Out of the Shadows

Pale and unsmiling, the diminutive Mao-suited official walked into the grand banquet hall of Peking's Great Hall of the People one day last week. He paused uncertainly at the door, but protocol officials hustled him over to stand in line with Premier Chou En-lai and greet guests at a dinner honoring Cambodia's exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In this low-key style, Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, now 69, returned from the shadows that have enveloped him since 1966, when he was purged along with Chief of State Liu Shao-chi as "one of a handful of party leaders who took the capitalist road."

Teng had once ranked fourth in the party hierarchy (behind Mao, Liu and Chou, and just ahead of the now-dead Defense Minister Lin Piao); he was party General Secretary and a member of the Politburo. Accused in the early months of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Teng confessed immediately, admitting that "my thought and attitude were incompatible Mao's thought." His return to at least a degree of prominence (he now seems to rank about 20th in the hierarchy, though he has not regained his party posts) is another indication of Mao's continuing effort to reunite the leadership. But Teng's duties are modest: he is believed to have been put to work reorganizing the youth corps.

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