The Twenty-Five Years of Chairman Mao

The outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are "poor and blank." This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing ... On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted. -- Mao Tse-tung, 1958

No one can seriously argue that the Chinese, with almost three milleniums of history behind them, were ever truly "blank." Yet in the 25 years since Mao and his 2 million-member Communist Party swept to power after a 22-year civil war, he has come a long way toward creating a new China. Despite the convulsions of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China has transformed itself more radically and more quickly than any other country in history. From what many Westerners saw as a devastated, underdeveloped satellite of the Soviet Union, China has remade itself into a largely self-sufficient, growing and fiercely independent world power. As the Chinese were getting ready for National Day (Oct. 1), celebrating the 25th anniversary of Mao's victory, a New China News Agency dispatch summed up the first quarter-century's achievement by reminding Peking's citizens that "this city, where even thumbtacks had to be imported before, is now producing ten times as much steel as the whole country did in 1949."

Signs of the coming celebrations were blossoming around the capital. Old slogans were being repainted; a new 17-story wing of the Peking Hotel was being completed; a spectacular fireworks display was being readied. There were even rumors that Mao himself would make one of his rare public appearances to take his place on the reviewing stand in Peking's immense Tienanmen Square and preside over the festivities.

The 800 million Chinese were justified in taking a day off to celebrate their impressive achievements. Under Mao's direction, China since 1949 has eliminated--often brutally--all traces of the old society, in which there were UPI privileges and wealth for a very few, but dehumanizing poverty, disease and famine for the vast majority of peasants and workers. The China viewed today by foreign visitors appears to be by contrast a land of smiles, health and purpose--if not of freedom. True, life is regimented, spare and hard by any standard, and the country's ancient cultural heritage has been all but obliterated; but no longer do beggars, prostitutes and addicts throng the cities or bandit gangs roam the countryside. Most fundamentally, perhaps, the deeply rooted Confucian attitudes of docility and resignation have virtually disappeared in favor of Mao's Promethean notion that the human will can solve all problems.

It is hard to believe, however, that even the lowliest peasant is totally unaware that his country faces an uncertain and perhaps worrisome future. Dominated for a quarter of a century by the ideas and personality of one man, China has yet to go through the experience, always wrenching in a one-party state, of a transferal of supreme state power. But Mao Tse-tung is now 81; although apparently in command of his party, he is physically very feeble. His much heralded meetings with foreign dignitaries, held usually in his book-lined study, are always spur-of-the-moment affairs, apparently because his doctors never know when he will be strong enough to take the strain of a visit. Last week he had an unscheduled meeting with Mrs. Ferdinand Marcos, wife of the Philippine President. A few weeks ago, he went to the seaside resort of Peitaiho, 170 miles from the capital, to meet Togolese President Etienne Eyadema, but most of the time he remains behind the thick walls of the old Forbidden City. Premier Chou Enlai, 76, Mao's versatile organization man, has spent most of the past two months in the hospital with what most analysts believe is a serious heart ailment. In the ruling Politburo, four of the 21 members are over 80, most are in their 70s, only four are under 60.

Succession, moreover, is not simply a matter of age. Since the devastating Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, Chou --with Mao's blessing--has gone a long way toward reconstituting the shattered party apparatus. But five years after reconstruction began, the task is only half completed. Of the 29 top party positions in China's provinces, eight are still vacant. China's military, 3.5 million strong, still has no Minister of Defense, no chief of staff and no top naval commander. The coalition of political interests that makes up the party leadership group remains awkwardly strained; military leaders try to hold on to the power they gained during the Cultural Revolution, while radicals and moderates jockey for position within the party.

Led by Mao's actress-wife Chiang Ching, 60, the party radicals are trying to keep ah've the intransigent revolutionary zeal of the Cultural Revolution. They see the pragmatic policies of Chou and the moderates threatening the purity of China's revolution. They are opposed, it seems, to Chou's tolerance of material incentives and his willingness to sacrifice ideological correctness for the sake of technical expertise. The most notable example is Chou's policy of detente with the West. Not only is accommodation with an imperialist country like the U.S. ideologically questionable, but trade with capitalist countries is contrary to China's goal of self-reliance.

Ideological Purity. Sinologists believe that Mao sympathizes with at least some of the radicals' arguments--after all, it was Mao who plunged China into the reckless adventure of the Cultural Revolution with the call "Bombard the party headquarters!" But Mao also clearly approved such departures from ideological purity as Chou's openness toward Japan and the West. Indeed, Sino-American relations, though cautious on cultural exchanges, have blossomed in the area of trade; the U.S. is now China's second-largest trading partner, after Japan. (By contrast, the Soviet Union inspires only fear in China --enough to prompt continued building of vast air-raid shelters in many of China's cities.) Although the Chairman's goals are, as always, difficult to understand, some China watchers believe that he is trying to strike a complex political balance between the radical and moderate forces. The consensus is that Mao's own strategy for the post-Mao era took shape at the Tenth Party Congress, held a little more than a year ago.

