Rectifying the Revolution

In the rampaging heyday of the Red Guards, their chief cheerleader, den mother and Joan of Arc was Chiang Ching, the fourth Mrs. Mao Tse-tung. A onetime movie actress from Shanghai, she clearly enjoyed her sudden role in the limelight after years of obscurity at Mao's side. The part, however, proved all too brief. Now that Mao has called off the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and sent the Red Guards back to school, Mrs. Mao has vanished from Peking's rostrums and podiums. "Hens must not cackle too much," Mao reportedly crowed to his male colleagues at a party meeting last month. Premier Chou En-lai was more chivalric about it: "In recent months Comrade Chiang Ching worked night and day for the revolution--and the hard work has affected her health. We therefore ask that she get some rest and recreation."

For Mrs. Mao's minions, the chief word these days is "rectification"--Peking's euphemism for cooling it. As the Maoists put it ponderously in their New Year's editorial, the annual policy guideline for the coming year: "Alongside the rectification of the party organization, the Young Communist Youth League, the Red Guards and various revolutionary mass organizations should be rectified ideologically and organizationally." That was one of only two references in the 3,000-word document to the once all-important Red Guards. For all official purposes, the Red Guards have vanished as thoroughly as Mrs. Mao. Hardly a red armband has been seen in the Chinese capital in the past two months.

Stubbornly Hoarding. Keeping the kids in line continues to present problems, though. The poorer students from rural backgrounds made the first and best Red Guards, and they developed a taste for status and power that their school careers cannot provide. Their teachers are having difficulty regaining their old authority, since many of them were dragged out, beaten or put to duty in latrines by their once and future students. Nor have they books to teach with: the old texts were headily tossed out as "revisionist" during the height of the Cultural Revolution, and nobody has replaced them.

Peking is also having difficulty in pulling the nation as a whole back from the precipice of the civil war nearly brought on by the revolution. The central part of China is now fairly well pacified, but feuds rippling out from the revolution are still roiling such remoter provinces as Tibet, Yunnan and Fukien. Despite the army's efforts to control the recent harvest, the peasants are hoarding a larger-than-usual share of the grain crop. Thus, despite a better harvest than last year, Peking's take has been poorer.

Industrial production has also suffered. Japan, one of China's preferred customers, received 10% to 12% less imports from China in 1967, and several hopeful foreign buyers at the recent Canton trade fair came back emptyhanded. Since many Chinese factories were shut down all during 1967 by the revolution's upheavals and others have unexplainedly closed in recent weeks, the Chinese were simply unable to fill the foreigners' orders.

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