorn to foreigners. To Premier Chou En-lai's recent order to stop insulting and beating people, a member of the Red Guards last week replied: "Why shouldn't we insult? We shall also do some beating." The announced targets were "the rightists and revisionists" within the party, but in fact the Red Guards seemed to have declared war on the party in general. There were more reports of indiscriminate beatings of local party officials, and in one town the party leader was smeared with muck and dragged through the streets. Despite Chou's explicit warning, Red Guards also ransacked the Shanghai home of Madam Sun Yatsen, the widow of the man who founded the Chinese Republic in 1911. The Guards denounced her for living in luxury unbecoming to a citizen of Mao's China. On yet another front, the Guards ordered the disbanding of the 60 million-member Young Communist League. The League has apparently failed to show the proper fervor for Mao-think.

Even the army was caught up in the violence. Or so it seemed from an order published on the front page of the Liberation Army Daily. It decreed an end to squabbling between political commissars and their counterparts in uniform. In fact, the shreds of evidence emerging last week suggested that Mao and his fanatical followers were becoming alienated not only from significant elements in the army but from sizable numbers of the Chinese people, just as they were from the rest of the world.

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