The most spectacular sign of the strategy was the rise of a former Shanghai cotton-mill worker, Wang Hung-wen, 38, from virtual obscurity to vice chairman of the party. He now ranks below only Mao and Chou in the hierarchy. Since Wang is associated with such radical faction leaders as Chiang Ching and Politburo Member Yao Wenyuan, his promotion indicated that the leftists could not simply be pushed aside as a political force.

Nonetheless, Chou En-lai and the moderates may have got the best of the bargain. Unlike Chiang Ching, who is a member of the Politburo but holds no office in the government, Wang Hung-wen has no independent power base. Some experts believe that his elevation was a token; the leftists got represen tation at the apex of the party but little increase in real power.

Balancing Wang's meteoric rise, moreover, was the re-emergence of several pragmatic bureaucrats who had been discarded during the Cultural Revolution -- most important, former Party General Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping, now a Vice Premier, who in recent months has taken over many of Chou's diplomatic functions. Teng is one of four high-ranking officials (referred to by some Sinologists as "the Four Horsemen of Peking") who are expected collectively to assume Chou's manifold responsibilities if the Premier should pass from the scene. The others: Li Hsien-nien, a jowly, rumpled former Finance Minister, whose current role is overseeing economic development plans; Chang Chun-chiao, thought to be a member of Mme. Mao's leftist clique, who could take over many of Chou's day-to-day office duties; Chen Hsi-lien, a bull-like army commander and the most likely candidate for Defense Minister in any post-Chou lineup.

Stinging Rebukes. The uneasy compromise involving Chou and the radicals had one almost certain target, the power of the military establishment. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, a number of provincial commanders had been trying to establish their hegemony over government and party organs. At the Tenth Party Congress, the military's representation on the 319-member Central Committee was trimmed from 56% to 41%. Four months later, eight of the most powerful regional army chiefs were transferred from their long-term bases of power to new, unfamiliar commands.

During China's latest ideological campaign, intended to discredit the ideas of the ancient sage Confucius and the reputation of former Defense Chief Lin Piao,* some of these commanders came in for stinging rebukes. At least five powerful army generals, including Li Te-sheng, the Politburo's sixth-ranking member, were attacked by name on radical wall posters for, among other things, "warlordism."

The campaign against Confucius and Lin Piao, which, according to People's Daily was "personally launched" by Mao Tse-tung, did more than just lower the status of the army. Although apparently intended by Mao to combat ideological backsliding, the campaign quickly became tangled in the question of succession. Chiang Ching and her radical cohorts, who had faded from view since their days of pre-eminence during the Cultural Revolution, seized on the campaign to enhance their own political positions. They used the confusing but time-honored Chinese tradition of attacking the living by drawing carefully worded analogies to the dead. Allegorical assaults on ideological and political enemies appeared in the press during the spring and early summer; meanwhile, only Chiang Ching (and Mao, of course) were consistently praised. Most serious were oblique but unmistakable accusations against Chou Enlai. There were, for example, embarrassing repetitions of the Confucian slogan "to call to office those who had retired into obscurity," a derogatory reference to Chou's efforts to reinstate old party bureaucrats. Western analysts concluded that a major power play was in the making.

Historical Allegory. It is likely that Mao approved some of the attacks, perhaps even those aimed at his powerful Premier. But the campaign was not intended to lead to a purge, and it was controlled--with "surgical precision," as a Canadian analyst put it--when it threatened to become too disruptive. Last August an article in the theoretical journal Red Flag blamed internal bickering and factionalism for the fall of the brutal, short-lived Chin dynasty of the 3rd century B.C. This subtle piece of historical allegory was written by one Lo Szu-ting; Sinologists regard him as a spokesman for Mao--if not Mao himself writing under a pen name. Since then, there has been scarcely a murmur from the radicals.

Chou's illness probably brought about this apparent political ceasefire. With Chou weakened--he was recently reported by Nigerian Chief of State Yakubu Gowon to be recovering from surgery--Mao has mediated among the factions striving to move into the post-Chou vacuum, diffusing power among the rehabilitated party bureaucrats, Madame Mao and Wang Hung-wen. In what appears to be a final, desperate effort to pave the way for his succession, Mao seems to be pushing hard for a collective leadership dominated by the regular Communist Party.

Now the big question is, who will belong to that collective leadership? As China's leaders mount the rostrum in Peking for the silver anniversary of their rule, Sinologists will be trying to determine which individuals or groups among them will be able to engineer a smooth succession to the post-Mao era.

Compromise Solution. The question--and the answer--are crucial. China can ill afford to have its attention diverted from its unfinished tasks by an exhausting power struggle or even a new period of social experimentation. The country's past experience has shown that too much ideological purity makes the economy and technology suffer, as they did in the frenetically leftist Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution periods. Conversely, a swing toward moderation has encouraged the creation of a privileged technocratic elite. China under Mao has veered from one to the other in an often harmful search for the way best suited to its needs. Now, faced with new circumstances and advancing age, Mao seems to be trying a compromise solution, balancing moderation in economic and foreign policies with a continued hard line in ideology and culture.

The tension between these goals is great. And it remains to be seen whether the next generations of Chinese, who have been brought up and nurtured in Mao's all-embracing philosophy, can live up to his expectations.

*Once considered Mao's heir apparent, Lin Piao died in an airplane crash after allegedly trying to assassinate the Chairman in 1971.

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